Stanford's Bookless Library

[soulotomy]

Stanford's bookless library

Quote:The e-book has arrived folks, and if Amazon's Kindle and Apple's new iPad with its slew of e-reader apps doesn't prove it, then ponder this: Stanford University's Engineering school may be entering an era of bookless libraries.

NPR has been speaking to administrators inside Stanford's library systems, concentrating on the Engineering library. Like most technical libraries in educational institutions, the shelves were once thronged with periodical publications--large tomes packed with research papers, refreshed as frequently as every month, and vital for researchers who need to keep up to date with the latest state-of-the-art thinking. But according to the head of the library, Helen Josephine, over the last five years many if not most of the periodicals have switched to being digital publications. It makes sense for the publications, which don't have to worry about print costs, and it makes sense for the authors, who may see a shorter time delay before their articles get published. And readers searching for data inside the texts have a much easier time of it too, they can run a digital search, rather than thumbing through indexes.

The change in publication habits for periodicals, and plain ol' text books too, has been so severe that a new library building, commissioned in 2005 and due to open next month, actually has 85% less shelf capacity than the previous edifice. That's a massive reduction in storage volume, and a pure reflection of the fact that bytes don't weigh anything. It's also the next logical progression in the modernization of library systems. Remember card catalogs? They were once a staple of any visit to a library, and their often hand-typed and hand-annotated reference cards were vital for finding the right book in a collection. But the card index was a perfect contender for digital replacement, even in an era when computers were mainly text-based. First they came for my card catalog ... then they came for my books ...

When you remember that there's a huge push by traditional publishers and booksellers, like Barnes and Nobel and Borders, to sell digital books for e-reader devices (and recall that Google's getting in on the act) it's tempting to mark this year as the beginning of the end for mainstream use of paper and ink books. Bookstores like B&N will, at some point, not need to stock quite so many physical texts--in the manner of Stanford's libraries--and merely extend its in-store "bonus" e-content merchandising to get people onto its property. Imagine, in fact, that a future Borders store consists of a couple of physical copies of each book and a coffee store: You browse books while sampling a text, and then scan the QR code on its rear-face with your e-reader to buy a digital copy of the book. Is Stanford's library the first strong hint that this is coming sooner than we think?

Ed

[polymerase]

(07-09-2010 08:41 PM)soulotomy Wrote:  Stanford's bookless library

[quote]The e-book has arrived folks, and if Amazon's Kindle and Apple's new iPad with its slew of e-reader apps doesn't prove it, then ponder this: Stanford University's Engineering school may be entering an era of bookless libraries.

I used to go every Thursday at least three times a month down to the Harvard Med School Library and read. I would spend about two hours mostly trying to find relevant papers, from those finding the connecting papers and xeroxing xeroxing xeroxing. Five huge xerox machines in the basement and there was always a line.

All through the 80s into the 90s. I don't think I have been to the library since 2004. Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry finally went electronic. Or at least my faculty card could gain access to it through the internet. That was the last one. I still have a hundred bucks worth of zerox card in my drawer but I will never use it because it is all online. I read the same amount, probably more but I am ten times more efficient.

The library is just for old publications and old maps. But most all of that is going online too.

I haven't exactly gone 100% electronic. I still print out the nicely formatted pdf and scribble in the margins. But then I end up copying those scribbles to my electronic notebook of the pdf so once the readers are just a little better the printing will go to.

[macbeemer]

Another dichotomy in the modern experience: just as there are SmartCars and other efficient rides, there will always be a Bentley Speed Six. Similarly, as poly and most of the rest of us will need to read more, and faster, without having to slog through a snowy Wednesday evening, there will never be anything like a leather-bound account of some obscure 17th century struggle in the north of France, read on that same snowy evening, in a soft old chair before a crackling fire. Did I mention the glass of port waiting nearby? It wouldn't be the same, looking across the room before the fire, only to see the greenish glow of an iPad discoloring the face of your companion.

[polymerase]

You got me there. A leather bound book that I know was read a century ago beats an iPad hands down. An Origin of the Species with handwritten notes in the margins by Alpheus Hyatt was the coolest thing I happened to find in an attack and is now in a museum.

But maps are what floats my boat and Harvard and other libraries have tons of really old maps. Looking at maps like that on the web is like watching the Drive In from the highway. Not that good.

The original is the original is the original. Viewing a print of Caillebotte's "The Floor Scrapers" on a web page is OK. A print is neat. Looking at the original is mind boggling. You can still see it in Paris not under glass but right there as he painted it.

[yoyo52]

I use on-line journal sources all the time. It beats the shit out of going to the stacks and pulling out the latest issue of whatever journal. But there are limits to the uses of etexts. I had a kid last year who thought it would be cool to use his iTouch to download the complete Shakespeare and use that instead of a hard copy. He used it one day only. It was just not flexible enough to do the kinds of things we do in a class--keep one finger in 1.3.5-8 and check out the echo at 2.3.15-25, then compare the passage at 4.1.56-92. He couldn't do it on the etext.

[polymerase]

Unfair! Teacher got the old school as well as everyone else. How about teach moves to treeless along with the class except for one student. Is that one student going to blow you away leafing through finding ePage 425b?

Or why use such weird paper centric mode of navigation? Why not "turn to where Hamlet is talking to the skull" Then that one kid holding the tree is dead meat. Meanwhile the rest of the class is writing permanent eNotes next to poor Yorick's skull and maybe even drawing a clown hat on him.

The comparing still needs a laptop with trackpad to grab out all your comparisons. Aren't your students all sitting there on laptops reading Facebook anyway?

[yoyo52]

There is no standard edition, so one kid will have one reference and another will have a different one. I've worked in classes where that's the case, with paper texts, and it's a complete and utter mess. The same goes for any long text. I've tried to use on-line texts for some classes, and the result is that it's impossible to make reference to a passage so that everyone can find it right away. Fritter away time locating it. I guess it's possible to talk about a text without having the text in front of you, but the result is pretty poor since you end up missing the thickness of the language. I guess I work with pretty old-fashioned objects!

[macbeemer]

Maps vs. GPS. I use both.

[yoyo52]

The old "both/and" instead of "either/or." Smart.

[polymerase]

(07-14-2010 07:34 PM)yoyo52 Wrote:  The old "both/and" instead of "either/or." Smart.

With maps it is Car GPs when I don't care. But when my life depends on it it is map plus compass then a GPS. GPS can kill you quicker than greased lightning on the water or in the woods.

The one thing about an emergency is you brain starts acting irrationally. With a map and a compass I can make a rational decision. When I have a GPS telling me oh, wait you are over here instead and the road is a modern road." you can die pretty quickly.

So I do love my GPSRs, I think I have six of them. But internet printed maps and a compass that I know reads true, priceless.