Not a monster but a giant in the book world

There is little left to say about Maurice Sendak now because almost everyone in the library world and the children's book world have been talking about him since his recent death. The news shocked readers who had grown up with Where the Wild Things Are and Sendak's other books. The tweets started pouring out about childhood memories of those remarkable monsters which were scary but somehow not threatening. Now the NY Times has published a particularly charming tribute from many of the illustrators and writers of children's books who have been influenced by Maurice Sendak's work. If you haven't read it yet, be sure not to miss it--and don't miss the slideshow. Sendak has influenced generations of writings, publishers and librarians who have come to expect some of his honesty and quirky vision in children's books. He can truly be called a revolutionary figure.

Would Maurice Sendak be part of the current revolution in children's books? It's hard to say. He expressed his opinion of ebooks very tartly on the Stephen Colbert show not long ago. He dismissed them out of hand as not being real books at all and his scornful words have been flashed around the Internet on YouTube. Is he right? Does his status as a pioneer make his opinion of the future, or the present, believable? In the long run it will be the children who decide. Change is inevitable and perhaps future generations will feel just as nostalgic and sentimental about their apps as today's adults are about the picture books they grew up with.

The value of librarians is that we welcome all sorts of innovations and accept the best of the new while preserving the treasures of the past. We certainly have a responsibility to keep alive the seminal works of Maurice Sendak, but we don't have to accept his opinions as gospel. There will undoubtedly be great ebooks coming along and the future belongs to the children growing up in it, not to those of us who grew up in the past.

Another player in the ebook field?

Just when it seems that the tug-of-war between publishers, bookstores and libraries is stalled with each side locked into a position unacceptable to others, a jolt has come to ebook publishing. As reported in the NY Times, Microsoft has agreed to invest millions of dollars in Barnes & Noble's Nook publishing. This sudden influx of money should make B&N a real contender against Amazon's Kindle. The partnership of bookstores and ebooks should be a natural one, although it doesn't exist in the Amazon-Apple world. Many readers (or borrowers in a library) would likely enjoy browsing through the print edition of a book before deciding to choose it to read on their e-reader. The all-online world of Amazon offers enticing pictures of book covers and snippets of reviews by journalists and other readers, but seeing the actual book offers an even stronger incentive to read.

Although this move may complicate librarian's choices in deciding what formats to choose for their ebook collections, any competition in the field is actually an advantage for libraries. Competition between producers of ebooks is likely to encourage all sides to enter into negotiations to make their products available through libraries as well as bookstores. Let's hope this business move will open up choices for all of us.

Ebooks belong in libraries

News about the difficulty of providing ebooks in libraries is finally spreading to the general public. Librarians have been worrying and debating for months, even years, about the restrictions placed on ebooks in libraries, but few people outside the profession realize what is happening. Many people believe—whether they approve or not—that libraries are providing ebooks easily to all of their users. An article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle recounts some of the difficulties that librarians face

As the library journals have pointed out, and most librarians know, publishers are pulling back on their offerings of ebooks in libraries. Many of the major publishers do not allow new books to be sold to libraries; some have stopped supplying any titles at all. All of us who are librarians should speak up for the people who want to borrow ebooks from the library. Encourage our professional organizations, especially ALA to continue to press the publishers for changes. Encourage our congressional representatives to support the right of readers to find books in school and public libraries in many different formats.

Is it time to retreat?

