School Libraries May Soon Be History (computers instead of books)

Rhinoceros Times ^ | 1/22/09 | Paul C. Clark

[this_ol_patriot]

This afternoon, I pulled an old book off my shelf. It was published in 1928. I had picked it up at a yard sale. How many other people had read and enjoyed that book?

I have a closet full of old textbooks, encyclopedias, novels, etc. that I pick up at a yearly "Book Nook" sale we have in my area. I love reading the little notes and stuff I find in them and wondering what the person who wrote them was like. Also the encyclopedias show that even in the past history changed depending on the year and the politics of the time they were written.

[Cacique]

I fear that we are moving in the direction of filtered information. The net control which is being exercised in China will be arriving here soon enough. The free internet as we have it now will have a short life span. We may have to revert to hand printed samizdat pamphlets as did dissidents in the old USSR. I fear conservatism will have to go underground as I fear a police state is on the horizon.

Paranoid you say? I think Santayana was right, ignoring the past leads to amnesia and repetition.



Ideas are more powerful than guns. If we don't let our people have guns, why should we let them have ideas?
-- Josef Stalin

[Cacique]

Most librarians are leftists and any critiques of the past worker’s paradises is verboten. With all the revisionism going on we can imagine book burnings and lauding Hitler as ahead of his time for getting rid of carbon footprints on an industrial scale.

[gopavenger]

Actually, Tri-Media Marketing Technologies in Canada has discovered a way to make sure every student is protected. The Kansas Securities Commissioner is making sure every child can beehive.ihive with the best. The investors are the kids’ friends.

[Semper911]

They can’t ban books, so they’ll just stop building libraries.

Nice.

[Oztrich Boy]

The oldest book I own (A History of the British Empire) was printed in 1868 - it's still readable

I have computer disks only 20 years old that can no longer be read.

[Paige]

This is NOT good at all! Who are the ones who will be in charge to make sure “ALL” books are on computers? The revisionist? Who is to say we will be able to get unrevised historical documents?

NO WAY will this work !

[BuffaloJack]

They don’t need books if they don’t teach students to read.
The uneducated are easy to rule.

[BlazingArizona]

A few years ago when we sold the house to consolidate into a retirement condo, I went through our collection of over 6000 books to winnow it to the essentials. I realized that for over 95% of them, we would read a book once and then put it on the shelf. That experience made me a total convert to the idea of e-books.

Today, Tor Publishing gives away a few of its novels in PDF form. As a sales strategy, it works: I read the free ones and would like to buy PDFs of more of their works. But they haven't made the obvious connection to the idea of selling e-book versions to accompany the freebies.

[yazoo]

“The wave of the future for publishing.”

Indeed. I switched to a Sony Ebook a few months ago. I can download books for less than the cost of paper book, I can enlarge the text to fit my weakening eyesight, I can read in bed with the lights off, store hundreds of books on a 10 dollar media chip, and do markups in the book with a stylus. Best thing that ever happened to books.