Eeee-Books. A Librarian's Guide To Publishers.

The landscape of e-publishing and e-formats is ever-shifting, like the earth that used to rumble underneath my people in the early time. Some times the earth would begin to quake, and then it would open up and swallow one of my many husbands.

E-books are kind of like that. There is no steady plain, no solid ground that might not turn to quicksand overnight. For this reason, they make me a little misty-eyed for my home land.

But I'm also very confused, which is why I was glad to see this Guide to Publishers in the Library E-book Market, published on the Digital Shift site. I will keep it as a reference, until the publishing ground shifts again.

 The guide differentiates between publishers catering to public libraries and those with more of an academic focus, which is good because a lot of the information I find on E-books is for public library collections, but I manage a small library for a health professional school.

Because our library is small, and the curriculum of our school has a specialized focus, we don't want some big wooly mammoth package, offering a lot of books we don't need. We want to be able to pick and choose the titles that are just right for us, like specific anatomy atlases and textbooks on physiology and pathology.

But I have yet to find a publisher or vendor who can match what we need on our terms. When I have looked through some of the book lists from companies providing health science content, I did not see anything that would be useful to a large number of our users. What I saw instead were titles like: "What you need to know about colon polyps."

Where I come from, we did not have colon polyps. The gravel we ingested with our food made sure of that. We did not have strange writings in the clouds. We had cave drawings. More direct, if you ask me. But what do I know? I'm just a cavewoman.

There are many, many mysteries surrounding Eeee-books, and each provider of e-books offers different lending/purchasing models, keeping the mystery alive. I ask, can we lend the e-books to everyone, or just one person at a time? Will they work on any device? What kind of pricing models are available? Would it even make sense to get e-books for our library? Or are we jumping on a wagon of bands? Do users want them?

So many questions. I will continue to hunt for answers, like I used to hunt the mighty Trachodon, and I will post the information I find here. But right now, my prominent, over-sized forehead hurts.

WebScale

So many webinars, so little time. And so much unfamiliar lingo coming at me! You modern humans invent new words like you're inventing fire. Like your life depended on it.

Today I watched a webinar presented by that great god in the sky, OCLC. The webinar was titled "Your library at Webscale: How radical collaboration is redefining library management services." They kept  throwing that word around: "webscale." At first I got excited, thinking they were talking about a mighty Hadrosaurs, a dinosaur known to my people, that had both scales and webbed feet...but then I realized they were just jawing about computers again.

The OCLC elders have created something called WorldShare Management Services that will help your library to be webscale. I still do not understand this word. But from what I could glean, which --with my primitive, undeveloped cave intellect, isn't much --a webscale library is the universal mind we have all been waiting for. It is a giant, throbbing brain, with arms that reach all the way around the earth ball.

If you want your library to throb like a smart brain, you must let go of the old ways. That ratty old ILS your library has isn't good enough anymore. It is soooo 2005. You may as well rip the computer out of the floor right now and make your patrons sift through a dusty old card catalog, because their searches will amount to the same thing, if you do not go webscale. This is what I learned in the webinar.

Library 2.0

I have recently become aware that there is this whole thing out there in the library world called Library 2.0. When I first saw the term I thought, 'Oh no! Is this an all-seeing, all-knowing Library program that has taken over the world and is out to destroy me?' I don't know. Because I'm a cavewoman -- that's the way I think. I know, I know....Library 2.0 is old hat. You modern librarians have been talking about it since at least 2005, when the idea was first presented at a library conference. But while you were experimenting with new gizmos and gadgets and your fast social medias, I was stuck inside a glacier, a human popsicle doing a slow thaw.

So now in an effort to catch up, I have become a member of the Library 2.0 network. Want to see the picture on my new Library 2.0 badge?

The Library 2.0 people are very smart people. Well, of course they are. They're librarians. But they are so smart they had a virtual conference last fall! They had a big meeting together, like a council meeting with the wisest members of the tribe, but they didn't even have to build a fire or make a sacred stone circle for everyone to sit inside. They just went on their computers, and all their speeches and classes were give online. By what sorcery are they able to do these things? I know--computer technology makes it possible. I have to keep reminding myself that.

Even though this virtual voo-doo took place last October, the Library 2.0 elders have made it possible to travel back in time as if it were still October, and watch and listen to the sessions from the conference!

So I looked over the schedule, and I have made a list of the sessions I want to attend. Many of these terms boggle my mind. What is a public knowledge base? What is an embedded librarian? Is that like being embedded in a glacier for 10,000 years? What are "digital natives?" I would like to meet these digital natives. They sound like my kind of people.

With so many choices, I hardly know where to begin. So I think I'll start with the first class on my list. The one about clouds and trees. Those are things I know something about.          

If you would like to sees the whole list of what's available, you can see that here:   You will have to register and become a member of Library 2.0, which means creating a username and password. Everytime I have to create a password, I worry that the computer gods are stealing my soul. Because that's the way I think. I'm a cavewoman.

My List of Library 2.0 virtual sessions, made available by modern science and not by sorcery:

Clouds and Trees: Using Folksonomies to transform Online Public Access Catalogues

Creating instructional screencasts: An overview of available tools and best practices

Down with the FAQ! Bring in the Dynamic PKB (Public Knowledge Base)!

Ebooks: Do They Use Them? Do They Care

How to build a mobile app from scratch for your library

How to Embed A Librarian, Library Resources and Service Components in Moodle!

Just click here – imparting effective scholarly habits to digital natives – the why, the what and the how!

Leveraging multiple literacies for sticky search education

Libraries in the Clouds

Libraries, Publishers, Vendors - The eBook Whitewater

Libraryhack : Setting content free

Multiliteracy is the new Information Literacy

My Info Quest: Providing Text Message Reference in Libraries of All Types

Outreach through Gaming

Privacy and the First Amendment , Friends or Foes in Cyberspace?

Proactively scanning Twitter & the web for feedback - How are users reacting?

Reading 2.0: the new role for librarians

Situating the Academic Library for Digital Natives: Enhancing Student Learning Through DLMs

The Embedded Librarian: A Crucial Addition to Online Courses

The Future of Emerging Technologies in Libraries

The Impact of Technology on Library Design

The Texting Librarian

The Unmined Potential of Ebooks: Create Passionate Patrons & Promote your Library

Developing a customized definition of enbedded librarianship.

Today's Libraries and the Self-Checkout Technology

Using Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Agents to Enhance Library Information Services

Web 2.0 Tools For You - A Cybrarian's Guide to Free Resources on the Web and their Practical Application in Libraries and other Work Environments

Who needs a computer? I have a QR Reader!

Here I am in 2012, a long-time library employee whose career goes all the way back to 1980, finding myself in this strange, new land of e-books, e-journals and embedded librarianism. Can I leave my primitive, cavewoman ways behind, and embrace the new technologies of this baffling modern civilization? Follow me and see.....