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       #Post#: 4848--------------------------------------------------
       The End of Libraries
       By: Mac Date: January 3, 2012, 2:11 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [glow=red,2,300]The End of Libraries
  HTML http://alltogethernow.org/showtag.php?currid=85[/glow]
       An open-ended essay on the tech of ebooks, libraries, business
       models and readers (customers)
       [quote]The End of Libraries, Part I
       Oct 18, 2011
       I am a library manager, a convert to the eBook format, and very
       worried. Although speculation regarding the collapse of public
       libraries has been in the infosphere since the advent of the
       internet, the public library’s continued existence has never
       been more uncertain than it is today.
       First, consider that in the face of growing demand, libraries
       around the nation are cutting back on new acquisitions, hours,
       and staffing. In tough economic times, public libraries, which
       are almost always primarily funded at the local level, are easy
       targets for cost cutting, and they are being targeted
       practically everywhere.
       And then consider the advent of eBooks, which are exploding in
       popularity. Amazon sells more of them than they do hardcovers
       and paperbacks combined. There are four good reasons why eBooks
       will marginalize, if not eliminate, the paper-based book within
       a few years:
       1.
       one reader.
       2.
       irresistible—no trees to cut down, paper to manufacture, type to
       set, or books to print, bind, store, and distribute by truck,
       train, and plane to the four corners of the world. In time,
       those irresistible economics will filter down to the buyer of
       books in the form of greatly reduced prices, at which point
       Amazon’s eBook sales will go through the roof.
       3.
       and annotate eBooks. You can embed audio and video and Internet
       links in them. In time, eBooks will add values and features we
       aren’t even dreaming about today.
       4.
       to the book. All you have to do is want it and, in a few
       seconds, anywhere in the world, the book comes to you.
       Eighty-two percent of American public libraries offer their
       patrons eBooks, most of them through Overdrive’s online service.
       So what is the problem? The problem is content. There isn’t any.
       Too few books are available in the eBook format. Too few of
       those that are available are purchased by public libraries,
       typically through statewide consortia that share a central
       collection of eBooks among many libraries. And too few of the
       purchased titles are available for checking out. The checkout
       model itself is fatally flawed, where one purchased copy checks
       out to one library patron at a time for two weeks, just like a
       paper-based copy. Most titles in my state’s consortium have long
       waiting lists and a recent check of 50 books I have on my “To
       Read” list found exactly none of them available in my library’s
       eBook catalog.
       And finally, consider Amazon.com. If they are successful in
       their current effort to get publishers to allow them to loan
       eBooks through their Amazon Prime service, the single most
       important motivation for supporting public libraries, at least
       to middle-class readers like myself, will vanish overnight. I
       will continue to vote for municipal taxes to support our public
       library, because I understand the vital importance of public
       libraries to a democracy. However, millions will not, and
       libraries from coast to coast will begin closing their doors.
       I do not believe I am being an alarmist. We are in a political
       climate where public services are being privatized, downsized,
       or eliminated at a rapid rate. And if libraries cannot begin to
       serve their patrons’ eBook reading needs—and they don’t come
       close to doing so today—and an Amazon or other commercial
       endeavor steps in to fill that need, libraries are finished.
       In my next posting, I will discuss how public libraries—and, for
       that matter, traditional publishers (their existence also being
       threatened by the internet)—can not only survive but flourish to
       a greater extent that they ever have, in this brave new
       eBook-dominated world.
       [/quote]
       #Post#: 4849--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The End of Libraries
       By: Mac Date: January 3, 2012, 2:12 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote]The End of Libraries, Part II
       Oct 22, 2011
       The threat facing public libraries is real.1 It has not made
       itself manifest as yet, because no commercial enterprise has
       assembled the eBook lending package which is demanded by an
       eReading public starved for content.
       The threat facing traditional publishers on the other hand, is
       here, today, and it is equally serious. Not only is Amazon
       publishing authors directly themselves (122 titles are coming
       out this fall alone2 and many, many more are planned for next
       year), but authors are increasingly self-publishing on the
       Internet and many nontraditional publishing entities besides
       Amazon are springing up to help them.3,4
       The authors whom publishers are likely to lose first are the
       ones who are most secure in their earning power and therefore of
       greatest value to them. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter
       books, for instance, will be selling the eBook versions of that
       popular series exclusively on her own website,5 Pottermore.6
       Public libraries and traditional publishers can save themselves
       only if they act quickly and boldly. The following is what I
       think they need to do, and the only alternative to this course
       of action, as far as I can see, is a not-so-slow but an
       ever-so-painful death.
