Comments on: Scilken’s Law and the Future of Libraries

By: Access? Ownership? Or are we missing something? « Librar*

Access? Ownership? Or are we missing something? « Librar* — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 09:23:43 +0000

[...] of course old-fashioned is not acceptable for librarians in this day and age. But several recent blog posts as well as some work with the National Library’s Trove service prompted some further [...]

By: Free Range Librarian ›

Free Range Librarian › — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 17:48:46 +0000

[...] my last post about my concerns about eBooks and the traditional lending model, a commenter said something [...]

By: Response to K. G. Schneider’s (The Free Range Librarian) Post: Scilken’s Law and the Future of Libraries « Evolving Libraries

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 16:50:32 +0000

[...] G. Schneider’s (The Free Range Librarian) Post: Scilken’s Law and the Future of Libraries Worthy read from the Free Range Librarian. Schneider argues that … well, I’m not sure exactly what she’s arguing for. [...]

By: Susan

Susan — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 13:26:50 +0000

“…will be faced with LESS books, and eventually a realization …”

Fewer, not less.

By: The Death of the Book (and Libraries?) « S503 Journal

The Death of the Book (and Libraries?) « S503 Journal — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 23:16:25 +0000

[...] have been a lot of discussions out there on the internet (like this one) and on the class forums about whether or not the physical book is dying, and whether libraries [...]

By: sharon

sharon — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:56:12 +0000

Also wanted to say something about movies. A lot of people come through the doors just to get a stack of movies for the weekend or the holidays. When they discover, or can afford, video-on-demand from Amazon, Netflix, and others, public libraries are going to lose even more supporters.

By: sharon

sharon — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:41:47 +0000

Well said, K.

I don’t think the Darien model will scale down. The fact that it is a wealthy community mitigates against the public library–most residents can afford to purchase what they need–what they are paying for is the personal service and the prestige of having a community cultural center. As long as having a library helps to hold up property values, there will be a public library.

Here are the official stats for CT public libraries: http://ct.webjunction.org/ct/stats

By: Jeb

Jeb — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 23:03:06 +0000

Libraries are way too awesome to be dismissed so lightly. This author assumes that the fight is over already and we’ll all be reading e-books by any tom, dick or harry that feels like typing for an hour or so.

A real book represents a commitment of time and energy that will always remain important. Book publishers will always publish books by people who invest quality in them. We will always go to the library and check out books once in a while, because sometimes we don’t want to sift through mountains of balogne like this article to learn something or to be entertained.

By: Miranda N.

Miranda N. — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 21:08:18 +0000

This is not a conversation I’m typically involved with, so anything I might say may already be out there (I’m sure it is!). Forgive me if someone here has already mentioned it. After the reading this post, my first thought is that music lovers have already gone through this in some ways. Very few people buy CDs and instead download the digital file from programs such as iTunes. I hated that I was only able to play this song on a specific number of devices because after all, I bought it. Why should Apple be able to tell me how to listen to my music. And they eventually provided the DRM-free version of songs for 30 cents more. I’m free to burn a copy, play it on an unlimited number of devices, etc. I wonder what the actual impetus for this change was and if it would cross over to books? It gives me hope, in any case. But I’d suspect it was to win over consumers who refused to buy the restricted songs versus the CD format. I’m not suggesting patrons and libraries boycott ebooks entirely, but it’s something to think about.

By: Marc Davis

Marc Davis — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:36:00 +0000

Acquisition on demand is a potent new model, I think, for both public and academic libraries — addressing a bit of what Steven Harris talks about in his comment. After an [library] set number of electronic accesses, the library acquires a physical copy or permanent ownership of the electronic item.