Henry,
Hi- Thank you for kinds words about my Varda Books and you know, that as your customer, I have nothing but the highest regard for you personally and your business as a Jewish bookseller. As most Jews, I like to read printed books as well and I think will want to do it for many years to come. Having said, I want to add that like most Jews I also like the herring. however not the red kind that you stuffed your response with. The issue is NOT if today there are many people who find printed books of greater convenience and warmth than respective digital editions, the issue if libraries today are better off purchasing paper books. And while I agree with you that there are many issues today still with books prepared for the computer-assisted reading and research, there are even more problems with their paper versions. 1. Cost. I am not talking about only prices, but also the cost of purchasing and keeping the reading material by the libraries. True, the nominal prices of eBooks for libraries today are higher than their printed equivalents, but it is only because the cost of hosting them is carried by a seller, while the cost of hosting the printed books by a buyer. Additionally, we should consider not only nominal prices but also the cost per usage. An average printed book in the library maybe consulted about three times per year, i.e. about 60 times in twenty year period. The same title in digital format will be consulted/read/searched ten, twenty times as often in the same period making the per usage only a fraction of what it is for a printed copy. 2. Utility. Besides the cost (which following the logic of considering the price only, on a surface seem should prod librarians towards the waiting for a number of years after a book initial appearance and towards the purchase of the used paper copy from Abebooks), there is such thing as utility. Digital editions of books save incredible number of life-hours because they allow a user to accomplish the same goal much faster: MUCH faster find, make a note of and organize the discovered passages than with printed books. Superior utility of eBooks does not save human lives only this way. The fact that books can be accessed from almost anywhere saves also transport time, tires, gas, etc. and improves quality of life as it allows one greater flexibility in combining the study with work/school/family/etc. 3. Effectiveness. The ability to search a book to quickly find what one is looking for fast does not only reduce the quantity of time needed to accomplish the task, but also allows the book to accomplish its mission - to be an efficient vehicle for the transmission of knowledge - much better. In a word, the libraries who wish to serve more people with better books, today have no choice but to look towards the digital editions for the solutions. The cost-effectiveness of digital editions (not measured by nominal price alone), their utility and effectiveness as a vehicle for transmission of knowledge is so much more on the side eBooks that any librarian who continues to purchase the printed editions (except for kids, Orthodox Jews, and certain other situations) is simply throwing money away and should be fired. Yours, Alex From: Henry Hollander, Bookseller [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 3:43 PM To: A G Cc: [email protected] Subject: RE: Bookless libraries - response to A G > Henry is a typical luddite and is a right (with exception of "from real") > only in saying that "the transition from real books to digital books is > not an equivalent transition to the transition from scroll to codex". The > transition to digital editions brings humanity a much greater increase in > use value of books, than all previous revolutions in this area. combined. > > Librarians who are too lazy to change their minds actually harm their > patrons and institutions they work for. > > Alex Dear Alex, I reject your characterization of myself as a Luddite, typical or otherwise. I have been selling books via the internet longer than any other merchant on this list. I have had an active presence on the internet since 1995. I have been actively following the issue of digital books since 1989. At that time I began a discussion with the CEO of a small computer technology company on the issue and developed a list of qualities in a digital reader that I felt were necessary before anyone other than tech geeks would be interested in using the devices. What I learned over the next fifteen years or so was that not only was the device the issue but also the business model which applied to the books being sold to be read on those devices. An additional issue to be considered is whether digital books are better than print books. This is an issue usually avoided by those promoting digital books. The standard that I initially imagined was the minimum standard for an acceptable e-reader was first achieved by the Nook Color and later by the Ipad. There are now many devices that meet that standard. However, there are additional possibilities for the e-reader that are not yet supported either technologically or legally. In my 2009 AJL paper (http://www.jewishlibraries.org/main/Resources/Podcast/tabid/89/ID/1133/Jewi sh-Libraries-Jewish-Book-Stores-Friends-or-Strangers.aspx or better the re-written version