E-Books

I will bet that most of you never knew that I once worked on the million book project. This cooperative project between Carnegie Mellon University and several other colleges throughout the city, state, nation and the rest of the world. You can learn more about the project here and search or browse the over 1.5 million book collection visit the site here. So not only do I know about digital books, I know the behind the scenes secrets.....For example: Do you know that the process to digitize a book includes scanning done in India and China and that when complete the book has been decimated and is no longer fit to be read without intense repair, and most digital projects do not concern themselves with this. Copyright is also another serious issue for all of the electronic book projects and although most of the books are ones that are no longer in copyright, there are also books that authors have relinquished copyright to or allowed limited use of. Although I did work for this project and had a memorable experience I cannot say that I agree with the million book project or Project Gutenberg. Before you go to defend the process and explain to me how worthwhile it is make sure that you have read “Double Fold” by Nicholson Baker to understand the process and impact of digitalization.
Currently one our greatest sumbling blocks is that we are not truely ensuring that our great works of literature and writtings, the ones that we want to be preserved are truely preserved. Just because it is here, online, now, does not mean that 100 years from now people will still be able to READ the book.
My other concerns have a more practical nature for those that do want to read online today. First of all, reading online is very hard and impractical and there are few who do this, so why are we rushing to put so many books online? What is the rationale behind this (and if it is preservation please see my first point, if it is to allow anyone to read them I want to know HOW!)? I can see the kindle and tools like this having some future uses for reading electronic books both through e-book merchants and free projects like Million Book and Gutenberg but currently the Kindle is way too expensive for this to be realistic and what really puzzles me is that popular e-book versions of new books are just as expensive as their paper counterparts! Aren't the publishers saving some great amount of money on the paper and binding? Can they not pass that along to the consumer? Right now there is no way it is worth it! I can get the paper versions just as easy.
Finally, my last practical concern is the fact that it is so hard to FIND e-books. Both the Million Book and Gutenberg interfaces are cluncky and hard to use and find books unless you are looking for a specific title and author (and good luck with that! I know a million books sounds like a lot but compared to the vast amount published it is just a drop in the bucket, and believe me....not everything digitized is WORTH finding and the most worthwhile have not been digitized!).
I can get behind the e-audio but only if we get a standard audio format that will work on my cd's, my i-pod, my computer and whatever device they come up with tomorrow. My searches through these databases and through my public library's e-audio collection have not proven this to be the case.
Bottom line, I will keep my paper books and prize my collection. It is worth it.