       Publishers: Convert every title, new and backlist, to eBook
       formats that support every device out there. Give them all to a
       nonprofit business entity, which we will here call AmPLE, for
       American Public Library Enterprise. AmPLE will manage the eBook
       distribution to public library patrons.
       Public Libraries: Determine your eBook budget for the coming 12
       months and send a check for it to AmPLE.
       AmPLE: Get your site up superquick and start lending to your
       libraries’ patrons. For every checkout, decrement the eBook
       account of the borrower’s library by 50 cents, send 45 cents to
       the publisher, and keep 5 cents for yourself. Patrons can check
       out up to three titles at a time regardless of whether one or a
       thousand other borrowers have borrowed them at the same time.
       And no due date. When a reader wants another book, they will
       return one.
       Do the math. In today’s model, a publisher might sell—let’s be
       liberal—2000 copies of a blockbuster new title to 50 state
       library consortia (the standard arrangement today) for $20 each,
       or $40,000. Period. End of transaction. The consortia then sets
       about loaning these 2000 copies to their 330 million patrons,
       2000 at a time for two-week checkouts. Ridiculous.
       Or. Check out that same blockbuster, which the publisher has
       provided to AmPLE free of charge, to—let’s be conservative—a
       half a million readers on Day One, at 45 cents a checkout, or
       $225,000—almost six times the amount the publisher would have
       received on the old model, and that’s only on Day One. That one
       title continues to earn money for the publisher throughout its
       term of copyright—until 70 years after the death of the author.
       The 50-cent “charge” for a checkout is a reasonable figure,
       arrived at by dividing the average library’s annual budget for
       new acquisitions by the average annual circulation7. This figure
       ranges from 25 to 75 cents for most libraries.
       Today, everybody loses, and this includes the authors. They need
       the expert services of traditional publishers. They need the
       nurturing, the editing, the production, and the management of
       their work, freeing them to do the work itself. We readers need
       traditional publishers, for their selectivity and the imprimatur
       of quality which their selectivity exhibits.
       And we all need public libraries, one of the last bastions of
       egalitarian democracy in the U.S. Through public taxation,
       public libraries provide us all with equal access to knowledge
       and a wealth of information services which must not be relegated
       to the sole province of the well-to-do. Study after study8
       affirms the huge return to our society on investment in our
       public libraries.
       As eBooks gradually—or perhaps not so gradually—replace the
       physical book, we need to ensure that our public libraries
       provide these resources as widely, efficiently, and economically
       as the technology allows. A system like the one described above
       does just that. Under this system, public libraries will
       flourish rather than fade, and everyone else wins as
       well—authors, publishers, and readers.
       [/quote]
       #Post#: 4850--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The End of Libraries
       By: Mac Date: January 3, 2012, 2:12 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote]The End of Libraries, Part III
       Nov 06, 2011
       It has begun. Last Wednesday, Amazon announced its new
       book-lending add-on to its Amazon Prime service.1 What it offers
       is fairly meager and the model, particularly in its remittance
       to publishers, is, to my mind, seriously flawed:
       1.
       2.
       U.S. publishers.
       3.
       not on other devices, even if they run the Kindle app.
       4.
       uses it for book lending, works out to $6.58 per loan. Many
       Kindle titles can be purchased for that price or not much more.
       5.
       one of the parties is probably getting a crummy deal; or, if I
       am reading the WSJ story correctly, Amazon is paying the
       publisher for each loan the equivalent of what they would pay
       them for a sale.
       Regardless of these shortcomings, the door is open, and you may
       be sure Master Bezos has firmly planted his foot in it.
       Additional titles, supported eReaders, assorted features, and
       (undoubtedly) pricing structures will follow as soon as
       publishers realize how profitable it will be to loan their books
       to millions of readers instead of selling them to thousands.
       Meanwhile, librarians have already begun whistling in the
       dark2,3, their arguments relying primarily on the weakness of
       the initial Amazon product. Still, that product is already miles
       ahead of what is being offered by most public libraries where,
       if a title is even available to you in eBook format, you will
       almost certainly have a long wait for it.
