1. Peter Brantley ALA NISO/BISG
Internet Archive New Orleans LA
06.2011

2. eBooks are a
conundrum

3. promise tremendous reach

4. yet pose significant
technical challenges

5. arguably a threat to
commerce in books

6. if libraries can do well
with eBook platforms

7. why buy when one can borrow?

8. it’s a fair question

9. but …
multiple
quiXotic
issues

10. publishers see books
as a commodity

11. libraries see books
as a service

12. access to information

13. two opposing views of ebooks

14. to place a different argument
about culture (national)
in a new context

15. “eBooks are files,
wrapped in a license,
surrounded by technology,
delivered by a contract”
Michael Tamblyn
Kobo Books

16. “eBooks are books,
wrapped in cultural life,
surrounded by readers,
delivered by history”
Michael Tamblyn
Kobo Books

17. yet, weirdly,

18. publishers
have an advantage
over libraries

19. retail / distribution platforms
(however the books are sold)

20. providing contextual services
(a different kind of metadata)

21. social reading:
sharing thoughts
on a platform

22. libraries value privacy

23. social has been monetized
(because social is valuable)

24. “[digital] transforms the book
from isolated vessel for text
into a shared interface”
Craig Mod

25. “Digital marginalia is a
collective conversation”
Craig Mod

26. so in that light

27. libraries can buy books
and then lend them

28. without seriously impacting
business models

29. and ensuring
a basic level of service
(access to books)

30. that’s what we want to do
at the Internet Archive

31. buy books and
then lend them

32. we’re old fashioned that way

33. greatest commercial
value of ebooks is

34. not really
the book
itself

35. but the conversation
around and through
the book

36. people
will exchange
money for

37. the social life
of books

38. for experts’ glosses and
the thoughts of friends

39. a digital book
is a centroid on
the social graph

40. “At MIT, his office … was crammed with books,
most overdue from the college library. Dr. Lettvin
claimed he did not return them because the
library would send him the students who wanted
those books, and he would interview them as
potential assistants.”
Jerome Lettvin; MIT professor with passion for ideas, a good debate
by J.M. Lawrence, Boston Globe, May 15, 2011.

41. selling a book is

42. selling a ticket to
that conversation

43. and let’s be real
(for a second)

44. libraries are already less than
5 percent of the book market

45. and rather sadly we
keep getting poorer

46. we’re not going to buy,
and not going to lend

47. enough books to impact sales

48. but we can add connections
among those conversations

49. publishers might
call it “marketing” aka
targeted impressions

50. maybe we should get
a commission on sales

51. Alexis Madrigal
said it more holistically
in The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/print/2011/06/what-big-media-can-learn-from-the-new-york-public-library/240565/

52. “The library has become a social network
with physical and digital nodes.”
(emphasis added)

53. but there’s one more problem

54. a problem in the future

55. for everyone (pubs and libs)

56. that we’ll have to
solve together

57. because books are
moving to the web

58. and if a book is not
a container of things

59. but a collection of links
to places on the web

60. interactive experiences
across the network

61. there’s nothing to download

62. and I don’t know what it means

63. to buy or borrow

64. access to the web

65. particularly

66. if books can change

67. where I read them
when I read them

68. who reads them
who has read them
who I read them with

69. these will be
the new books

70. thanks!

71. “Centroid”, Flickr!, CGehlen

72. peter brantley
internet archive
peter @ archive org
@naypinya