Title: Op Ed - Little Red Herrings
Author: Mark Herring
Description: A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall - The oddity is that we have happily become a spectator society, happy to see the world with our eyes, not with our minds, as Shakespeare had it.
Link: pdf
by Mark Y. Herring (Dean of Library Services, Dacus Library, Winthrop University)

Is it just my e-magination, or are we in
an e-lust for e-books? E-verywhere
I look, now, I seem to e-ncounter
something about eBooks. I have been
ebombarded recently with a glut of
eBook offers. I wish I could pay with
e-money but they always ask for the
real thing. That’s the funny thing about
e-stuff. It always requires real money,
e-ven if it flops, or they tell you it isn’t
e-nywhere but e-verywhere. Still, you
can’t send virtual money. A recent article
in the Economist reported a run on
the bank in Second Life as if that were
news. Not to worry. Its e-ventors are
still making real money. But I’ve said
e-nough about Second Life.
Friends (and in this group I also
include e-nemies because without the
second part I wouldn’t have that many
to count) think I may be a Luddite. So
much so that they’ve threatened an
e-ntervention. But I’m not, really. I’m
just worried that ALA is going to e-lope
with Google and leave all of us librarians
in the e-lurch. One more panting article
about Google and libraries by e-ither
of our professional magazines and I’m
calling the FCC about pornography, but
that’s another story. Seriously, am I the
only one noticing all the e-xcitement
about eBooks of late? I got so many
calls from women tryng to sell me stuff
that I think I must be one or two on their
speed dial. So what gives?
If you want eBooks, there’s no lack
of looking. eBook.com sells itself as
the “world’s leading source of eBooks”
[note the capital!]. Okay, I know I’m
dense but that can’t be too hard, especially
if one has only 80,000 titles, the size
of a very small academic library. They
also tout, on Google anyway, lots and
lots of e-titles. Two categories caught
my e-yes: “sex” and “erotica.” I hate to
sound like a philistine, but is there a real
— or virtual — difference? Seems to me
both are about sex. Perhaps some cataloger
will explain the difference to me.
Can sex not be e-rotic or the e-rotic not
be sexual? Anyway, the two are sandwiched
(so to say) on Google, between
“Computers” and “Business.” Someone
get me marketing on the line!
A number of eBook vendors have
been around quite e-while and offer
thousands of eBooks to download on
your … computer and/or laptop. But
many of them are not doing as well financially
as they would like. For example,
one eBook content provider still beats
the e-bushes for donations. Another
began with millions of dollars in venture
capital but later ended up downsizing
dramatically. While a few have made
comebacks of sorts — rehiring some
there, closing an office while enlarging
another — none of them make very good
business models to hold up for e-mulating
to would- be e-ntrepreneurs.
One eBook content provider did a
pilot in a city by offering end users a
chance to get on e-board for pennies a
year. End users could simply log on and
get the book they needed, if what they
needed was one of a few thousand in cyberspace.
Don’t have a computer? Newt
Gingrich was ahead of his time when he
offered the homeless laptops. See, if he
had been successful, we wouldn’t have
that e-mbroglio now between the have
and the have-nots. Anyway, could this
have anything to do with the decline of
media centers in the K-12 schools? Of
course, kids had to pay for the access but
it was a mere pittance, right?
Another eBook content provider was
acquired by a Consorium. While this
vendor began with quite a bit in venture
capital, most of the money went into
cyberspace. That may be another way
of saying that they didn’t lose anything,
really, but I’m not sure those e-venture
capitalists felt that way. We have this
access but it is by far and away one of
the least used of more than 100 databases
that are offered. And the lack of use isn’t
from lack of trying to stir up interest.
Marketing didn’t seem to help. There
were no takers, real or e-magined. I
don’t want to be charged with omitting
the e-obvious, so what about Google’s
gigantesque G-3,478 libraries and the
plan to digitize e-very book in as many
libraries that will agree to e-ngage with
it? Copyright, e- or otherwise, did throw
a wrench in the works for a bit, but that
was e-asily overcome. Google e-gnored
it unlike anyone e-lse has been able
to. Money talks. For books still under
copyright, one gets e-snippets; for those
in public domain, the full text. We still
don’t know how this will be paid for
(pay-per-view comes to mind, as do ads,
but I’m only speculating), yet we’re assured
it will be affordable. (Whether the
affordability has in mind Google owners,
Bill Gates, or struggling libraries is
anyone’s e-guess.) Yes, yes, I e-know.