       In the final analysis, readers want to read and writers want to
       be read. Any institution which facilitates that relationship
       will flourish; any that inhibits it will fade. At present,
       Amazon is facilitating and libraries and publishers are
       inhibiting the relationship. If the latter don’t get their act
       together—and fast—they will render themselves redundant.
       Publishers may come and go, but America will let its public
       library network fade at its peril. This further blot on our
       already tattered escutcheon is not one from which we will easily
       recover, in our headlong pursuit of oligarchy, mediocrity, and
       irrelevance.
       [/quote]
       #Post#: 4851--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The End of Libraries
       By: Mac Date: January 3, 2012, 2:13 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote]The End of Libraries, Part IV
       Nov 12, 2011
       There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the Internet over
       Amazon’s new Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. A Google search
       will turn up many more instances than I could hope to footnote
       here. Be sure to read the reader Comments on the news articles
       for a full helping of the panic and despair sweeping the world,
       particularly among writers.
       I am not sure they have as much to worry about as they think
       they do. However, Amazon has been less than forthcoming
       regarding the details of their financial arrangements with
       publishers and authors. Let’s look at what we know about those
       arrangements so far.
       In a Wall Street Journal article published the day after the
       Lending Library was announced,1 the following was revealed
       regarding the finances of the deal:
       Russell Grandinetti, vice president for Kindle content, said
       “the vast majority” of participating publishers were receiving a
       flat fee for their titles, while a more limited group is being
       paid the wholesale price for each title that is borrowed. “For
       those publishers, we’re treating each book borrowed as a sale,”
       he said.
       Let’s look at these two remittance models, starting with the
       flat fee arrangement which covers “the vast majority” of titles.
       I at first thought a flat fee arrangement would have to favor
       one party over another. However, an article from Bloomberg via
       Gulfnews.com2 reports that Amazon’s flat fee payment for “a
       group of books” is good only “over a period of time.” This being
       the case, one assumes the parties would be able to renegotiate
       terms after that period of time (whatever it may be) had
       expired.
       However, it is this arrangement which may deservedly cause
       concern among writers regarding where their share is coming from
       and how much it will be. Until more is known about the details
       of this arrangement, I cannot come to any reliable conclusions.
       If I were an author, however, and my book was included in the
       Kindle library under this remittance model, I would be speaking
       with my publisher by now, if not my lawyer.
       I feel on firmer ground when examining the other arrangement,
       wherein Amazon purchases a copy of a title when it loans it out.
       On first glance, this struck me as a lunatic move, but upon
       closer consideration I think it reveals Amazon to be crazy like
       a fox.
       If Amazon is buying a copy of a book at the same wholesale price
       which they would pay to the publisher when and if a customer
       bought the book through them, then they own that book just as a
       public library does and I would grant them as much right to put
       it into their “Lending Library” as any public library could. If
       they then loan that copy to an Amazon Prime customer and another
       customer wants it while the first one has it, Amazon will need
       to buy a second copy of the book before lending it out to two
       people simultaneously, in order not to be in violation of
       copyright. I am assuming that is what they are doing.
       If so, writers—and readers—should be ecstatic. Amazon,
       overnight, has declared itself a SuperLibrary. Anyone with a $79
       annual Prime membership can check out any of 5,000 titles. If a
       thousand customers check out any one title under this
       arrangement in the first month, a thousand copies of their book
       will be sold to the Amazon Lending Library. Amazon then retains
       those thousand copies to loan out to additional Prime members
       who ask for it in the second month, at no additional cost to
       Amazon.
       With this model, everyone wins. The publisher sells as many
       copies of a title as there are interested Prime customers in a
       single month, with (I assume) standard royalties accruing to the
       authors. The Prime customers don’t have to wait to check out a
       desired title, which most of us have to do now in borrowing
       through our public library.
       You may be sure the one-a-month limitation on loaned titles
       won’t last once everyone realizes how much money there is to be
       made by opening the floodgates of digital book lending, though
       subscribers will undoubtedly pay more for enhanced services.
       If Amazon can pull off a real Netflix model for its Lending
       Library, they will have me as a customer for life. That model,
       however, must come close to including the following features:
       •
       •
       •
       •
       read;
       •
       about what I pay for Netflix movies). I read about 65 books a
       year and start, but don’t finish, another 15 or so. To borrow 80
       titles a year, I am willing to pay $160, or roughly twice what
       Amazon Prime costs now.
