E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians • Hacker News Board

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#121

Post by vharuck » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:22 PM UTC

fouric wrote: post #120

> If I wanted to borrow A Better Man by Louise Penny—the country’s current No. 1 fiction bestseller > Public libraries are engaged in one of the most valuable series of community services for all ages, for all audiences > If you think about equitable access to information for everybody, there shouldn’t be discrimination or anything like that Devil's advocate: the article (and many of the persons mentioned) seem to be…

To play an advocate from a deeper level of Hell: Why should the ideas in fiction be dismissed as uninformative?

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#122

Post by falcolas » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:23 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #108

falcolas wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your brain maps physical properties of the book to actual content Any resources detailing this? It's the first I've heard of it. > Besides, no e-reader today can let your riffle through pages as fast as paper book. True, though the iPad is actually somewhat faster than a physical book, in my experience. > you have to wait for visual feedback (screen refreshing). At least in my experience, the time required to flip…

> > your brain maps physical properties of the book to actual content > Any resources detailing this? It's the first I've heard of it. The link to the guardian article in my previous post has more details and a link to the original study. > I simply can't agree with this. A well indexed ebook is easy to follow cross references in (such as footnotes), you can do an actual search on the content, and the lack of weight…

> The book you describe is 1200 pages of technical snippets that is largely used as a reference index.

That's referencing a fiction novel, whereas you are referencing paper as better for non-fiction (and e-readers better for fiction) - a fairly major distinction.

> The book you describe is 1200 pages of technical snippets that is largely used as a reference index.

Sorry, but you're incorrect on this point. It's an entire physically based rendering literate program, written in such a way as to teach you about PBR in a highly linear fashion (with cross-referencing). It's written to be read from one end to the other.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#123

Post by nemo » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

fouric wrote: post #120

> If I wanted to borrow A Better Man by Louise Penny—the country’s current No. 1 fiction bestseller > Public libraries are engaged in one of the most valuable series of community services for all ages, for all audiences > If you think about equitable access to information for everybody, there shouldn’t be discrimination or anything like that Devil's advocate: the article (and many of the persons mentioned) seem to be…

Librarians are trying to make available materials that their reading communities want. Their bias towards entertainment media is a reflection of librarians doing their job of providing to local communities who read and listen to a lot of fiction.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#124

Post by remotecool » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:27 PM UTC

It's interesting because these expectations from consumers began with rampant illegal file sharing in the late 90s.

Many people made the claim that music (and now books) cost nothing to distribute, so they should get it for free.

The actual cost of creating the first copy is always ignored.

I always thought it was worse than theft because at least when you steal a TV, the value of the entire product line doesn't decrease.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#125

Post by falcolas » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:31 PM UTC

johnchristopher wrote: post #111

falcolas wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> being able to tie that memory to a location in space makes it more concrete for me This sounds a lot like the old "visual/auditory/physical learning" phenomenon to me. Were it truly the case, the old O'Reilly books would be the best possible resources for programmers, and not StackOverflow, blogs, and online programming language documentation.

You moved the goal post. Books can't cover everything but deal with the general. SO/blogs are typically concerned with corner cases or specific assignements/problems.

> SO/blogs are typically concerned with corner cases or specific assignements/problems.

No, blog posts and online documentation are hardly limited in such a fashion. They cover everything from corner cases to syntax introductions, to setting up the environment. Go, as a single example in a sea of examples, has their entire official getting started and other guides entirely online:

https://golang.org/doc/

And while SO has recently limited itself to corner cases, it has not always been that way. It has been a resource providing information on culture, machine setups, and "where's the best info on getting started online" for a very long time.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#126

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:32 PM UTC

fouric wrote: post #120

> If I wanted to borrow A Better Man by Louise Penny—the country’s current No. 1 fiction bestseller > Public libraries are engaged in one of the most valuable series of community services for all ages, for all audiences > If you think about equitable access to information for everybody, there shouldn’t be discrimination or anything like that Devil's advocate: the article (and many of the persons mentioned) seem to be…

[deleted]

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#127

Post by tus88 » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #25

tus88 wrote: post #20

I didn't know libraries lent ebooks. Seems kind of strange.

