The library of the future: No books, but lots of cappuccino?
Just as I was making my way through Harvard Library Director Robert Darnton’s provocative Publishers Weekly piece flogging his new tome, The Case for Books, I stumbled on this bit of news from New England prep school Cushing Academy:
This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks – the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital….
Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine.
Coffee shop aside, there seem to be two dueling sensibilities here, with Cushing headmaster James Tracy declaring, “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,” while Harvard’s Darnton argues:
History shows us that one medium does not necessarily displace another—at least not in the short run. Manuscript publishing flourished long after Gutenberg’s invention; newspapers did not wipe out the printed book; the radio did not replace the newspaper; television did not destroy the radio; and the Internet did not make viewers abandon their television sets. Every age has been an age of information, each in its own way.
On the ropes? Robert Darnton’s Case for Books – 9/14/2009 – Publishers Weekly
I’m on the ropes about this one myself. On one hand, I cannot, personally, imagine a world without books. They are too intricately tied to my background, my history, my identity. And just this morning, I was at New York City’s Strand bookstore, where hardbound copies of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol were selling faster than the clerks could restock the table. (“Call downstairs,” the manager directed one worker, “and tell them the obvious.” ) On the other hand, I took one look at the heft of that Brown book and decided, “I’ll get it on Kindle.”
I’m the kind of old-fashioned reader who likes to carry a book everywhere. I used to wait for the paperback. Now, I just download it onto a device that weighs less than my wallet. I can carry hundreds of titles around at a time, make the print larger in the eye doctor’s office, and turn pages without fumbling on a cardio machine.
What I can’t do is earmark and linger–or at least, I tend not to. Darnton also writes of the days when readers kept “commonplace books,” in which they would copy favorite passages and add their own observations. I guess I’m a latent Victorian, because I’ve been keeping those books for years (who knew they had a name?), and just yesterday I was frustrated by not being able to find a passage I wanted to copy from Olive Kitteridge–because I’m reading it on the Kindle. (Just try flipping back to section 1192-543whatever.)
And though I read an awful lot of news online, whenever I have an actual paper newspaper in hand, I find hidden gems.
Will we eventually give up on all print? Will it be sooner, as the Cushing headmaster believes, or later–maybe never–as Darnton suggests? What’s your prediction?
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How — does this matter to others beyond you and me? – can one ever feel any sense of identification or ownership of a book if all you’ve done is only read it on a screen? You can’t underline, highlight, dog-ear the pages, stuff it into your backpack for a long train ride. There is something powerful, as I am also a person who almost never leaves the house without a book in hand, to that physicality.
A $12,000 capuccino machine? That sum is what many authors these days are lucky to get for their &^%#@ advance.
If you’re going to totally dismantle physical books from their contents, let’s follow the Ipod model. I’ll be happy to sell you a sentence.
Why buy flowers or art or beautiful linens for your table? Just look at ‘em all on a screen.
No thanks.
The highlighting is indeed a problem, Caitlin, although you can “clip” sections on a Kindle. But it is certainly not ideal for nonfiction books that you want to highlight or reread or for books with charts and graphs.
I have a dilemma right now–an out of print book that would cost me $80 to buy in paper. I can get it on Kindle, but I really don’t think I could read it in that format, take notes, go back and forth between chapters, etc.
As for flowers and other beautiful artifacts–I believe I’ve seen them projected onscreen in some crappy science fiction movies!
In response to another comment. See in context »Caitlin, are you reading on a Sony without study tools? Or is it that you don’t have an e-reader?
I’ve used the 3 Kindle models. Each one allows you to highlight forever, and there is even a dog-ear mark if you want to bookmark a page.
Not only can I highlight precise sections but I can add a note to that also. Some of the books I read have about a third of it highlighted so I can discuss these sections with others easily.
Then, if I’ve enabled Amazon to save my notes to their server so I can see them all on one page there, in a password-protected area, it does that. And it keeps the notes with the book in case I delete the book but want it back later, along with my annotations.
Search results in a book remind me where a characer first entered and gives me context around that and then in the next result on the same page shows me the next time the character shows up.
And I stuff my Kindle into my backpack or purse all the time. I really don’t understand. At this point I leave my house with over 100 books in hand and some newspapers and magazines, in a 10 oz package.
I never mind lines anymore.
Sometimes I use a bigger Kindle so I can read pdf files and because of the amazing clarity of it and the ability to increase or decrease size of fonts or spacing to suit my eyes.
i can also look up a restaurant or nearby movie with its web browser, which can access the web (slowly) at anytime from anywhere at no added cost.
