Cali the Librarian

GigaOm: How the e-book landscape is becoming a walled garden

Just as a few massive chain stores eventually came to dominate the traditional printed book market in North America, the e-book marketplace is a kind of oligopoly involving a few major players — primarily Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble. And while bookstore owners of all kinds are free to decide which books they wish to put on their shelves, these new giants have far more control over whose e-books see the light of day because they also own the major e-reading platforms, and they are making decisions based not on what they think consumers want to read but on their own competitive interests. That is turning the e-book landscape into even more of a walled garden.

(Source: twitter.com)

"A new generation, one that grew up with a data surplus, is coming along. To this cohort, it’s no big deal to miss a tweet or ten, to delete a blog from your reader or to not return a text or even a voice mail. The new standard for a vacation email is, ‘When I get back, I’m going to delete all the email in my box, so if it’s important, please re-send it next week.’ This is what always happens when something goes from scarce to surplus. First we bathe in it, then we waste it."

—

Seth Godin - The Shower of Data (via aaronwhite)

(I kind of like the idea of just deleting everything that came in while away. Not going to happen, but it’s a nice thought.)

(Source: kirklove)

a few more reactions to Godin’s post

PC Sweeney: Seth Called Us Out On Our Bullshit And Folks Got Mad

janholmquist: The future of libraries – Why Seth Godin and Bobbi Newman are both right

Censored Genius: The Fight Goes On

Digitization 101: Wayback Wednesday: Looking at the future of libraries

O’Reilly Radar, Nat Torkington: Four Short Links: 18 May 2011

and libraryguy:

Have I got this right? Seth Godin says: “We need librarians more than ever”, and now the entire profession wants to pummel him? 0_o

Agnostic, Maybe: “Bring Me the Head of Seth Godin!”

This response to Seth Godin’s post is the best one I’ve seen thus far.

In coming up with the blog post title, I thought it might grab’s people attention (nothing quite like a little cheap ‘Gotcha!’ advertising ploy, right?) but also serve two functions. First, librarians can’t keep trying to kill the messenger when it comes from outside libraryland. Putting Seth’s head on a proverbial pike does nothing but tell people that librarians (oddly enough being the strangely open minded intellectual freedomniks that we are in defending divergent viewpoints) are not interested in outside opinions. That does not serve us well going into the future for those looking to lend a hand and offer an outside viewpoint.

Other responses since yesterday:

(Source: twitter.com)

"It may be if a marketing guru says libraries shld be doing stuff we already are, message isn’t abt services, but that we suck at marketing."

— http://twitter.com/ThatAndromeda/status/70243809883201536

Seth Godin: The future of the library

I think he’s got some good points, though I take issue with at least one part:

And then we need to consider the rise of the Kindle. An ebook costs about $1.60 in 1962 dollars. A thousand ebooks can fit on one device, easily. Easy to store, easy to sort, easy to hand to your neighbor.

Sure, the ereader is easy to hand to your neighbor; the ebook itself, not so much.

A few reaction posts: