What’s in Your Library?

I recently realised that I spend at least a quarter of each waking day reading; journals, magazines and newspapers… most of which have gone digital. Then there are e-mail messages, blogs, messages on a dozen or so on-line forums, manuscripts and other documents.

So much content, so little time.

I have a library, which is fairly large, not too dusty or musty, which is full of books and documents that date from ages past to the present, all of which have been carefully indexed and organised so I can find what I want.

Of course, many of them now also reside in a digital version of that same ‘library’… which is a several terabytes worth of manuscripts, e-Books, PDF formatted documents, soundtracks and albums full of digital images, audio files, video files and a ‘digital jukebox’ loaded with copies of my CD’s and DVD’s.

All of this content resides on several different systems, all of which are carefully and religiously backed up across several redundant raid arrays and archived on several different back-up media.

… And nearly all of which I can access nearly instantly from almost anywhere on or near this large sphere we call Earth as long as I have a cellular telephone, PDA, computer or
some other form of digital reader.

In a recent article on eBooks in the Guardian Robert McCrum led his column with this interesting bit…

“The experience of reading a sustained piece of prose is not going to be fundamentally altered by a new delivery system.”

He’s right. Whether it is in printed with ink on paper, or digitally on electronic paper, or formatted for a book reader, or even done in audio format, the experience of reading will not be fundamentally altered… because it requires the human mind, with it’s ability to imagine, to make the experience of those words come alive.

Will alternate multimedia forms of books change the experience?

Not appreciably, or at least I hope not.

GOOGLE THIS!

“Private opinion creates public opinion. That is why private opinion, and private behavior, and private conversation are so terrifyingly important.” – Jan Struther, English poet (1901-1953).

There is a lot of noise and debate about the proposed Google Book Settlement. On one side we have Google, with the Author’s Guild and American Association of Publishers.

On the other we have the Open Book Alliance, the Open Content Alliance, and everyone else… writers, agents, independent book store owners, and on and on goes the list.

To understand the disagreement, you have to understand that the Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers represent only a small cross section of the industry, and a small percentage of it at that. Neither represent authors or industry members in other countries.

… and no other country is considering amending their copyright laws.

Only in the USA is Google attempting to force a change favourable to themselves in this regard.

Part of my problem with it lies in the fact that the agreement is deeply convoluted (read the 350 pages for yourself), and in the long term benefits only Google.

The other part of my problem with it is the fact that they tried to accomplish this by using the federal court system, which is an intentional attempt to bypass the Congress of the United States; the only governing body that has the right to change or amend the laws of the country.

Believe and choose as you will, but my vote is NO to Google.

I encourage the courts and congress to say NO as well.