At ALA Midwinter, Brewster Kahle, Librarians Ponder The E-book Future

From research and pilot programs, digitization efforts and financial support for vendors, libraries have helped prepare the way for e-books. But now that the consumer market for e-books has taken off, are libraries in danger of being marginalized? A standing-room-only panel discussion on Saturday, January 8, at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in San Diego, CA, looked at the challenges and opportunities e-books hold for libraries, with two overarching observations: e-books have arrived, and, as moderator Rick Weingarten noted in kicking off the discussion, e-books are not just another format—they are different, just as web pages are different from printed pages, and e-mail is different from regular mail. “And because e-books are different,” he said, “what libraries do with them is different.”….read more

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