Let's Ban Print Books in Academic Institutions!!!!!!!

Friday November 18, 2011

Well, according to an article in "The Chronicle of Higher Education", South Korea plans to digitize all of its elementary and secondary school curriculum by the year 2015. This is occurring because the price of e-readers is doing down and the fact that Amazon has announced that it sells more e-books than print books.

Most items that an undergraduate needs to read is available in electronic form. According to Marc Prensky, he feels that nonelectronic books on campus should be banned or put in a museum. The advantages of a total electronic library would be:

1) Weaning students and scholars off the physical books of the past, colleges can find ways to ensure that they can achieve all results they want with integrated tools of the future.

2) Book and commentaries on books would start to be connected in ways they are not now.

3) Ideas would be freed from the printed page.

Print books in higher learning need to be in a museum and academics need to move to the tools of the future.

Not sure how I feel about all this but maybe I know how people felt when we moved away from clay tablets and scrolls. I mean I like learning new techniques but the comfort of a physical book would be hard to give up !

"The World Digital Library is an attempt to go beyond Eurpoe and the Americas... into cultures where the majority of the world is"

-James Billington

Bed Bugs in a Library Book!!!!!!!

Well it seems bed bugs are not only in in hotels and homes anymore! One patron of the Mount Pleasant branch of the Vancouver library system, in October 2011, found that out one day when he was reading his book from the library and a bed bug crawled out of the book and onto his hand. He asked his wife what it was and then he googled bugs and found out it was a bed bug. He then opened the book again and found more bed bugs in it.He and his wife frantically tore the house apart vacuuming, laundering and found no bedbugs.

The library system has no plans to close the library at this time as the system has over 10 million items. It will continue to monitor the situation. The patron claims his house is bug free!

Quote for the day-

"There may be "bugs" in technology but finding them in your print book just ain't cool!"
                                                                                   -Carla Lamontagne

See you next time!

Gaming @ the Library

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Video games and gamers have found a new haven-academic, public and even school libraries! Libraries by providing gaming programs have gained users in  previously difficult target ages- tweens and teens. Gaming programs is one of the most popular service libraries are providing. The do so by having video game clubs and hosting tournaments.They also have areas for game usage in the library as well as being take games home for 1 week.
Libraries are safe places for kids and young adults giving them a place to gather and talk with friends. As a result, many libraries have noticed an increase in children's and Young Adult books being checked out as well.

Well that is all for today and I'll leave you with a relevant quote to today's topic:

"Libraries enable the past to talk to the future!"
                                           -Edward Cornish

Saturday, November 5, 2011

     A few weeks ago, I subscribed to "Library Link of the Day"and today's excerpt came from the "Washington Post and Business Technology". It stated that Amazon.com on Thursday, November 3, 2011, is starting a lending library for Kindle owners that will allow them to borrow one electronic book per month. Here's the catch-borrowers have to subscribe to Amazon's Prime service which supplies free two-day shipping and streaming movies for $79.00 per year. This library, according to Amazon, has more than 5000 books, that includes bestsellers.
     The six biggest publishers-Random House, HarperCollins, Penguin, MacMillan, Simon & Schuster and Hachette are not participating as they have battled with Amazon over whether the publisher or Amazon gets to set the retail price of the books.
     According to Amazon, it is paying the participating publishers for the right to lend the books for a fixed price.It is paying the wholesale price every time a book is lent out in some cases.
     However, the books cannot be read on phones, PCs or tablet computers, despite the fact that there are Kindle apps for the mentioned devices.
     Oh, and I almost forgot-Kindle users got access to electronic books from public libraries. Those CAN be read in the Kindle apps.

     I am not sure what to think of this as it seems like Amazon is going out its original role as a bookseller.
     Bye for now!

Knowledge is free at the library. Just bring your own container.- Unknown
    

A new blogger

Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Welcome to my blog about library-related items. My name is Carla Lamontagne and I am currently a student at SIAST taking the Library and Information Technology course.
Libaries and books are two of my favourite things and learning more about them is thrilling even at the archaic age of 51!
Yesterday, when I was driving home from classes and listening to CBC radio as my usual habit is, the radio announcer began to describe something related to ebooks. A company out of the Netherlands has developed an iPad app that lets you share your marginal notes on e-books with other people and allow you to see what they wrote as well.
To do this you simply highlight a passage in the e-book, tap on it and you both leave a message related to that part and read what others wrote about it.
Joep Kuijper, the Dutch co-founder of Openmargin, feels that for e-books to be successful, they have to break away from the features of the printed book.

Well that's all for now and here is a quote about libraries-

"A library should be the ONLY place that you should judge a book by its cover!"