       Publishers and public libraries still have time to forge an
       alliance similar to the one laid out in Part II of this series.
       And although I there recommend a lower rate in the public
       library lending model, I am convinced the substantially higher
       number of checkouts would more than make up the difference in
       revenue generation.
       With the announcement of the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, the
       clock is now ticking. If Amazon can pull this off, as I said in
       Part I of this series, I will still vote to support my public
       library. Millions of others, however, will not, and public
       libraries will fade from our landscape as quickly as blacksmiths
       in a world of horseless carriages.
       And Amazon’s triumph will be a national tragedy.
       [/quote]
       #Post#: 4852--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The End of Libraries
       By: Mac Date: January 3, 2012, 2:14 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote]The End of Libraries, Part V
       Dec 08, 2011
       Today, Amazon announced the KDP (Kindle Direct Publisher) Select
       program, which enrolls independent authors and publishers in a
       $6 million sweepstakes and, upon its announcement, immediately
       added 129 books to the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library. I predict
       thousands more will follow very soon.
       From the press release:1
       The monthly royalty payment for each KDP Select book is based on
       that book’s share of the total number of borrows of all
       participating KDP books in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.
       For example, if total borrows of all participating KDP Select
       books are 100,000 in December and an author’s book was borrowed
       1,500 times, they will earn $7,500 in additional royalties from
       KDP Select in December. Amazon expects the fund to be at least
       $6 million for all of 2012, in addition to the $500,000
       allocated for December 2011. Enrolled titles will remain
       available for sale to any customer in the Kindle Store and
       authors will continue to earn their regular royalties on those
       sales.
       So, for the first time in history (correct me if I’m wrong),
       authors will regularly receive a royalty payment each time a
       title of theirs is loaned, as well as each time it is sold.
       Amazon’s payment strategy may seem eccentric. However, upon
       closer examination, it reveals itself as a cautious move on
       Amazon’s part, limiting their liability. As for what seems to be
       a rather cruel provision—setting authors against each other in
       the sweepstakes to win a big chunk of that $500,000 (a
       month)—well it is really just a reflection of the real world,
       where bestsellers earn more than literary novels—only in this
       case the purse is not open-ended.
       Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos knows something you—and traditional
       publishers—probably don’t. eBooks are for lending, not selling.
       Oh, plenty of people will still buy books, particularly the
       print versions as long as they continue to be around. But the
       real money will be in loaning eBooks to a vast, global audience.
       And Bezos intends to dominate that business.
       What author will fail to be lured by the sweet smell of the $6
       million Bezos intends to put into the shared kitty in 2012—an
       amount which Amazon promises to reconsider each month on the
       evidence of the previous month’s activity.
       Traditional publishers will feel enormous pressure from their
       authors to join KDP Select and, if they refuse, they will lose
       those authors to Amazon’s KDP program.
       Can you say “disruptive technology”?2 Brother, you ain’t seen
       nothin‘ yet.
       Meanwhile, where does this leave public libraries? One step
       closer to obsolescence, I fear. If they, and publishers, don’t
       get together soon, and forge something like the AmPLE program we
       outlined in Part II of this series,3 a tsunami of disruptions
       will be heading their way.
       With the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, Jeff Bezos put his toe
       in the water. With KDP Select, he is up to his ankle.
       Much more is to come.
       [/quote]
       #Post#: 4853--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The End of Libraries
       By: Mac Date: January 3, 2012, 2:14 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote]The End of Libraries, Part VI
       Dec 15, 2011
       On November 2, Amazon introduced the Kindle Owner’s Lending
       Library (KOLL) for its Amazon Prime customers.1 It initially
       offered 5,000 titles, most obtained from second-rank publishers
       under contractual agreements and, under some other fairly hazy
       arrangement, additional titles one copy of which Amazon
       apparently agreed to purchase at wholesale for every Prime
       customer that simultaneously borrowed it.
       Then, on December 8, Amazon announced KDP Select, a program to
       enroll self-published authors in KOLL, and, as I predicted, a
       week later there were over 52,000 titles available for borrowing
       in KOLL. I predict that number will again increase tenfold
       within the next 60-90 days as traditional and first-rank
       publishers cave in to the enormous pressure from their authors
       and from the changing nature of the marketplace, and begin
       listing their titles with Amazon’s KOLL.
