Are You E-ready?

By: Jaclyn Dreicer
Posted In: News

About eight years ago, librarian Lisa Long was working at Brandeis University. She heard about Google’s intentions through other universities in California and the Midwest, but people in New England just weren’t picking up on the chatter. That was when Google first entered into agreements with several libraries, including Harvard, to digitize books.

“I think what people think is wrong with Google making a universal digitized library may be in the way that they are going about it,” Long said. “Since then, though, I have found Google Books incredibly helpful in research.”

Today, Long works as the Ezra Stiles special collections librarian at the Redwood Library in Newport, R.I., which is America’s oldest subscription library. Long is responsible for the rare books and archival materials there and as of this year, she began a project based on society’s move to the electronic delivery of books. E-books have been around since about 1999, but their recent surge in popularity has brought librarians and students in Newport, R.I. a series of mixed feelings.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, Google secretly negotiated for 29 months in order to reinforce the digital book distribution. Google’s court trial took place on Feb. 18, 2010 and Federal Judge Denny Chin delayed the ruling due to the overflow of information the case entailed.

Publisher’s Weekly stated in January that 25 percent of consumers who read e-books now buy mostly e-books and have cut back on purchasing print books. Bookstore sales also fell 2 percent in November last year and this decline was the largest since sales fell at 3 percent in May.

E-readers like the new “Alex Reader,” that went on sale in February for $359, offer 3G/Wi-Fi on a full-colored touch-screen according to Publisher’s Weekly.

One thing that Long has already learned from interviews with patrons is that these “e-readers” are creating a reverse appreciation of the book; Long calls it “a love/hate relationship.”

“I want to document what people think right now and make that available, so 400 years from now someone can have that information and know what a rare book dealer or a librarian thought about this book replacement,” Long said. ” If there’s going to be one.”

In her opinion, these devices are beneficial because they can provide a word by word index to help researchers and students collect information faster. The downside to these “cold wireless things” Long said, “is that the art and illustration portion of the book is forgotten.”

Collections librarian Robert Kelly, who also works at the Redwood Library, believes that e-readers are very practical devices, especially here in Newport.

“If you work most of the time on a ship, like as a fisherman, the e-reader would be a better option instead of lugging around 20, 30, 40 books,” Kelly said. “They even sell waterproof covering now.”

He also believes that patrons can’t browse the shelves for e-books either – at least not in the way they’ve become accustomed to. Kelly knows from his experience in working at Barnes & Noble that the e-readers sell out before Christmas.

“They are so big and they never sell out of anything,” Kelly said of the bookstore change. Still, an e-book differs significantly from its paper counter-part. “There’s something unique about opening a book and reading it, the tactile sense of the pages, the smell of the book, in terms of used library books, the idea that other people have read this before you,” Kelly said. “I’m a big fan of purchasing used books for myself to see what other people have written in them.”

Kelly deals with printed material and purchases new books for the Redwood Library. Books are also an indulgence for Mike Labrie, a senior at Salve Regina University. He is an English Literature major and he often writes for online magazines and literary journals. Lately, he has been working on his own literary magazine.

“The thing about creating is that it’s your own,” Labrie said. “This whole e-Book/Google situation takes the beauty out of it. You can’t curl up with a blanket and Amazon’s Kindle and feel exactly the same way that you feel with a real book.”

According to Publisher’s Weekly, some e-readers have an application called “e-ink” that makes the text on the e-reader look just like the pages in a real book.

“Google’s dog-eat-dog philosophy makes everything easier to access, but they are clearly not a publishing representative,” Labrie said. “If the settlement ever happens in Google’s favor they’re going to take a toll on small publishing companies.”

The Google Book Settlement stated that Google will eventually pay rights holders 63 percent of all revenues that they receive from complete digitized books, but the U.S. Department of Justice still hasn’t made any final decisions. There isn’t much being said about when the next court date for the Google books settlement will be held either, but Google posted on its online settlement that authors and publishers should claim their books before Mar. 31, 2011.

In the meantime, Long plans to continue interviewing experts on this topic for possibly another 10 years, depending upon what technology throws her way.