Coffee and e-books

I promised not too long ago in a vlog far, far away, that I'd write about life with a Kindle.

Before we start, though, a couple of announcements: First, we've got coffee every night this week for midterms! If all the cramming and writing you're doing is getting you down by the time the post-dinner coma hits, come to the Library after 8 p.m. through Thursday night for free coffee! We've got all the amenities: Creamer, sugar, artificial sweetener and, my favorite, stirrers!

Second, our first-floor computer area survey is done. Expect a post later this week about the results -- and the winners of our prize drawing, of course!

Now for the main attraction ...

I bought a Kindle a couple of weeks ago, as I mentioned, after posting this. And I love it.

It's so convenient. It slips right into my coat pocket in case of lousy weather (plenty of which we've had in the last few weeks). The screen is amazing, as is to be expected when you've grown used to cell phones and iPads that are all but unusable outdoors -- it's crisp and readable in nearly all conditions and looks just like a book page. The thing itself manages to pull off the difficult task of being both very book-like and very unlike a book as might be expected. More than anything else, I've had two habits to get over: touching the screen, thanks to the capacitive handhelds I've had over the years; and turning pages. You can actually read one-handed, which is useful in more situations than you'd think, including driving.

Did I say that? Haha! No, I didn't.

By far the most useful aspect of the Kindle, though, is the accessibility I now have to a huge number of public-domain works. This includes a plethora of classics I've never read -- specifically because they were in the public domain. Why pay for a free book? And it's no fun reading those books on a computer screen; your eyes get tired. And as far as checking them out from a library -- even the Gallaudet University Library -- there are so many other options that I grow neglectful of the canon.

Using the Kindle chiefly -- if not exclusively -- for public-domain works also gets around a problem that's endemic to e-reading devices like the Kindle and e-books in general: DRM. Digital rights management enables publishers to maintain control over a copy that you've purchased yourself, simply by including in the terms and conditions that such purchases are understood only as "licensing." In other words, even though money has changed hands, you're still really only renting the object of the transaction.

Libraries all over the country ran headlong into this wall just last week when OverDrive -- a major e-book lender for libraries, mentioned in the post linked above -- announced that an unnamed publisher had altered the licensing terms of books purchased by libraries through OverDrive: there would now be an upper limit on the number of times an e-book from that publisher could be checked out. When a given e-book exceeded the limit (set at 26), that e-book would no longer be available through that library without re-purchasing the license.

More information has since filtered in; HarperCollins acknowledged that it was the publisher in question and explained their reasoning, and also that these terms applied to all e-book lenders carrying HarperCollins titles.

HarperCollins is huge. They're one of the six largest publishers in the US, if not the world. Their books are everywhere; they published, for instance, Sarah Palin's Going Rogue last fall. Can you imagine the effect a 26-loan limit on that book alone would have on a library?

I was talking with Elizabeth Henry, our E-Resources/Instruction & Reference Librarian, last week just after the news came out. I was, predictably, a little steamed -- how dare they? Would they presume to dictate to libraries a limit on how often a physical book can be checked out? Of course not; the first-sale doctrine prevents that.

The first-sale doctrine states that once a legitimate copy of a work has been legally purchased, the seller transfers all rights of ownership of that copy to the buyer. The buyer can then transfer the ownership of that book any way she likes -- sell it, lend it, give it away, whatever. The original seller is not entitled to any further control over, or revenue from, that copy. If, for instance, you found an incredibly rare copy of Kenneth Grahame's Dream Days, illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, at a garage sale and bought it for 50 cents, then turned around and sold it for $2,000, the person who sold the book to you isn't entitled to a cut of the money (although if you were a nice person, you might consider a thank-you of some kind to the hapless garage owner).

What? I'm not kidding -- there's a signed first-edition limited run of the book on the market for $1,750. Don't think I haven't thought about it ...

Anyway, the first-sale doctrine is part of the legal underpinning of what libraries do; we let people take books without paying and do God only knows what with them in the privacy of their own homes. Provided we get it back, and there's no physical damage to the book itself as a result of whatever you did with it, there really isn't anything else we can or should do about how the book is used.

Publishers dislike that; they see libraries as enabling people to read, and maybe even copy and distribute, the publishers' product without paying a single red cent for the privilege. And now they've found their way in, as the case of HarperCollins and OverDrive illustrates so well.

Elizabeth agreed with me for the most part, but reminded me that e-books, though not all that new, are only now beginning to become a major part of the publishing industry at large. As such, publishers, vendors, libraries, and individuals are still feeling their way along a very bumpy road.

That made me feel better, a little bit. Some perspective on the issue always helps. What also helps is the knowledge that this particular problem with HarperCollins doesn't apply to us; our collection of e-books doesn't work on the same principle as, say, OverDrive's. So come what may, our collection -- full of fascinating reading like Accidental billionaires or Changing anarchism -- won't be affected by publisher decisions affecting e-book lending.

If you're interested in reading more about what other librarians have to say, I'd suggest starting with the Librarian in Black's e-Book Bill of Rights.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying my Kindle, even with Amazon's Big Brother lurking over my shoulder. Expect some "classic" book-review vlogs in the future as I work my way through the free copies of the Library's holdings, starting with Tristram Shandy. Don't worry -- I'll still read new(er) books, like Pillars of the Earth. Expect a vlog about that later this week!