Over seventy attendees listened to intriguing presentations by CUNY librarians at the Emerging Technologies Committee’s “Electronic Books and Electronic Readers: Emerging Issues and Questions,” a standing-room-only event at Baruch’s vertical campus on April 23.
Alycia Sellie (Brooklyn) and Matthew Goins (Openflows, Inc.) proposed a Digital Reader’s Bill of Rights and discussed the problems with proprietary e-book formats. Their presentation, “The Rights of Readers and the Threat of the Kindle,” focused on the rights of readers and issues that librarians face under restrictive Digital Rights[Restrictions] Management (DRM). License terms are often encrypted, and because the user may not see the terms, purchasing means default acceptance of the license agreement with no negotiating rights. Amazon’s Kindle was criticized for its hidden rules, including number of allowable downloads of purchased titles, meaning “purchased” titles are essentially only rented.
In the second presentation, Lehman librarians Stefanie Havelka, Rajeev Jayadev, Jennifer King, and Adelaide Soto using the SONY e-book reader. Lehman chose SONY over the Kindle because SONY supports ePub and pdf, has touch version, and works for the disabled. SONY also allows downloading from libraries and other free resources. The device may only be used in the library, and fines for loss or damage are heavy. Lehman hopes to purchase more e-readers and is subscribing to Overdrive for downloadable academic titles.
John Jay librarians Gretchen Gross, Maria Kiriakova, Karen Okamoto, and Mark Zubarev discussed their pilot project with e-books. They received a $2000 grant for a pilot test on students who failed the CUNY entrance exam and were taking summer classes. (The Center for Advancement of Teaching at John Jay received a $250,000 grant to purchase Kindles and test and assess them with classes but did not consult or work with the library.) E-readers create many headaches, from purchasing to use in the library. The team concluded that e-readers are not yet ready for the academic library. The project results have been published in Computers in Libraries 30.2 (March 2010): 20-24.
Gretchen Gross compiled a list of “E-Reader Tidbits” with links to sites about e-books and their users and studies by academic librarians at Yale and John Jay College.
Robin Brown (BMCC) shared her delicious bookmarks about ebooks. After a brief history of e-readers, she discussed handicapped access to e-readers. Continuing the DRM discussion, she noted that Project Gutenberg is software and hardware neutral, while proprietary systems tie the reader to a vendor.
The conclusions of the John Jay group rang true through all the other presentations. While e-readers do have futures and purposes, they are not ready yet for the world of academic libraries.
Audio of these presentations and slides of the presentation by Alycia and Matthew are available.
Jane Fitzpatrick (Graduate Center)