Category Archives: ebooks

Public Libraries Should Continue to Exist

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 20, 2011 - 11:14 am | , , , ,
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A non-librarian friend of mine (ooh, name drop much? :)) shared an article, “A Country Without Libraries,” from the New York Review of Books, in her Google Reader feed. I started to write my long comment there, but then I thought “Why else do I have a blog?” While I agree with the author that public libraries are a necessity for democracy, I sort of hated the second half of his article. I would argue that wandering from subject to subject, learning, is far easier on Wikipedia than in library stacks, and to put forth “There are lots of books!” … Continue reading →

I’ve joined the revolution

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | October 13, 2010 - 12:49 pm | , , , , ,
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… and, in the process, I’ve chosen a side in the ereader wars. (I’m not going to talk about ereaders vs. netbooks/iPads/iPhones vs. books right now. I’ve done that, albeit back in the pre-iPad era—and back when I was in love with a product that never actually made it to market. I may feel the need to do it again, since people continue to refer to the iPad as an ereader and keep insisting on the intrinsic value of book-as-physical-object, but this is not that post.) As I’ve said numerous times, both on social media and in person, “Amazon is … Continue reading →

Ebook readers – a primer, a rant, and a call for pertinent discussion

  By Coral Sheldon-Hess | May 9, 2009 - 5:21 pm | , , ,
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Getting the facts straight Even now, a year and a half after the release of Kindle 1.0–not even the first or most innovative of ebook readers–I keep seeing bloggers and other Web folk (many of them librarians or engineers who should know better) spouting off opinions like “why not just buy a laptop and read on that?” or “screens hurt my eyes.” And that bugs me. Clearly, there’s a huge failure in marketing happening on Amazon’s (and Sony’s and iRex’s) part. But I’m not sure what else they should be doing to educate consumers–nowadays, you can go a Target store … Continue reading →