Last week in class Paul Courant came and spoke about the Digital Public Library of America. In the midst of his talk, he mentioned that he thought textbooks would all eventually switch to online formats, and would become a necessary package to purchase along with a student's tuition. As an SI student, I have become used to the numerous readings online, and so the physical textbook does not matter so much to me anymore. The ability to have online textbooks and be able to access them whenever and wherever I want without lugging them around in my backpack would be a blessing.
Our second topic of the night was embedded librarianship. I think the embedded librarian can be a great addition to a school department. For myself, I do not think I would necessarily enjoy this position, because I would want to have fellow librarians on hand to run to if a patron came to me with a question I could not find the answer to. I would also not want to be on edge about my embedded position being the first one cut in an economic slump.
During this past week, we had to engage with Twitter as a resource for staying in touch with the library world, and I maintain that Twitter is not my favorite thing. First, while I did have a Twitter account, I rarely use it, because I do not find it very useful or interesting. All the information thrown at you in Twitter seems choppy and and there is no way to keep up with all the tweets ever posted on your account. Publishers, librarians, and authors seem to throw up any sort of posting on Twitter. Some of the news is interesting - perhaps an interesting article about an author or will be posted. But most of the news seems to be more about what this author is eating for lunch, or what book this publisher recently released. I also do not enjoy having to sift through the random information, find the few tweets I am actually interested in, and then click on the link to go to a whole new page. On the whole, I find Google Reader a much better resource for staying in touch with the library world. Blogs can be chosen based on the blogger expertise and personality, and once you find a blog you like, you can stick with it and generally be pleased with the postings. Blog postings are long and generally thorough, and they have a title so you know what information to expect in the post. Because of the nature of the blog post, bloggers do not post every little detail about their lives. I much prefer the blog for library news. When I check Google Reader, I know what to expect; when I check Twitter, I dread picking through all the useless bits of information to find the few that appeal to me. Although I will say I did have fun designing my Twitter account.
I forgot about Paul's comments on textbooks, and I think it would be such a huge improvement to have them all be online. I haven't had the same negative experiences here at SI that I had in my undergrad with spending a ridiculous amount of money on books, so I've been thankful for the having the articles in pdf format. I think whatever price they come up with for textbooks will be significantly less than what students usually pay per semester too. Not having to lug around heavy books is always good too!
ReplyDeleteI personally cringed a little when he mentioned online textbooks. Only when they are actually less expensive than a real textbook (including the used copies one can buy online) and e-reader technology has advanced to where students can readily download textbooks and highlight/write on them, will I be sold. Could be a great market transformation, but I'm remaining a skeptic for now!
ReplyDeleteI agree that I prefer blogs to Twitter to staying on top of things. For one thing, it's much easier to categorize the types of blogs you follow, so that you don't have that moment of cognitive dissonance when one of the people who writes for your hometown's alt-weekly shows up in the middle of a bunch of library related posts, as has happened to me several times this week.
ReplyDeleteAs far as electronic textbooks go, I'll be sold when not only are they actually cheaper than print textbooks, but they are also as easy to page through, flip back and forth between sections, and remember information for later retrieval by where something is on the page.
Interesting take on Google Reader vs Twitter. You make some very good points. Twitter is harder to stay on top of and you're right in saying you never know what you're going to get. It's definately a balancing act and have to slog through many tweets to find something relevant some times; it depends who you follow but even then it's not going to be perfect. Quick question: how do you envision embedded librarianship would work? Part of class that was so interesting was the various forms and types of embedded librarianship.
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