access…but to what???
Posted by markwilliams on September 8th, 2008
This blog focuses on middlewhere but sometimes its good to remind oneself of what exactly we are getting access to, essentially to borrow George Marshalls (of Marshall plan fame) phrase - “why we fight”. Well a number of stars are aligning all of the sudden to get me excited about ebooks. I Played with an e-ink based e-reader in a highstreet bookshop, with generally good impressions - have just seen video of the e-ink cover of Esquire magazine in the states - and finally have seen that both the States and Ireland are promoting e-books and readers to school students. Well we won’t be using access management to support an e-ink download tomorrow or even the day after that, but it can’t be too long until it all comes together in the perfect symbiotic relationship (think iphoness for ereaders) and ebooks on e-ink ereaders become an everyday product. Now that will pose all sorts of questions for mobile access……
Apologies for the amount of e’s in that last sentence, they will all be absorbed into their compound parents in time…….
September 9th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
ebooks on e-ink readers also demonstrate new challenges for access.
Currently the models for access to these ebooks is essentially controlled via the device - you purchase the ebook and load it onto your device. For individual use, this is OK - and there is clearly potential for a student to have a large number of texts at their disposal on a single device - great.
However, for libraries, or others providing ‘access’ to resources, this is a terrible model. There is little or no point in circulating the devices (even if this is legal, something that has been debated in the US around the Kindle), since essentially this leaves you circulating a large number of items to a single person - if you had 100 (different) physical books, you could potentially lend one each to 100 people - if you have 100 books on an e-reader, you can only lend them to one person at a time.
This needs some exploration - does the idea of ‘access’ to resources (as opposed to just outright purchase) as traditionally supported by libraries have a role here? If so, how could it work? Do we need a standard ‘authorisation’ mechanism to grant access to copies of these e-ink ebooks for a limited period of time (e.g. the duration of the course)?
In theory we have a great opportunity here, but currently in practice libraries don’t seem to have anywhere to go with this.