Why? Some readers want e-books, so not facilitating them means losing readers.

Well I imagine people go to libraries as it's the only way to get physical copies of what they have. Ebooks are obviously more conveniently download from the internet. Or is this ebook a physical device not a download?

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#128

Post by everythingswan » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:35 PM UTC

fouric wrote: post #120

> If I wanted to borrow A Better Man by Louise Penny—the country’s current No. 1 fiction bestseller > Public libraries are engaged in one of the most valuable series of community services for all ages, for all audiences > If you think about equitable access to information for everybody, there shouldn’t be discrimination or anything like that Devil's advocate: the article (and many of the persons mentioned) seem to be…

Fiction is quite illustrative as well. I don't know how to, or if we need to, draw the line between entertainment and education but I think that it's unfair to say that you cannot be entertained and educated at the same time.

I don't know if that was your point specifically but there are undertones whenever library funding gets brought up. It's also comparable to welfare fraud. There are people who campaign against welfare because of abusers but the amount the fraud amounts to is relatively low.[1]

I'm not learned enough to tell you what percentage of fraud is acceptable but I worry about us treating this the same way. I understand the campaign about how your taxes are spent but I also think we agree that this is a valuable community service, especially for people who do not have access to tools and networks like I do.

A very fair point though fouric!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_fraud#United_States

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#129

Post by logfromblammo » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:37 PM UTC

shantly wrote: post #117

logfromblammo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we know to be a copy by common sense, real world interpretation of the word "copy" is not necessarily what copyright law considers to be a "copy" for the purposes of enforcing copyright laws. Is holding a book up to a half-silvered mirror making a copy of it? Is looking over someone else's shoulder as they read making a copy? Do the activation levels in a person's visual cortex count as a copy? It may be useful…

In that case why are libraries bothering with jumping through these hoops and paying extra money for expiring ebooks anyway?

They want to be "good citizens" in the book-publishing ecosystem. They follow along with the publishers' schemes, to ensure that the channel for public access to the material remains open.

They don't want to risk the possibility that there might be knowledge out there that an ordinary person might be barred from accessing via the public library. And as long as the publishers are reasonable, even when charging a higher library price, that's cheaper than libraries setting up a different infrastructure.

The mission of most libraries is about access and public service, rather than raw price. The publishers can abuse that.

Re: E-books at local libraries: a fight between publishers and librarians

#130

Post by johnchristopher » Mon, Sep 16, 2019, 7:42 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #122

johnchristopher wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > your brain maps physical properties of the book to actual content > Any resources detailing this? It's the first I've heard of it. The link to the guardian article in my previous post has more details and a link to the original study. > I simply can't agree with this. A well indexed ebook is easy to follow cross references in (such as footnotes), you can do an actual search on the content, and the lack of weight…

> The book you describe is 1200 pages of technical snippets that is largely used as a reference index. That's referencing a fiction novel, whereas you are referencing paper as better for non-fiction (and e-readers better for fiction) - a fairly major distinction. > The book you describe is 1200 pages of technical snippets that is largely used as a reference index. Sorry, but you're incorrect on this point. It's an en…

> It's written to be read from one end to the other.

But you wrote:

> Finding content in it that wasn't a chapter title included going to a glossary with a ton of page numbers, and flipping back and forth constantly (see comment about sticky pages) to see if page N was the one I was looking for.

So either you read it from one end to the other or you used it as reference material (which "(looking) to see if page N was the one I was looking for." strongly indicates).

Frankly, I am not interested in trying to convince you of anything. There are substantial evidences that paper and e-books have different strengths and all you are saying is that the strength I wrote about are wrong because you don't feel like it and your 1200 page monster should be the only point of data to refute what you don't want to agree with.

All the while asking for sources I gave in one of the first post, which tells me you take only what you want from the conversation.

Not interested.