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

[FibonacciSeries]

Carry on.

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

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

Librarians prefer Ebola!

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.

That was most amusing.

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.

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.

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'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.

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

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!

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

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.

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

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 ...

And yeah, the number of clicks you have to do every bloody time you open the damn thing to prove you're a bona fide student with rights to open it.... On campus is usually easier. Off campus... aaaarrrggghh is a good response (off campus can mean indonesia or 10 m outside the library btw). It is not the library's faul, we're invariably doing our best (with no extra funding and indeed loads of staff cuts because of course we're all space-wasting bourgeoisie enforcing our services at top cost) blame the bloody publishers.

yes, blaming the publishers is usually what happens . even the on-the-ground-working-with-academics-every-day publishers blame the publishers!

Our library has somehow managed to provide many bundles of journals in a very easy to access way, though there had been a journey getting there.

It's funny I'm actually saying that some services are quite satisfactory. I have a lot of quarrel with HR and catering though.

i think the timetable people are incredible. i don't know htf they do it

Timetabling is akin to magic.

I think there's a difference in behaviour both by the type of book, and the device you're reading it on. I've had a sony ereader for about 6 years now, and I read fiction on it. I like it because the battery lasts forever and it works in direct sunlight - if I'm going on holiday, that's the device I make sure I have.

I also read on my phone because I always have it with me, and I don't need a separate booklight for it, so if I find myself stranded upstairs putting a baby to sleep then I still have something to occupy me.

I like both because the SF authors I read seem to like using unusual words, and being able to click on them to find out what they mean is really handy.

Both of these are fiction though. For reference/educational I prefer the paper - it's easier to flick through, I can put post-its in as mentioned above, and I find it easier to scan. A tablet is a second place to this, I just find I need the bigger books, space to stretch out when I'm reading something technical that a phone or ebook reader doesn't seem to give me. I don't know why.

Then if I want searchable reference I go online with my computer or a tablet....

I may just be over-teched :D

The safari bookshelf is a great resource for techies - like netflix, but for books.

Oh good. Please tell your libraries you like them, we get a lot of stick and are always one of the first places looked at for cuts. And it's always us and catering that are in demand so constantly pressured to extend working hours. Funny how the 'in demand' and 'more cuts' don't agree with each other.

You can buy special top-level gateway software platforms to help access, that's probably what you've got LordCopper. If you have the funding to buy, IT skills to tie it all up, and to maintain, so more funding.