Libraries have been increasing their purchases of ebooks for several years now, and those of us--including me--who think this is a good advance have been cheering, but dissenting voices are now being raised. The struggle between publishers, libraries, and ebook users has been heating up recently. Several publisher are refusing to sell to libraries. Harper Collins has instituted a strick limit of 26 circulations per book for its ebooks, and amazon.com has seized the opportunity to start a lending program of its own for ebooks. The meeting of ALA leaders with book publishers does not appear to have accomplished much, although it's always good to have an ongoing conversation. Now along comes a thoughtful commentary by Bobbi Newman who writes the Librarian by Day blog. She suggests that libraries stop buying ebooks for a while until the market has worked out the way in which these purchases will work. As she suggests, and several other librarians have agreed, we always have other needs to fill, other resources or programs we could spend money on rather than ebooks. Why not concentrate on meeting those needs until the market quiets down? I agree with many of her ideas. It is irritating to try to work out the best way to spend library budgets, ebooks are difficult to administer and require lots of staff time helping patrons, and the increasing prices of ebooks are a burden for libraries. Still, in the long run, I think we have to stick with our purpose of pushing forward into an increasingly digital reading environment. It's frustrating and some patrons complain about our spending our money that way, while others complain about not buying enough. We have a long way to go in establishing relatively simple ebook circulation. But still...the future direction seems clear and how long will we have to wait for perfection? A wise colleague once told me when I was thinking about postponing the purchase of computers "until something better comes along" that a waiting attitude won't work in our world. "You have to step on the escalator" he said. "Sure there will be better products in 6 months or a year, but you will lose those months in waiting." It's the same with ebooks. If we wait for the publishing and distribution problems to be worked out, we may have pushed our libraries into oblivion. Our patrons will borrow from amazon.com or from some other source; young people will share the ebooks they buy without bothering with libraries; our budgets will probably fall even further behind. Libraries are already seen by many people as somewhat old-fashioned and unnecessary. If we stop purchasing ebooks, we will be viewed as even more irrelevant. We know there is a strong, appreciative audience for ebooks out there; young people are more and more accustomed to getting materials online. We need to remain players in the ebook field; we need to support our professional organizations in their attempts to influence publishers and distributors. It's a tough fight, but this is no time to give up the battle.

How much more can we pay?

The news that Random House publishers are doubling and tripling the price of their ebooks came as a shock to most librarians. Just as children's and YA librarians are developing their ebook collections to meet the requests of patrons, they suddenly become luxury itens. As the LJ/SLJ blog "Digital Shift" reports, children's books that used to be priced at about $20 will increase to $35-$85 per title. Librarians who have worked for months to persuade their administrators that even children's collections should include ebooks, will find their budgets severely strained. At the very least the number of copies of popular books will have to be reduced. And there are tricky questions to answer about whether a dozen paper copies of a new series title is better than a handful of digital copies. Which do teens and tweens really want?

Paper publishers are fighting for their lives now and not inclined to listen to the budgetary woes of librarians, but I hope they can be persuaded that we are all in this together. If young people don't grow up with easy access to books, they are unlikely to become lifelong readers. What will publishers do if their market for both digital and paper books shrinks away?

But talking to publishers is difficult for the average librarian. What we need to do right now it talk to our patrons. We need to open a dialog with kids and their parents to find out what they really want. How would they decide about which format to provide? The one thing a crisis may help with is establishing communication. Now's the time to rev up the Facebook page and liven up the blog so we can get plenty of input from the people who really matter--the children and teens we are hoping to provide with reading experiences.

Bring on the e-readers

There’s been a lot of hype lately about how ebooks are being used in schools and libraries for children and adults. Ebooks are popular, and some children as well as adults say they prefer reading ebooks to reading print. Librarians, always eager for anything that increases the love of reading, would like to increase their collections. But what can we do for children who don’t have e-readers? Even though these devices have become more and more popular, they are by no means universal. Some libraries manage with a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) but that penalizes parents who cannot or prefer not to buy e-readers, and the policy opens the possibility of teasing and competition among the children.

The preferred solution for most libraries is to buy devices and make them available to children either in the library or to borrow. A report in School Library Journal gives a round-up of the possibilities and problems in buying Kindles, iPads, and other reading devices in children’s libraries. Even setting aside the expense, which can sometimes be covered by donations or grant money, there are complications. The companies that produce e-readers have aimed their devices at consumers not libraries. Books are designed to be used on only one device at a time. Vendors are not always prepared to handle agreements for purchasing multiple copies of ebooks. For classroom use, the devices have to be synched so each child is looking at the same book and this is a problem.