Cushing’s Headmaster Tracy was interviewed at The Kindle Chronicles podcast a couple of weeks ago and a walk was video’d of their library. I don’t personally understand the mentality that doesn’t see coexistence between physical books and e-books. They each have advantages, and some books are worthwhile only in hardcover format.
If interested in the interview (and I can imagine not being interested and I can’t say that I understand him after hearing it), that is at http://bit.ly/tkccush2
Susan, the highlighting is done via a Menu option on the Kindle. And I think you’re absolutely right in picking up some dissention at Cushing.
I hope this helps.
– Andrys
In response to another comment. See in context »kindleworld.blogspot.com
Andrys, thanks for your thoughtful response and the helpful Kindle hints–I am aware of some of these features, but have to say I find them too much trouble! Maybe it’s a question of adapting.
I listened to Headmaster Tracy’s interview (thanks for the link), and he comes across as very bright and very dedicated and passionate about reading. It will be interesting to follow the progress of his plan, which he says is to “go paperless, not bookless.” And I love his notion of the “democratization of information.”
In response to another comment. See in context »I hate to get all apocalyptic on everyone, but what happens when the lights go out, or energy becomes so expensive that accessing all these electronic libraries becomes prohibitive?
(See yesterday’s NYT piece on how expensive it is for everyone to be plugged in all the time.)
Besides the obvious portability of an actual book it is also imminently accessible to all sorts of people including those for whom the Kindle is still out of reach $$$$.
That is an excellent point, Maria, and I did think of it myself (gulp) as I read yesterday’s Times story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/business/energy-environment/20efficiency.html?em
Kindle and similar electronic readers will come down in price, as all electronics do (mine was a gift, making me probably for the first time in my life an “early adopter”). But right now you are also correct in that by eliminating the actual bound volumes from libraries, most of the population would be excluded from reading. Maybe the next step is Kindles you can borrow from a library.
In response to another comment. See in context »What do we do when the lights go out? My kindle will last for about 10 days before needing a recharge. So when the lights have gone out, I’ve used a battery-powered clip-on light to read fo rhours.
Despite Cushing, it’s not an either/or world. I don’t comprehend his mindset.
There will always be paper bound books. TV did not do away with movie houses as people feared nor did it destroy radio. I remember when it first came on the scene.
We use whatever is most appropriate. But Headmaster Cushing’s attitude is that of an extremist and it WAS scary to me to read of his plans and mindset. This was a prep school though, pre-college and the school library was used as a place to relax with laptops, and information is possibly more quickly findable on the web than it would be from the stacks, I guess. If someone had done this to a public library, that would be just ludicrous and insane.
– Andrys
In response to another comment. See in context »http://kindleworld.blogspot.com
My family and I recently toured a home in our town and were shown into the room billed as the “library”. My son tugged at my sleeve. “Mama,” he said, “Where are the books?” The room was walled in shelving but the shelving held photos, knick-knacks and trophies–not one book.
Unfortunately this is not the norm. I’ve been in many book-free houses in recent years. To me this is the real sign of the decline of books. While I doubt that books will disappear entirely, I don’t see how they would be missed when they’re already missing in so many places.
And as for that $12,000 cappuccino machine? For that money they could have bought a bunch of Kindles. You can’t learn Austen from a computer screen.
Yes, Sophfronia, the bookless house is sad to behold and all too common these days. As for supplying Kindles–I think that was the prep school’s plan, to supply something on which you can read the electronic books.
In response to another comment. See in context »Glad you mentioned this. I’ve seen a lot of this, too. It is so sad and shockingly common. It is as if the books are too much trouble.
In response to another comment. See in context »I agree with Caitlin Kelly-
….and call me strange, but I love the smell of a musty old book.
I was given a Kindle for my birthday in June, and my poor sweetie got nothing but grief from me for it. They’re really expensive, (public libraries define democracy for me)and I much prefer real paper books, even with old-fashioned details like illustrations and photos. My ex-husband, conversely, won my heart our first Christmas when he gave me the Times Atlas of the World. I use it all the time.
I grew up in a home with floor to ceiling shelves filled with books on every imaginable topic and my own shelves have everything from medieval histories to travel guides to reference works on Asian art. Nothing makes me feel wealthier, day to day, than being surrounded, literally, by centuries of wisdom, insight and knowledge.
I don’t want to even imagine a “library” (root word, libris, Latin for book, she said pedantically) without any books in it.
“Will we eventually give up on all print?”