It puts before the public millions of
books that would otherwise be collecting
e-webs. As an author, I ought to be
e-cstatic about that. But I want readers,
and that doesn’t seem to be in the works
when it comes to e-readers (see below).
I also haven’t seen anything about
re-mastering
these texts,
something e-xperts tell me will be required
at some point. Let’s hope no one
is using digitization as a replacement for
traditional preservation.
Here’s the part that confuses me.
eBooks have been around about twenty
years now, but today we’re not very far
from the starting gate. The last thing I
saw e-ndicated that the niche for eBooks
was still very low, e-reference texts and
e-journals notwithstanding. And then
there are the e-readers. One can’t very
well lug about a laptop, e-ven if wireless,
so what’s an e-reader to do? There isn’t
much on the horizon.
For example, one company set out
with lots of hype for an eBook reader.
This reader highlights all sorts of new
technology and bells and whistles but it
has been something of a bust in the short
run. Still, it offers really only a handful
of titles, comparatively speaking, via its
database. You have to log in, download
the book to a computer and then upload
it to the reader. You can also upload
directly to the reader. It’s all very e-asy,
you see, but not altogether convenient.
Someone I know bought one and it’s
been in the shop for awhile and looks
like it may go back next week. Twice
now my friend has tried to schedule a
training session and both times had to
cancel because the reader wasn’t working.
The fine print indicates he can get
another reader, but it will e-likely be
refurbished (surely they sent us a new
one to begin with). Of course, one
e-xpects such glitches in any new technology,
but it sounds like the same song
with the same verse. While one “can”
download texts not available from the
database, the e-xperience was nothing
short of e-xasperating.
Another eBook reader costs a lot so it
should be better, right, but I can’t speak
to the advantages or disadvantages. It’s
just too expensive and we simply don’t
have the resources to test e-read it. I’m
sure it works well, and of course at that
price it had better work wonderfully
well. But I’m at a loss to know how
to make that work with thousands of
students. Even buying one for e-very 50
users would be pretty e-xpensive! (What
would really help would be textbooks
made available as eBooks. Students
might jump at the chance to carry around
a 6 ounce reader as opposed to a 60
pound book bag!)
The problem isn’t really the techcontinued
nology — okay — not e-ntirely. The technology
is there; and if it isn’t quite there, it will
be, I promise. The problem is people. You
can predict technology. You can’t predict
people. So why the e-ffort to push so hard
with e-texts when the pushers aren’t getting
very far? I have a suspicion, which I’ve
outlined in my book Fool’s Gold, recently
released by McFarland in August of this
year, so I won’t bore you with the details.
The short answer is this. We know from
studies so far that virtually (no pun intended),
no one, e-ven e-readers, reads an e-text from
e-cover-to-e-cover (e-readers spend minutes
with texts, not hours). We also know that
the resolution on e-readers is at best about
50% or so the resolution of a printed page.
Again, we know that the transferability of
reading skills from screen-to-text is not so
good, or not nearly as good when you go at
it the other way around. So what gives with
the grand push?
Part of it is e-conomic. I’ve submitted
all my manuscripts over the last decade or
so in some electronic format. Converting
them is e-asy and requires little outgo on
the part of the e-publisher. It also allows
the e-publisher to reap just about 100% from
every sold copy, something impossible to
do unless you’re Mellon, which managed,
or so I’ve read, to make a profit off only a
dozen copies, a practice that did not win it
accolades from scholars. What worries me
about the push is that e-veryone is becoming
print allergic. Students already are, and
you know that if you work with them for any
length of time.
But another worry obtrudes. Are we
pushing something that will only insure us
of a generation of e-lliterates? The snatchand-
grab mentality of the Web strikes me as
threatening our freedom.
Am I being hyperbolic? I
don’t think so. Our democratic
capitalism works
only for a well-informed
e-lectorate. If that electorate
isn’t reading anymore
— and the latest study, Decline in Reading,
more than indicates we’re not — then that
e-lectorate won’t be very well informed.
Maybe I am a Luddite, after all — there,
I’ve saved you the trouble of sending me an
email. But perhaps we should at least catch
our collective e-breaths before venturing
too far along this path. At least, maybe we
should pause for just an e-moment before we
get so far down that path we find ourselves
completely lost in cyberspace.