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The phenomenon of e-books will hit the library community this year as several new ventures get under way.
The response of the library community to this will be interesting - and crucial to the future pattern of their development.
The music industry is under threat from the downloading of pirate copies of their latest offerings via the Internet. Similarly, publishers and
their trading partners, libraries, are currently facing new technologies and perhaps, more worryingly, a new attitude amongst their customers amongst the key 18-20 year olds who have little enthusiasm for
libraries and books. Their preferred medium is digital in its many forms - Web, CD-ROM, portable E-book devices etc.
How the new technologies will affect the libraries is conjecture at the moment - but we will not have long to wait for the effects to be felt.
Consider the Web for example.
Apart from its already widespread use by students to assist in garnering facts, background, news and multi-media items for their studies, new forms of Web service are poised to change the landscape for librarians for ever.
In March 1999, www.netlibrary.com for instance will launch a Web based library service that allows a student to "check out" an electronic copy of a book to their PC for a limited time for a fee. Once the loan period is over, the book is automatically "returned." They have 15,000 titles already available and are expecting to add 200 titles a month to that core collection. Within the business model they appear to have all the right links set up with publishers so that money flows back to the author for the use of the material. All that remains is for a university to buy a block deal from netlibrary.com to supply its students with the material as required and the loop is closed. And that loop need not include the traditional library - although in reality it may be the librarian who does the deal - since theirs is the knowledge of usage patterns and so on. Whatever happens it will profoundly affect the library as a service, as a profession and as an institution. Why buy traditional books? Why build that new library?
Another model for the E-book is exemplified by the "Rocket book" - a handy paperback sized reading device that can hold up to 10 books at a time. As one book loving librarian admitted while she certainly preferred a book with its nicer reading capabilities, she was thrilled to have 10 books together on a trip. This device can be replenished from the Web as required as needs change. The library model is recast again with a device that in many ways improves on the book - and you can still read it on the beach!
Think on this.
Although the device costs about $200-$500 now to buy - it may become like the mobile cell phone - the device is free with the service. Or the university may decide to provide every student with an E-book. In China they are about to build 1,000 new universities - will they build 1,000 new libraries or will the library become just an E-book service station?
E-books will of course remain side by side with any new media but there will be profound changes as a generation of digitally literate (and book
averse) users enter the higher education process.
The survey evidence is that these students would far rather use computer based resources than books - how much is due to real commitment to the new medium and how much to a preference for all things digital and its "cool" image is debatable. It is clear however that this generation expect to be able to link directly to related information and to copy directly into assignments rather than read, write notes or photocopy from printed material with all the associated inconvenience and time wasting.
The impact that this revolution will have on the Integrated Library Systems can only be guessed.
Book collections will still require management but, at the very least there will need to be some thought about how the OPAC functions should work so that E-book resources - whatever the technology - can be accessed seamlessly. If E-books come with a MARC record then it will be easy enough to load cataloguing descriptions. The challenge will be in making sure that the portal for E-Books remains the library and its electronic heart, the Integrated Library Management System.
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