I certainly hope so, just on the environmental side there are so many compelling reasons to give up printed matter. Not just the impact that making paper has on the environment, but follow the trail of the printed word and see just much of our valuable resources are used up. In a world growing short of resources can we really justify building (heating, cooling, maintaining) temples to the printed word when we can now store all that data on a hard drive that fits in the palm of your hand? Can we justify shipping cartons of books when with the click of the mouse we can have the book downloaded to us for about the amount of energy it takes to light a cigarette?
And when the eyes go? Keep reading the printed page but also keep up on technology. My ninety year old mother was an avid reader, books spilling around her chair, a full ashtray on top of a couple of new bestsellers. In her mid-seventies she developed glaucoma. When she turned eighty macular degeneration made reading almost impossible. I’ve tried audio books, but she is also quite deaf – and totally unable to comprehend technology. My years of subscribing to The New Yorker has left me with every nook and cranny stacked with magazines I can’t bring myself to throw out. You can not download the entire last centuries New yorker issues on your harddrive.
Tom Medlicott
“You can not download the entire last centuries New yorker issues on your harddrive.”
Only because that’s how they wish it!
In response to another comment. See in context »Yes you can. The New Yorker sells an archive CD from issue 1 to whenever they first released it. Check their web site or Amazon.
In response to another comment. See in context »Susan: There is something almost church like in a library. I remember the feeling I got the first time I visited the Library of Congress and the Fifth Avenue Library in Manhattan. The same I had visiting St. Peter’s in Rome. Books are very special indeed. They should be honored and respected. The kindle is ok for the subway but in a hammock or in front of a fireplace, only a real book will do.
Isn’t there more than one kind of reading? For “popcorn” reading, the screen works fine. For serious reading, re-reading, markup, etc., paper just seems to work best, or at least the technology just isn’t ready to fully replace paper yet.
Having said that, why isn’t there an offline / mobile version of True/Slant yet?
Nevermind susceptibility to rising energy costs and outages and limited server capacity, how do we protect both information and literature offered in a format that could be changed at a corporation’s or government’s whim without anyone knowing?
Well, there’s another reason not to sleep at night.
In response to another comment. See in context »Really not a valid argument rocky, first off server capacity is not really limited, adding more capacity is not a big deal. Rising energy costs would actually have a far great impact on the printed word than it would on electronically stored data since printing uses so much more of it. And finally verifying the integrity of data is much easier to do in an electronic form than in a printed format.
In response to another comment. See in context »Okay on the first coupla’ points. But verification? You’d need an original to do that.
In response to another comment. See in context »No,this is a real issue about electronic archives- file formats change quickly. For example: Who’s got a reader for WordStar- the dominant word processing software of the late 70’s/early 80’s that ran on CP/M. Those files recorded on a common format, cassette tape, would be unreadable today.
In response to another comment. See in context »The problem with digital data is that you also need the hardware/software to retrieve it, as well as a way to ensure the survival of the media it’s stored on.
“Data Rot” is a real issue that you don’t quite have with books, despite comparisons with paper acids, etc.
When there’s no power or your batteries are dead or there’s no wi-fi for miles around (as is often the case here in Alaska), nothing beats a book, magazine or newspaper. You can read one while snuggled up in a sleeping bag when it’s -20 outside. A Kindle? Battery will freeze solid.
Libraries? Eventually they’ll probably have a dozen or more major repositories (perhaps upwards of 100-150, in larger cities) for books that one can request or check out, or you can own your own. The future however is definitely digital for smaller libraries. I like the idea of an open source ebook reader as opposed to a closed platform like Kindle.
Nothing personal to Mr. Bezos, but the idea that someone could delete a book you paid for off your device without your permission is pretty scary, so better to keep it all open source. You can already get public domain classics from gutenberg.org.
I can convert the text files from there to pages for display on my PSP (Playstation Portable). So on flights or train trips I can read, play games, surf the web (if wi-fi is available) or watch a movie as long as I have the battery life. Now if it only had a phone… but if I just want to read, as was the case on my last trip, I lug along a big old hulking 800+ page book because it requires no batteries.
-Laz
The Cushing Academy isn’t alone. Even though we haven’t thrown out the books (yet) my own campus, Loyola University Chicago, literally blocked off the doors to our library after a temple to all that is digital opened next door. Now the only way you can get to any actual books is by taking a five-minute walking detour through the newfangled Information Commons (which has no books, but ironically still boasts a reference help center) and winding your way down a hallway connecting it to the library. And yes, you pass a coffee shop along the way.
Not surprisingly, students aren’t happy about it: http://tr.im/zqdg
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