Sarah the Librarian

This week we stuck with the thoughts of utopias/dystopias, but turned our focus toward the future. One of the articles we read this week discussed the metaphors used to describe the internet in the media. I knew we used metaphors to describe the internet, but I was surprised at how prevalent this practice was once I saw a sampling of them all laid out. Not surprisingly, many metaphors focused around the internet either as creator or destructor. I was a little surprised, though, to see how prevalent the "internet as physical place" metaphor still is. I know social networks and "meeting" with people online is all the rage now (I am taking a class that meets solely online), but I didn't think about how that's tied back to the earlier days of the internet when people really struggled to understand what the world wide web was and there were tons of representations of it as a physical space, even a Saturday morning cartoon  based on the premise that the web was...

While I had a lot to say about ebooks in libraries last fall, I've since  found it almost ridiculous to keep up with all the different news on that front. It's clear that things need to change, but there are so many possibilities for what direction that change is going to take. However in the latest round of ebook developments I have to bring up a point that I think I first saw put forth by Jamie LaRue (although I can't seem to find the link now). Hachette recently decided to follow the example of Random House and dramatically raise its prices for ebooks sold to libraries. The argument here is that a digital file doesn't fall apart like a book and so libraries can lend them forever and never have to buy new copies of perennially popular titles.  While it's true that libraries do buy replacement copies of books that don't physically hold up, during my years in a public library it was more common that mile-long hold lists were the reasons we bought more c...

I've been meaning to write about the recent news in the libraries lending ebooks debacle, but I'm just now getting around to writing my thoughts out, so apologies if my links are a bit outdated. One of the great things to come out of ALA Midwinter this year was the plan to schedule meetings with the Big Six publishers to discuss the relationship between libraries and publishers when it comes to ebooks. ALA was successful in scheduling meetings with five major publishers, and while all the problems of libraries lending ebooks were not solved at these meetings, I can agree with ALA President Molly Raphael's general assessment that a lot of good information was shared on both sides and that everyone came away with a better understanding of the big picture than they had before and an ongoing dialogue had been opened. One of the main problems identified in the meetings that surprised me (but probably shouldn't have) is that intermediaries like Overdrive have now became ...