library – Page 6 – Dumpling in a Hanky

The Kindle in commercial settings

The Tinfoil + Raccoon blog owner Rochelle recently blogged about her experiences of testing the Kindle, specifically in relation to use in public libraries. She comes to the conclusion that it’s not an efficient use of resources, and there’s some interestingly vague user terms from Amazon which could prevent a library form lending a Kindle with any content loaded onto it, thereby pretty much defeating its entire purpose.

Although they’re not exactly the same, public and commercial libraries (such as my own) are likely to encounter similar problems with eReaders like this. I considered what effect it would be likely to have in law firm libraries back in September, with our very specific needs for authority (hey, if we have trouble getting judges to accept electronic versions of cases, just think of the fun we’ll have with electronic, editable / underlineable versions!) and multiple copy licensing.

Add to that the fact that, as we’d dispense these eReaders, we would therefore automatically become the IT support for them, cos if we give them out, we must know how to fix them, right? And as the Hedgehog Librarian pointed out in conversation with me, when a member of staff does the inevitable, and loses a fully loaded eReader, you then have the cost of not only replacing the reader, but every textbook loaded onto it! *whimper*

Throw in the joy that the Kindle is set up to allow you to download anything you want, without further authorisation needed (as it’s assumed that , if you have it, you’re the owner and therefore entitled to download materials), then you can just imagine the solicitors joy, as they see they can add anything and everything they want to the eReader, and it’s apparently free! They wouldn’t see the library budget draining away, download by download…The only way to stop it is to unregister the Kindle, which then makes it pretty much useless, as you wouldn’t be able to add new content (I think,can be hard to tell from the vague info), or download updates to that content.

Plus, for the Scottish market, we’re tiny compared to our neighbours and therefore would be last on the list for getting our core texts converted to eReader use, if ever. It’s hard to make a commercial case for it if you know you’re only likely to sell a few thousand copies. And if you can make that case, then the cost is likely to be so high to make it viable that every Scottish law / academic library’s budget will be wincing painfully.

So…with all those potential problems with the eReader in a non-personal use setting….I wonder if there are plans for an ‘academic’ version, with blocks on unauthorised downloading? Or if, in a commercial setting, they’d only ever be useful for reference texts – the type of thing you need to have available, but nobody’s ever going to fight to get their hands on it. Freeing up those shelves full of dictionaries, expert witness registers, “Who’s Who in the Law”, “Chambers UK”, the White Book etc., and replacing them with one, handheld unit, to be checked in and out with the librarian. Now THAT I can see working…if the publishers ever did it!

All kinda moot points at the moment, as we can’t even get a Kindle here yet (and no sign of even a possible release date either – a search on Amazon brings up 3 chargers for the Kindle, but no machine), but where America leads, we tend to follow. And if the Kindle sells well, it may be the beginning of an eReader boom. Remember those strange wee devices from that quirky firm Apple? Seemed to play music without you having to carry CDs or cassettes around…wonder if it ever caught on?

The whales are surfacing

An article in The Guardian discusses “Facebook whales”, individuals with more than 1000 ‘friends’.

I personally have currently got 42 friends, all of whom I either know in real life, or know of professionally. I’m polite and add people that ask, if I know them, but if I don’t really have any interest in them, I delete them a few weeks later. I can’t even begin to imagine how you would try and manage that size of a network (allegedly, humans cope best with a network of between 100-200 individuals), and to be fair, Mr MacLeod does actually admit that he doesn’t read the news feed. Which leads me to wonder why he uses the site, if it’s not for keeping up with the activities of the people he’s interested in? Is he just friend collecting for the show-off element: “I’ve got SO many more friends than you, I’m so much more worthwhile”?

Anyhoo, I’d definitely like Facebook to develop a way to turn off certain peoples feeds, or certain activity feeds. I don’t need to know when a friend has added another friend..or that they’ve left certain groups (although when they join them it can be handy, but I don’t particularly care if they no longer want to be a member of that group, I’m a big enough girl to be able to play on my own). It just clogs up the feed, and the more your network grows, the more clutter you’ll get in your feed, as Mr MacLeod has found. A way to cut down what’s coming in as a feed would be very handy. Does this sort of option already exist?

On a related point, at a speed networking meeting last week for my professional group, we had a chat about sites like Facebook, Bebo, and even the grandfather of them all, MySpace. Of 5 of us, only 2 had access to these type of sites in work, and those 2 were unsure if it would be officially frowned upon if it were ever to come up formally. And these are meant to be forward thinking, cutting edge legal firms, governmental bodies and universities. Of course, the option is there to try and persuade our employers that we need access to these sites…but in a library context, we were hard pushed to find a good reason why we should have access. “Networking” is a wonderful word, but when you’re trying to justify to a fee earner, whose time is charged in minutes, why you should spend your minutes on a site that gives no business return…can you ever win?

E-reader technology and trauma

Both the English Law Gazette and the JLSS have information on Sweet & Maxwells trial of a new eReader, the iRex Iliad Reader.

Now, while they seem like fun, the downsides (like lack of search and index) do make it look like it’s going to still be a good few years yet before this sort of thing is commercially available, and the fee earners start demanding them / similar technology, which gives me plenty of time to try and work out, for a commercial law firm, the following questions:

Are the ebooks individual plug in elements? Or downloadable files?
Will we have to provide every solicitor with an eReader, or would we need a library eReader that would be borrowed out on demand? Given their attachment to their other devices such as Blackberries, I can’t visualise them being happy to share a resource like that.
How many copies will we need of standard texts? I can only imagine this’ll lead to every solicitor wanting their own copy of each available relevant text…the other alternative would be for the eBooks and eReader to stay in the library, and be borrowed out like normal books. Again, demand could mean this would lead to the Library needing multiple eReaders…
And the copies issue leads onto the cost issue…what pricing structure would the publishers be using? Would each eBook cost the same as a book? Would there be discounts for buying multiple copies?
Would there be a way to disable the annotating function if the ‘library of eBooks’ option was what was used? Or wipe out ALL annotations in one shot, without trawling through the pages? People DON’T like to read other peoples random scribblings on books!
Are pages printable?
Would printouts of these pages be acceptable in court?

Anyone got any ideas?