There are far more questions than answers to the many problems in providing ebook collections and e-readers in children’s libraries, but patrons want them and librarians are going to have to work with publishers and vendors to figure out ways of providing access. Libraries and schools are large purchasers of books and should have some leverage in getting publishers to move more quickly to move to digital books. The purchase of the devices, administration of collections, availability of titles wanted, integration of catalogs, and the high costs involved are barriers. This is the kind of problem that professional associations are designed to work out. It’s time for librarians, individually and in groups, to pressure publishers and others in the business to confront these issues and provide answers. The children can’t do it by themselves, so this is a time to step up our advocacy and speak out for the young people in our schools and libraries.

Libraries save us from piracy?

One of Publisher Weekly's most dynamic blogs, the PWxyz blog has called attention to something that often gets lost in the discussion about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and other discussions about the right of individuals to access content. Besides being technically unwieldly and probably unworkable, SOPA deprives people of the right to find out about digital content they might otherwise not encounter. For more than a century public libraries have served to let people find books, magazines, and other content they either never heard about or cannot afford to purchase. Most people learn to love a book or an author by reading material borrowed from a library--or sometimes from a friend. Reading it once, or listening to music once, isn't always enough, so library borrowers turn into buyers. That's been happening with books all these years and it can happen to ebooks too. Most people are willing to pay a reasonable amount of money to purchase material they want to keep as long as buying it is made convenient. Instead of helping libraries by allowing them to lend ebooks to their cardholders, many publishers have worked to restrict lending. Somehow they believe the model that has worked for a century and more in developing devoted readers won't work any more. Instead of trying to restrict use, publishers ought to work with libraries to enable more people access to both print and digital content. Readers, authors, and publishers all benefit from having a community invested in producing and consuming artistic content. Let's call for sanity instead of SOPA.

Another step backward

Libraries are finding that their patrons, just like other readers, are looking more and more for ebook formats. Over the past year, there has been a sharp growth in the provision of ebooks in libraries. But now, once again, a publisher is pulling back and trying to turn the clock back to the days of all-print. Penguin publishing announced it would no longer make its new books available for borrowing in libraries. The reason given was a vague worry about security, but no one I've talked to can figure out what that worry would be. The more likely reason is a specific worry about sales of books. That's a legitimate concern, publishers after all are in business to make money, but many of them seem determined to ignore what the public wants. Most likely the average reader will not buy the Penguin ebook but will look for another book from a different publisher to borrow from the library. We don't live in a world where many people can afford to buy all the books they would like to read. That's why public libraries are becoming more popular week by week. Instead of pulling all its books from the library market, Penguin should try to work out a model that would give a fair profit to writers and publishers without making most books inaccessible to the audience that wants to read them. This is especially important for the youthful readers who cannot possibly purchase books for themselves. Very few families buy books for their children, not with the prices being charged by publishers. Libraries are the major source most children have for reading materials. Let's not cut down on the supply but work to increase it. Publishers and librarians both stand to gain from an increase in reading. Let's work together to make it possible to fill the need for good books.

Books that disappear in the night

Halloween booklists are a familiar handout in children’s libraries. Books about pumpkins, witches, and trick-or-treating fly off the shelves at this time of year. Parents, teachers and children expect to see old favorites and a few new entries every year. But in making up booklists this year, many librarians must have been struck by the variety of what they include—printed books, ebooks, apps for the i-phone and i-pad, as well as videos and websites for streaming stories of ghosts and goblins. Will these new formats become old favorites, or will they be replaced by stories in newer formats? Will the apps of today become the filmstrips of thirty years ago crumbling in a forgotten corner of the storage closet? What is a book now and what will it be in the future.
This week the Internet Archive hosted a Books in Browsers” conference in San Francisco to explore this question. Is the print book dead? It seems unlikely, but it is worth keeping up with ideas for new formats no matter how off-the-wall some of them seem. A traditional book is written by one person and after it is edited and printed it cannot easily be changed or modified in any way even by the original author. A digital book, on the other hand, exists only as a bundle of electrons that can be altered—updated by the author, which is useful—or hacked and changed by other people, which is a problem. When librarians buy an ebook for their collection, they are purchasing it with the faith that enough of their readers have the necessary equipment and will be able to read it to justify the purchase. What happens if the technology of a book becomes obsolete? Like old tape recorder tapes or vinyl records will they become useless to the vast majority of readers who no longer have the equipment to access them? When we buy a new Halloween classic for our collection, what assurance do we have that it will remain permanently in our collection? Will it disappear silently some day because the publisher has decreed that it has circulated as often as is allowed? Will it become unusable? Should we purchase at least one print copy of each item we buy in digital format to ensure that our collection remains usable? As librarians go about their day-to-day business, especially during this busy fall holiday season, we may not think enough about the long-term strategies of collection development, but we do so at our peril. There are stronger forces than witches and goblins about to snatch away our Halloween treasures!