       Meanwhile, Amazon today claimed it has sold more than a million
       Kindle devices (including the newest, the Kindle Fire) each week
       for the past three weeks.2 Those devices are primarily intended
       for one purpose—reading eBooks.
       Amazon has been much more reticent about releasing the numbers
       of its Prime customers, though I can tell you those numbers
       increased today by at least one—me. And the book I immediately
       borrowed, What Is It Like to Go to War, by Karl Marlantes, must
       have been provided through that fairly hazy arrangement
       described above. It is most definitely not self-published, and a
       quick perusal of Amazon’s first five pages of titles from its
       publisher, the Atlantic Monthly Press, revealed no other titles
       that were included in KOLL.
       Others have estimated Prime customers at around five million,
       and that was early in 2011, before KOLL was more than a gleam in
       Jeff Bezos’s eye.3 If that number was close to accurate almost a
       year ago, I am probably safe in estimating the number has
       doubled since then and especially since the introduction of
       KOLL. Ten million members, all able to check out one book a
       month, 52,000 books to choose from, and a $500,000 pot to split.
       I hope after this first trial month Amazon will release some
       figures relating to KOLL usage; however, whether they do or not,
       I think things look pretty sunny for many of the authors of
       those 52,000 books. Not that there isn’t a tremendous amount of
       controversy around the issue, just now, appropriately enough,
       among self-published authors.4 Much more is to come,
       particularly as authors associated with traditional publishing
       houses begin to understand the unprecedented advantage they are
       missing out on: payment for books that are loaned as well as
       those that are sold.
       What does this mean for public libraries? I think I have made
       that pretty clear already in the first five parts of this
       series.5 More to come, as more develops.
       [/quote]
       #Post#: 4854--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The End of Libraries
       By: Mac Date: January 3, 2012, 2:15 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       [quote]An Open Letter to All Living Authors (VII):
       I would like to address some of my favorite people today in
       this, Part VII of The End of Libraries, and give you my take on
       what is happening in the eBook lending world, a brave new world
       that is as significant to the history of the printed page as the
       invention of movable type.
       I read 93 books in 2011—78 in their entirety and at least the
       first 50 pages of 15 others. Midway through the year, while
       attending a library conference, I won both a Kindle and an iPad
       2! What luck, hey?
       Knowing that my public library had eBooks to loan, and being a
       borrower of books rather than a buyer (I can’t afford to buy 93
       books a year!), I spent time and effort (too much!) learning the
       Overdrive interface and checked out my first eBook, When the
       Killing’s Done, by T.C. Boyle. The experience of reading that
       book on my iPad made me a dedicated eBook reader. From then on,
       I didn’t care if I ever held a “real” book in my hands again.
       I quickly realized how fortunate I had been to find a Boyle at
       my library. A subsequent search for something to check out
       revealed nothing of interest. I maintain a list of books I want
       to read; it is six pages long at the moment. I checked the first
       50 titles on this list in my library’s eBook collection (which
       it shares with 150 other libraries in my state) and found
       exactly none of them in the catalog. And most of the titles that
       were there had long waiting lists.
       Desperate for eBook reading matter, and eager to see if the
       Kindle experience was as great as the iPad, I broke down and
       bought Desolation, by Yasmina Reza, one of the books on my
       six-page list. Though for me the iPad reading experience is
       superior to the Kindle (except in terms of weight), I would
       still prefer a Kindle edition over hard copy.
       There followed a month or two of a dry spell, during which I
       continued to read books wastefully printed on processed dead
       trees and badgered my state library consortium to spend more on
       eBooks.
       Eager to convert my wife to eBooks, I finally again broke down
       and purchased for the iPad the enhanced version of Rin Tin Tin
       by Susan Orlean. Its many pages of color photos and ten embedded
       videos(!) gave me a taste of the delights coming our way as
       eBooks mature and take on features we cannot even imagine today.
       Then came the first rumblings of KOLL—Amazon’s Kindle Owner’s
       Lending Library—and I began to write this series on The End of
       Libraries. Once KOLL was announced, and since my company has an
       Amazon Prime membership, I immediately borrowed my first “free”
       book from the Lending Library, What It Is Like to Go to War, by
       Karl Marlantes. Karl will get a piece of a $500,000 pot from
       Amazon for that loan, as will all the other authors whose books
       are loaned during December 2011, KOLL’s first month.