in AJL News) I claimed that access to e-reading capabilities would be nearly ubiquitous by 2015. THE MAIN OPEN ISSUES REMAINING ARE THOSE TO DO WITH THE BUSINESS MODELS (AND STANDARDS). Libraries are not treated equally to retail purchasers of e-books. Companies that sell access rather than ownership have found a model that is wonderfully profitable for themselves and horribly parasitical towards their customers. Purchasers of e-books from Amazon are always subject to complete loss of access to the materials they have purchased at the arbitrary discretion of Amazon. Many scientific journals are only available through the rental model and the costs are ferociously high. E-books are not available with complete device interoperability because Amazon prefers to obstruct a standard format for their own commercial benefit. Amazon's pricing model as defended by the courts threaten the future of independent publishers by taking away from the publishers the right to set prices so that their operations can be profitable. Essentially, the middle-men have crippled the potential for e-books. Some smaller e-book venders have a fairer model and I would say Varda Books is one of them. Making e-books accessible is a much more complicated project than making printed books accessible. I am not sure where the financial tipping point is between the two, but I am pretty sure that librarians are having just as much trouble locating that tipping point and acting on the correct side of it.. There is research on this subject already, but much more is warranted. It has already been shown that reading retention from paper books is superior to reading retention from e-readers and other screens. This may change over time due to evolution, but not in the lifetime of any of the living. In a Pew Center study on e-reading (http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/the-rise-of-e-reading/) it was found that the majority of e-reader owners use their devices to read periodicals and newspapers rather than books. (At least one publisher of Romance Novels has entirely switched to e-books.) What we can learn from that is that the preference of the majority of e-readers is for a device that will allow them to dispense with ownership of reading materials that they consider disposable or expect to complete in a very short time period. Serious reading is getting a much slower uptake onto e-readers. E-reading devices are slowly being made able to take advantage of the previous 1500 years of experience in book design. However, many types of books are still poorly served by e-readers. Poetry, Art Books, Children's Books and in general all well-illustrated books lag significantly by comparison with the printed iterations. The world of books outside the English language remains largely outside of the e-reader purview. The simple truth is this: if you put a paper book in a readers hand they are good to go. This will always be true. As such e-books will always be at a handicap. This is quite different than the transition from CDs to MP3s (Video to Dvd, etc.). That was a device transition. A device was required in the first state and a device was required in the second state. The issue here is whether or not we should make reading depend on access to a device or not or maintaining an open situation (multiple types of access). I strongly support maintaining an open situation. (This is by definition not a Luddite position.) As I stated in my previous post, Bookless Libraries is a radical idea. As in all fields there may be some lazy librarians, but I don't know any of them. It is clear to me that in the environment of a bookless library the institution administrators will view librarians as an unneeded luxury. Wrong as they would be I think that librarians who actively work towards that goal may actively be working themselves out of jobs. The best in librarianship today is found where libraries are trying to do more, offer more in more different ways, and with budgets that rarely offer the support required for the task. Today's librarians can be neither lazy in thought or deed. They are ill-served by the Bookless Library radicalism. They do their best work when they are able to do their work on the basis of the needs of their patrons, rather than the needs of their venders or imperious technologists and futurists. I strongly believe that libraries need to organize and resist the rapacious exploitation that they are suffering from at the hands of scientific publishers, Amazon, and all those who license use of books rather than sell them. Libraries should be demanding the adoption of an open standard for e-textuality. Information technology should be subordinated to librarianship rather than the reverse. The continued prevalence of paper books in the library environment should be assumed. Varda Books is now frequently bundling the purchased of their e-books with print-on-demand paper copies of the same titles. Despite your statements above, on a practical basis, we seem to differ less than might have been thought. Best Regards, Henry Hollander Henry Hollander. Bookseller 843 Twenty-Fourth Avenue San Francisco, CA 94121 415-831-3228 tel [email protected] http://www.hollanderbooks.com ALL KINDS OF JEWISH BOOKS
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