Another way to borrow ebooks

As borrowing ebooks from libraries becomes easier and easier, publishers are growing nervous and librarians are raising questions about what is best for their users. Now that Amazon.com has made books for Kindle available for library borrowing, youth librarians have to make choices about the best formats to offer their patrons. Kindle (at least in its present incarnation) is obviously not going to take over the picture book market the way that i-Pad apps are doing. Kindle offers straightforward editions of stories and nonfiction books with limited graphics and photos. Will teens and tweens want to read their books this way? The N.Y. Times reports that many publishers are afraid adults will stop buying ebooks and start borrowing them instead. Young people are much less inclined to buy their books than adults are, of course, but with price not a factor will they learn to love borrowed ebooks or will they stick to paper products? Portability is always an issue with kids, which is why paperbacks are so much more popular than hardcover books, but do they consider ebook readers as portable as paperbacks? There is a durability to a paperback that inspires people to tuck them into the back pockets of jeans or stuff them into backpacks. Is the hard metal casing of a Kindle equally inviting? To many of us adults, the cost of a Kindle would make it impossible to treat casually, but teens are notoriously blase about costs they don't have to pay. Publishers and libraries are rushing to embrace new technology and offer the latest formats available in our libraries, but how much do we know about what we are doing? Perhaps its time for librarians to start reporting to their colleagues, through blogs and professional meetings about what is actually happening in libraries. We've done a great job of informing one another about the new titles and how kids are reacting to them. What about the new formats? Why isnt it just as important to report on that? Anyone who has tried lending Kindles to young people in school or public libraries is invited to respond and let us know what's going on. It's time to look beyond the stories to the packaging and to become a force in shaping how publishers offer their wares.

View from Europe

I am spending a week in London and it's surprising what a change of view can do to your opinions. One of the first things I noticed here was the number of bookstores, small, independent bookstores still carrying on. That is very unlike the scene in San Francisco, where scarcely any independent bookstores are left in the city and the few that do exist are downtown in the business/tourist area. The city's children, who tend to live further out in the neighborhoods, scarcely ever get a chance to see a bookstore now that Border's has closed. It is lucky that the San Francisco Public Library still have many vibrant branches being updated and serving more people every day. Changes are coming to British bookstores too. The first Waterstone's bookstore I walked into was featuring a large book describing how self-publishing is changing the book world. Traditional book publishers are finding many inroads made by self-publishers with print or ebooks made available at low prices to the public. Speaking of digital books, the news today that Amazon.com is launching a digital library system, similar to Netflix lending of DVDs, has sparked interest. A lending library of digital books would meet the needs of many readers who balk at paying for every ebook that attracts them. Of course, libraries, with free digital book lending services have an advantage over amazon for many people, but the competition will be keen among those who are willing to pay a small fee to have access to the latest book. This is something all librarians should keep an eye on. Publishing is changing dramatically and libraries will have to be nimble to keep up with global changes and maintain relevance. Fortunately, that's just what we are in the habit of doing.

Will they tweet to the President?