       KOLL began with 5,000 titles and by the end of December it had
       almost 70,000, the vast majority apparently coming from authors
       in Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program, in which
       authors can self-publish their books. In order to be part of
       KOLL, KDP authors had to commit to a 90-day participation in the
       lending program and agree to give Amazon exclusive sales rights
       during that period to the books enrolled in KOLL. Obviously
       thousands of you thought it was worth the commitment. Why? I
       think it is because you have become aware of an exciting new
       fact of literary life that also occurred to me while watching
       the eBook world and writing this series over the past six weeks:
       eBooks are for lending, and anyone who can come up with a scheme
       to adequately compensate authors for those loans will have built
       the better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to their
       door.
       Amazon is on its way to doing that, all by itself. Monopolies
       are inherently undesirable, and this one also threatens the
       continued existence of a vital national resource: our public
       library network.
       You are going to make a lot more money lending AND selling your
       books in the future than you make just selling them today. You
       are going to pressure your publishers to get on board with eBook
       lending and, if they drag their feet, you will do whatever you
       need to do to find your way to this enhanced revenue generator.
       As you do, I ask you to read the first six parts of this series
       (and any future parts: follow us on Twitter for announcements),
       consider the ill effects of monopoly and the end of public
       libraries, and get on board with a movement to bring an adequate
       eBook lending model to public libraries. I suggest one such
       model—the American Public Library Enterprise, or AmPLE—in Part
       II. Public libraries serve all 330 million Americans, not the
       scant few million who may be Amazon Prime customers and eligible
       for one KOLL checkout in each calendar month. The revenues you
       stand to gain which today are sitting on the table are enormous,
       and our public library network stands ready to bring them to
       you.
       How to proceed? Get together with your fellow writers. Get
       talking. Don’t fret, the way your publisher is fretting (if you
       have one). A reading renaissance is at hand, knocking on our
       doors, ready to bring your works to the masses and masses of
       money to you. Don’t let this take forever, and don’t let Amazon
       kill libraries by bringing to a few of us what should belong to
       the whole world.
       [/quote]
       #Post#: 4855--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The End of Libraries
       By: Chiprocks1 Date: January 3, 2012, 3:21 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       We have a local paper that did a huge essay about Libraries
       closing throughout the US. I think it's a huge mistake on a
       number of reasons to shut them down. I have no desire to start
       reading e-books. There's a tangible feeling you can't replace an
       actual book or magazine with the latest gadget. And then there's
       the social aspect of heading down to the local Library and being
       able to talk with other people who are just kicking back in the
       lounge or book clubs to discuss the most recent reads or the
       staff themselves. I've made a lot of friends and connections
       just at the Library alone and that's priceless.
       With all these internet outlets, it's going to create even more
       fractured social and interpersonal relationships out there. If
       that happens, it's gonna be a sad sad day in my world and I'm
       guessing for a lot of other people as well.
       #Post#: 4857--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The End of Libraries
       By: Mac Date: January 3, 2012, 3:40 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       While I have not fostered that kind of social interaction, I’m
       sure it exists there. I’ve kept to myself, I guess being
       selfish, and just used the library for media. Maybe I should be
       more open to those things. I tend to agree with electronic vs.
       holding a book, but I’ve discovered over time, technology help
       form change. Look at music. I loved vinyl albums. That whole
       experience was cool. But I think I’m slowly adapting to the
       digital age. Hell, even CD’s are going away for me.
       My library is very busy all the time. Those people are like me
       and enjoy the experience, but like the article is saying, far
       more people don’t care about libraries or books and that support
       will dwindle.
       But this series of articles highlighted the idea that the
       library building going away, much like the CD store. I hate that
       and hate to think that one thing I do several times a week has
       the possibility of disappearing… suddenly. At least this guy is
       trying to keep it alive or at the very least the libraries
       wealth of available options open to people.
       #Post#: 4859--------------------------------------------------
       Re: The End of Libraries
       By: Chiprocks1 Date: January 3, 2012, 3:46 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Well, I hope you're prepared for when everything technological
       collapse in the future and all of these gadgets stop working.
       Then what? All the libraries and books will be long gone. I've
       already scoped out a few cave walls to start writing on and
       drawing on. And yes, one of the cave walls is geared
       specifically to my forum posting.
       You can find me at Penny Cave when that happens. Suck on that!
       [IMG]
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