Ebooks are an area of technology that I think all Librarians are a little sceptical and wary of. I am a bit of traditionist and love the feel and smell of books and think that an ipod or ipad or computer screen can not possibly have the same attraction as a genuine book. However, I am not that much of a Luddite to not see the various possiblities that ebooks have,eg for out of print books and for people who live in remote areas. My biggest fear is that ebooks will be our future and replace the printed book altogether. Concerns about cost, the environmental impact of paper usage and so on could really mean that this will be in the future. The current generation are used to accessing information online, via ipods and interactivity, so for them ebooks are an extension of what they are used to. I really hope that the book doesn't disappear, it is much easier to use and just as portable, doesn't rely on battery power and so on. But the video link I saw to schoollibrary.com is convincing in it's attractiveness of having everything at your fingertips as you need it!
Hopefully there will be a place for ebooks and real books in the libraries of the future. At present I think that there is. I was impressed to find google ebook searchr and have added it to my delicious page.
Audio books on the other hand are something that I have used and have in my library. At my current school we had a student who was vision impaired and I was conscious to try and add to the audio book collection regularly. In fact it was funny that Ifound that other students in his class liked to borrow these books too. I have used audio books myself on long journeys and find them a great way to pass the hours, and they were on cassettes too. Once my children didn't want to stop our journey and get out for lunch, they wanted to keep listening to the story!
For students learning to read audio books have a role to play and I have even started using stories read out loud on my IWB for my primary and infants classes. The children seem to enjoy them a lot.
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Whoa! A marathon effort, and you finished the race in style. Thank you so much for all your contributions, I have really enjoyed reading through these last few posts and I hope you will find some of these things useful.
ReplyDelete:) Felicity