President Obama startled many pundits today by holding a twitter forum on TV. He answered some of the more than 50,000 questions that were tweeted for him. The content was similar to press conferences and other political commentary that we've heard for the past few years, but the method and media should make librarians think about process. The children who are in our libraries and schools these days are learning to communicate through social media as much as through traditional writing and talking. The time for arguing about what has been won and lost in the changing, whirling media world is over. It doesn't matter whether the skills of handwriting and public debating are being lost because most of the children of today will rarely or never need to use those. Librarians are naturally conservative when it comes to culture. We know the value of preserving literary and other intellectual content in book form, but we are living in today's world. We should help children to react to older artifacts like books through every technique of the digital world. We should help them feel at home with tweets and blogs; ebooks and vbooks. Today's children almost certainly will not be tweeting to whoever is president in 2024, but they will have been able to use the skills they develop today to adapt to new media in whatever form it takes. As librarians and teachers we will help them get there.

A busy time was had by all

New Orleans was crowded with librarians this past weekend as the American Library Association held its annual conference. 20,000 people descending on a city have quite an impact. New Orleans had welcoming weather—hot, but only a few major rain showers and one real thunderstorm during the conference. For that we can all be grateful.

Children’s librarians had plenty of programs to attend, from the book-oriented sessions to discussions of the future of the book and digital resources. One noticeable trend among the attendees was that every session that dealt with digital materials or technology trends was filled to overflowing with standees at the back of the room and others hovering around the doorway. What is the future of ebooks and what are libraries going to do to cope with the inevitable changes? That was the challenge heard on every side. One speaker from the Internet Archive project told the audience that over 700,000 self-published books came out during the past year. What are librarians going to do to make these books available to their patrons?

And what about transliteracy? That’s an important word to know. It means the ability to read, write and interact across a range of tools and media. Sounds as though that’s what our children need these days, doesn’t it? As one speaker flashed up on the screen—The 21st century is when everything changes—and the patrons we serve in our schools and libraries are 21st century natives. We need to keep up with the growing importance of digital access. A good website to know about is www.digitalliteracy.gov which gives information about how the U.S. government is trying to extend Broadband throughout society, eliminating the digital barriers in some communities. But Broadband access is not enough; many technologies are not intuitive and libraries should be places where children (and adults) can learn the skills they will need for the coming changes.

Just as valuable as the programs, perhaps, were the exhibits that stretched out for acres in the huge, mile-long convention center. Children’s book publishers offered tables full of brilliantly colored picture books and attention-demanding series books. What were not on display were the interactive books that are coming out for children. Trade publishers are lagging in making available the apps that bring children’s books to their i-pads, i-phones, and other devices. The slow start in this area is partly due to the difficulty of pricing children’s ebooks. Publishers haven’t quite decided whether to make them available in series on a subscription basis or to sell them outright as individual digital products. The educational publishers have intriguing offerings for schools, designed for both classrooms and school libraries, but the type of books bought by most public libraries were nowhere to be seen. Publishers certainly had not brought examples to the conference. Every publisher I spoke to told me that next year they would have ebooks on display in the conference—but that’s what they were saying at the last conference too.

What are librarians to do? Well, for one thing keep after the publishers to produce the kinds of materials we need. Keep asking when they are going to bring their titles out as apps that kids can read at home. Remind them how important it is for librarians to be able to purchase the exact titles they want, not a package of books shoved together to increase the price. We owe it to our child patrons!

New futures for nonfiction

Ebooks have made a dramatic entrance into the picture book field now they are becoming more important in the nonfiction arena. This month School Library Journal has an excellent roundup called "Pick me! Pick me!" of new nonfiction series available for public and school libraries. Choosing ebooks to be read on computers or mobile devices poses new challenges for librarians used to dealing with print. It's important to know the kind of equipment available in the library, in the school, and in children's homes. SLJ makes some excellent points about the importance of testing these products before purchase and, if possible, having children of the appropriate age try them out. The books are exciting--offering opportunities for vivid graphics, sometimes speech, translation and note taking. We are entering a new era of making information attractive and intereting to children.

Newer, shorter books

We all know how many students come into the library with a request for "a short book". A book report assignment often calls out this response. Now the makers of ebook reading devices are answering this call, for adults as well as young people. A few weeks ago Kindle announced plans to publish short books--somewhere between a novella and a novel--that will be sold for Kindle. Now more publishers are jumping into the game, often to provide materials to read on i-phones, i-pads and other small mobile devices. According to a N.Y. Times story, this trend may lead to some big changes in publishing as writers and editors learn to tailor their wares to the needs of today's readers. With magazines fading from prominence for many readers, there is a need for a detailed account of events or a complex story, but one that does not require a full book to recount. Another advantage of the short form is that the time from the conception of the idea to the availability of the text is much shorter than for conventional books. It will be interesting to see whether the revolution in Egypt and turmoil in other Arab countries will be detailed in some of these new, short, immediate ebooks.

For those who mourn the decline of the printed book, there is a cheerful sight in San Francisco this weekend as the lavish booths of the World's Largest Antiquarian Book Fair were on display. There were plenty of lovers of print books around to browse, enjoy, and even purchase the books, which range in price from under $100 to over a million.

How do I choose the format?

Librarians all over the country are trying to decide which ebook formats they should try to serve with their collections. Ebooks are fast becoming a standard service in libraries, but it's hard not to be confused with the proliferation of formats from which to choose. Here's a clever chart of formats to help you visualize the choices to be made. Many books and periodicals are available for a variety of formats, but it's helpful if the librarian can help a patron decide what he/she needs. There is a lot of information packed into this chart and most of it will help us make choices.Whether you personally prefer a Kindle or a nook or really want to stick to ink on paper is irrelevant. We need the expertise to explain to patrons, both parents and children, what the choices are and then show them how to use the resources available in the library.

Libraries are given a gift

Publishing tends to go into hibernation for the last few weeks of December. All the books available for holiday gifts have been published and all the companies can do is wait and see what the public (including libraries) will buy. This year there is a new factor in the equation--ebook readers were among the most popular gifts for the holiday. Thousands of people around the country found one among their gifts. Publishers celebrated the number of people who ordered ebooks the next day, but libraries have at least as great a reason for celebrating. According to library figures, the borrowing of ebooks jumped 93% in the two days following Christmas. This has been reported in Stephen's Lighthouse blog which points out that libraries now have a stronger mandate than ever to collect ebooks for borrowing and to make them available for many platforms. Amazon's Kindle is still limited to purchased books, but almost all of the other ebook readers are compatible with borrowed books from library collections, and as more people become aware of this, Amazon will be pressured to follow suit. The availability of ebooks in public libraries will encourage more people to read and perhaps will broaden their reading interests. Although there are no figures I have seen on how many children's books are among those borrowed, but these figures will follow. As long as librarians remain aware of what patrons want and are willing to offer them, the use of libraries will expand. Even though the use of ebooks has increased dramatically in 2010, many people are still not aware that most libraries have ebooks available for borrowing. Here's an effective area for more publicity throughout the library, including the children's room. This is the time to build awareness, while new ebook readers are searching for sources of reading materials. Let's make 2011 the year when every library became a resource for digital as well as print books.

They never learn

By now everyone has heard that ebooks are outselling hardcover print books at amazon.com and elsewhere. Mainstream publishers in the UK announced recently that they would fight back by severely restricting access to library copies of ebooks. A NY Times story recounts the familiar tale of how another conventional industry is going to try to market its products in a way sure to irritate customers. Using DRM technology to limit access, these publishers want libraries to lend a copy of an ebook to only one reader at a time and to limit use to in-library reading. Well, the whole point of ebooks is to make their content available in various places so readers can consume content whether they are at home, in a train or plane, or relaxing in a park. Like the music industry before them, it appears that some publishers want to turn back the clock and hang onto outdated technology. This is a losing game for everyone. A fair and equitable distribution of ebooks is necessary to encourage people to read, to support authors, and the publishing industry itself. Librarians should work with publishers to design systems that will allow a writer to reach readers, to support herself, and to encourage increasing literacy throughout the community.