Feminist Pub 16: where the Bluestockings develop armoured stockings to deal with the thousand paper cuts

Our uni library books and journals have different licenses depending on the deals with the publishers. Most of the ones we have are very good (but expensive) and no one has ever complaint - for a fast moving field where things become obsolete quite quickly it's quite a good model. Plus no one actually wants to own some of the stuff. Also save shelf space. But for other fields there is a problem of not owning stuff and not having print.

Our council library ebooks, on the other hand, are a bit peculiar. You are only allowed 3, and you can't return them! You just have to wait till they expire and then it's gone from your phone when you say OK-OK-OK-I-read-them-3-weeks-ago-and-can-I-borrow-a-new-one-now. Particularly bad for DC who borrow Judy Moody books and finish them in an hour ...

God that was long. I don't like privatization of info. Librarians don't, we're supposed to be about access to it.

Wossat about libraries? Who woke me up?

Yes there are advantages to ebooks, and there are problems too. The advantages as has been said is that it protects the physical books from wear and tear. You can also have as many students reading it as you have licences. They can read them remotely - definitely an issue as elearning and distance learning gathers pace, especially when we're selling uni courses at horrendous prices to overseas students to whom we can offer no other informational support due to distance.

The disadvantages. Licences can be bloody expensive and very restrictive - at last place we had some ebooks that could only be read by one person at a time, so bang goes that advantage. Most of the licenses restrict what software you can use to open them on, so for academia you have to sit there staring at a screen, not doenload them onto a convenient device. It has often been said that you can't cuddle up with an ebook. You have to download te special software (done to protect copyright etc) so you're now beholden to the conditions of that software provider as well as the ebook owner (best hope your foreign students have the right device - suddenly we're in the business of providing remote IT support without extra funding too). It has often been said that you can't cuddle up with an ebook.

What else. Oh yeah. You never own that ebook, the library doesn't own it, so if tge licenser turns it off, away it goes. With a book you own it now, forever, a thousand years on. Privatization of information. Reduced capability for science in our culture.

So far the disadvantages are mostly all about (did you want an essay btw? ) the privatization. There's one more - obsolescence. It has been pointed out that we still have access to the domesday book, produced 1086 or whenever it was. A project in the 1980s to reproduce that was famously obsolescent and couldn't be accessed by 2000, though it looks like they've been working on that www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-13367398 and got most of it online. Hurrah.

the licencing is very complicated and will depend on the deal made with the publisher. the terms don't always make it very user-friendly, partly because everyone is still working on a quite a print-based business model

Don't ebooks from the library have all sorts of annoying restrictions on them through? I ordered them for my students thinking they would all be able to access the readings, but it turns out only three at a time are actually able to read it online - PLUS it has a tendency to log you out after ever other page, which is quite maddening. Frustratingly the only thing my students will bother to read is journal articles (where I upload the actual file for them). Anything else is asking for too many clicks. God knows how they'd react if I asked them to get up and go to the library!

That's what I mean Ebearhug - it very much depends on the individual and the type of book. I would expect print and electronic to coexist for a good while yet

I use my ereader a lot, but I still buy and keep print books too for various reasons

I've also got a kindle app on my phone but so far have only bought 2 books. However, our library has an ebook part which you can borrow and read on your phone. That's really nice, and I've been ready light detective novels on my phone.

I worked in a medical library. It's where I first heard of Ebola.

I prefer print, because I have an almost photographic memory, and I'll know the quote I want was about 2/3 down on the right hand page at the end of that chapter about 3/4 of the way through the book, and I just don't have that same sense of physical place with ebooks.

I do have a Kindle app on my phone though, and I quite like that it means I've always got something to read with me, and I don't have to have to carry something physically big with me. I have a lot of free classics on it - there are few titles I've actually paid for, and even my copy of Everyday Sexism was when it was on special offer one weekend, so only cost me 99p.

Also, some books just aren't really right online - I have a lot of catalogues from art exhibitions, and And they're often bigger than A4 in page size, and obviously with lots of colour illustrations. It's just not going to be the same on a smartphone or even an A5-size eReader.

Plus all the out of print books I've got which haven't been scanned/transcribed into an electronic format... Or the childhood books which I read and reread - even the ones I've bought newer editions of, I haven't quite managed to give up the falling-apart copies.

I am sad to admit that I have never quite 'got' ebooks. And I wish I had. I distrust them somehow.

I think it stems from work where we were told always, always to check important documents in hard copy because you don't 'see' the whole document in screen and also miss more typos. Wonder if it's true.

Well, I find reading from ebooks fine if I'm just reading, but there's nothing like seeing a row of post-its sticking out from the side of a book, and knowing exactly which one goes straight to the quote you want, just from, you know, the feel of the book.

That was most amusing.

Heavens what an autocorrect

*ebooks

There's a series of books for children where the evil baddies are librarians, trying to give us the wrong version of the world.

Librarians prefer Ebola!

Librarians prefer Ebola of course IME - no students complaining about others hogging the books

I thought my undergrads would prefer ebooks but the ones that bothered to read prefered print. And they are youngsters...

I'm not sure whether it would be so common now, but when I was studying this 6 or so years ago, it was found that when students had the option of both print and electronic of a textbook they would naturally tend to read from the print version and use the electronic one for searching, quote-saving and essay writing - often using both versions simultaneously. It's not surprising really, but a conundrum for publishers and librarians! I suspect things are different now because the technology has improved and students are much more used to electronic resources

Chunky it's interesting. I briefly did research into reader behaviour wrt print vs electronic reading. (Inevitably it depends on the person and genre of book). Of course it is v out of date now!

We have no books any more (apart from kids ones).

I used to have an entire wall full plus boxes in the loft (started out alphabetical, but then I had a crazy weekend where I arranged them in a rainbow, and never looked back. I knew it had gone too far when I started selecting my next reading book by the colour of its spine though!), but now I have about a thousand on an ebook (mostly antique science fiction), and more on my phone (newer, purchased stuff), and more on my computer, and I I'm in computing, so most of my reference books are out of date after a few years, so they are gone too...

People coming to my house would get the wrong idea entirely - I read every night, and spare moments on the train, I always have at least one fiction book on the go, plus goodness knows how many reference articles and manuals I read - just none of them are in print. It's a bit sad, but I do love my ereader.

I think it's your local council you need to contact. Video of how dangerous the junction is might help? They'll probably just say they have no money though

Our books are organised alphabetically by author, and split into fiction and non. But most of my books are on my kindle. Sometimes when DH is irritating me, I like to take them (and the CDs) out of order. I'm a bad person.

Also unrelated to feminism, went for a quick run tonight without my compression socks and holy badgers arse, my calves hurt. I'm getting really old.

There's a mystery (unrelated to feminism) which you O Wise Ones may be able to solve for me:

Lollipop persons - we have them at the pelican crossings and zebra crossings and traffic light crossings near schools. But none at a junction of 6 2-way roads near our school. Why? Is there something I'm missing? Who do I talk to?