Primum fabella: a big publisher focused group a bunch of us on how to sell e textbooks through the library. Not one of the almost eight librarians bought this approach. We’d just add this expense? We’d become the bookstore?

Secundum fabella: observe the modern elementary school student burdened with book bag, those gunnysacks of learning that assure orthopedic surgeons of business well into the next century. Sure, the kiddos would be served by e versions; takes a load off the fanny and maybe improves learning. On the other hand, they don’t have to trek far—Moms, Dads, and grandparents await in Escalades just a few feet away…

Fabella tertia: I sympathize with the “real book” conundrum. You can’t arrange key textbooks on your office or home shelves as knowledge display. How do you claim you’ve studied when it is just pixels?

Ultima fabella: I’m ready, with any takers, to author a print and e textbook about all of this. Others can be paid to review; you, my co-author, will retire to the Southwest with the royalties which we’ll deposit electronically, of course!

Latin translations courtesy of Google…

Second anecdote. A young, fresh-faced enthusiastic student (sophomore) at the College of Charleston somehow found my office up on the second floor of the Addlestone Library. It was nearly 5 o’clock and I was thinking of leaving. Anyway, he was looking for a print book which the online catalog said was being processed in technical services. He said he desperately needed the book for a paper he was writing that was due in a two days. So, I looked in the online catalog myself and discovered that we also had an eBook version of the very same book. I told him he was in luck. He could see the book now, online. He said, “I know, but I want the real book.” To make a long story even longer, we found the print book in processing and the student went away happy. The book (transportation was the subject) he wanted was a quasi-textbook if you know what I mean.

And third anecdote. A young man was complaining about his heavy bookbag. “Man, I want all this stuff to be electronic so I don’t have to carry all this heavy stuff around.” Good point.

Fourth anecdote. A psychology professor on our campus was very enthusiastic. She agreed to let a publisher use her class as an experiment with a different type of textbook — a looseleaf binder that students could remove and file pages in at will. She thought this was a grand idea and so did the students. At least initially. But it didn’t work out because pages went missing and content was lost.

I am still collecting anecdotes.

So far, librarians have stayed away from textbooks and the textbook publishers have stayed away from us. The library model is one to many—buy once, used many times by as many people as possible. The textbook publisher model is many to one—sell as many copies to as many customers as possible. A librarian at a textbook conference and a textbook publisher at a library conference are fish out of water.

I’ve found colleagues, faculty, and students mostly agreeing with Austin’s studying behavior which we might label agnostic. En attendant Samuelson?

Perhaps Austin’s company is one of those who will alter this and bring these publishing/distribution/use models together. Got to ask though—Netflix’s major game now is streaming video to Internet connected televisions. Here they are causing concern to distributors and content providers.

Does CampusBookRentals have a Netflix fix? Would libraries be involved?