I am a technology junkie. I try to embrace every new funky gadget that comes along. I had an Ipod Touch on its first day out (and bragged… a lot). But something about a piece of technology meant to be used as an electronic reader that is named for fire-building makes me nervous.
I am of course talking about the Kindle. (What’s a Kindle? you might ask)
Fortunately, it is my understanding that Kindle developers did not intend to replace books. When the Kindle came out I assumed businesspeople would use it on trips to carry many books with them in one small package. When my father was hit by a car this summer he had a long hospital stay. Toting around the half dozen books I had thrust upon him from room to room became cumbersome. Turning pages hurt his broken arm. My uncle bought him a Kindle and it cheered him up significantly.
Yesterday MSNBC interviewed an Instructional Technology director who had bought ten Kindles for his department and declared an end to school libraries as we know them.
If video embed doesn’t work please watch the report that enraged me here
The reporter jumped from Jim Henderson of the Granite School District liking his Kindle and buying a bunch for his staff, to “the end of modern libraries” without a whole lot of evidence to back herself up.
These were my largest issues with this report:
- The report states clearly that textbooks are not yet available for Kindles, but seems to be about how Kindles will replace textbooks.
- Textbooks are not often housed in school libraries anyway.
- The man interviewed talks about Kindles bringing an end to library fines. “How many of us have lost a book?” he asks. Well, sure, I have lost a book, it cost me abut twenty five dollars to replace. I felt a little ashamed, but in the end, no big deal. I bet losing a Kindle would cost a lot more. Not to mention breaking a Kindle. Do we really want to be giving expensive electronics to our students?
- Amazon’s terms of service states very clearly that books bought for Kindles are for personal use, loaning them out in a library would be forbidden.
I think we are all just a little bit excited about our new cool toys, and carts are going way before horses. As a former journalist, I get really frustrated by news broadcasts that say nothing and ask no questions. Especially when they are slamming on libraries. Back off MSNBC
Filed under: By: Miss Information, News, change or die, libraries | 3 Comments
Tags: Amazon, bad journalism, Granite School district, Jim Hendersn, kindle, MSNBC, really bad journalism, School library
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The debate over whether libraries can lend Kindles has been going on since the Library Journal article came out saying Sparta Public had started doing just that. Amazon, so far, has turned a blind eye to it (and seemed to have no real policy in place to enforce the policy already in place, so many took it as just a vague statement “don’t do it!”). I feel like as more and more libraries jump on this trend, and Amazon starts to see a dip in Kindle sales, they may just come around and start enforcing the policy leaving a whole lot of libraries with a lot of Kindles they can’t lend out.
It makes perfect sense for Amazon to neither encourage nor discourage Kindle lending initially– they want to let as many people as possible try one out in the hopes that more people will buy and there will be positive word of mouth– but now that demand has slacked off, why would Amazon continue with this altruism?
I’ve been aware of Kindle for a while, but I have never wanted to use one. Even though I work at a search engine technology company and generally see the digitization of content as a good thing, I do not believe electronic books can replace the old fashioned kind. When I read books I want an experience that is focused and gives my eyes a rest from my computer screen. Having a bunch of choices in one device recreates the iPod phenomenon of having so many options you can’t settle on one thing. Having worked with kids, I think the prospect of using the iPod of books in a classroom setting would be nightmarish, at least with younger children.
And yes, I agree this video is a shoddy excuse for journalism!!