Oct 16, 2010

Libraries at the Tipping Point EbookSummit - facing challenges of Ebooks Ereaders

I love how Twitter and Hootsuite enable serendipitous discoveries - the "weak ties" thing : like the #ebooksummit : Libraries at the Tipping Point conference, a virtual live event involving 2500 participants, held on September 29 2010 when I was sailing along Croatia's Dalmatian coast with my family & so only chancing upon it belatedly.

As usual there was a lot of retweeting, especially as it was a virtual event. So once I culled these out, it distilled a core of interesting content & comments shared so generously -see below.

Highlights for me : Emily Williams' blog post on Ray Kurzweil's provocative preso " If Libraries are screwed, then so are the rest of us" was a really great read - as was the LibrarianinBlack's posts on David Lanke's closing keynote, Library User Experiences, What-ifs of Ebooks &  How Ebooks Impact Libraries Readers Publishers.

And Barbara Fister's "Ebooks and the Retailization of Research" was one of the recommended - pre read articles ahead of the conference, with her words : "Golub's vision of inexpensive articles easily purchased by scholars is tempting; it would relieve libraries of an unsustainable financial burden, trying to supply every article a scholar might want with little negotiation power. But if taken to extremes, it would put an end to what libraries do: provide access to a wide range of information as a communal resource."

As a manager with responsibility for my org's Global Corporate Library KM Service, I am intrigued by the emergence of Ebooks etc. However I shudder on reflecting if legal copyright issues should constrain the traditional knowledge sharing done by professionals and academics, when we discover a great journal article, book etc. We don't need "choking", by legal Ebook tractions impeding innovative processes, which traditionally arise with leveraging the sharing of new information & knowledge in professional & academic communities. 

Posted via email from kerrieannesfridgemagnets's posterous

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