Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley
\nJune 2007 Issue
\nMay 10, 2007<\/p>\n
Libraries without Hours<\/strong><\/p>\n I love books. Our apartment has bookcases standing in our living room because the walls were already lined with bookcases. There are books in our dining room, too. You would think with so many books I\u2019d have no need for libraries or bookstores, but you\u2019d be wrong. I\u2019m always coming across facts I want to check, ideas I want to research, and authors I know I should read.<\/p>\n Libraries let me browse, finding books I didn\u2019t know existed. The joy of wandering \u201cthe stacks\u201d in a university library is that I end up checking out two books for every one I knew I wanted to read.<\/p>\n But, to be honest, library hours are not what they used to be. Worse, university collections aren\u2019t being updated because hardcover books are not cheap. When I was looking for books on Chaucer, it seemed Fresno State\u2019s selection was limited to a single shelf. Tulare County\u2019s libraries do the best they can with limited resources, too.<\/p>\n Thankfully, we have the World Wide Web and libraries without limited hours or limited shelf space. While I really appreciate a great librarian, the books are what I seek. It\u2019s all about the works.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been inside university libraries three times in the last two years. During one of those visits, the research specialist asked why I wasn\u2019t getting the journal article I wanted online. I said I liked the library, and she laughed. \u201cAt least someone does.\u201d<\/p>\n When I was a child growing up in Ivanhoe, we\u2019d visit the small Tulare County branch library once a week. I read some of the books several times, waiting for the day when I could select books from the \u201cgrown up side\u201d of the building. Now, I check online libraries almost as often as I visited that little building in Ivanhoe.<\/p>\n Project Gutenberg<\/a><\/strong> (http:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/<\/a>) has more than 20,000 books online. Most of the works distributed by Project Gutenberg are past their copyright, meaning they were published before 1923. These are not resources for the latest theories in science, but I\u2019m a literature person. In some cases, authors have allowed the works to be distributed via what is known as the \u201ccommons\u201d approach to copyright.<\/p>\n The first documents posted to Project Gutenberg were the founding documents of the United States and various religious texts. Ancient works, especially Greek and Roman texts, soon followed. Today, more than 400 works a month are added to the project, all prepared by volunteers.<\/p>\n For those unable to connect to the Internet all the time, Project Gutenberg sells CDs of famous works. You can purchase CDs by genre, such as science fiction, mysteries, poetry, or philosophical works. The books are plain text files that can be read on any computer or even a personal digital assistant (PDA<\/a>), such as my trusted Palm Tungsten.<\/p>\n The Internet Archive<\/strong> (http:\/\/www.archive.org\/<\/a>) can\u2019t match Gutenberg\u2019s selection of texts, but there\u2019s no better location for public domain and free audio works. As a fan of mysteries and science fiction, I\u2019ve downloaded hundreds of classic radio dramas and \u201cplain\u201d audio books. Most of the audio files are in MP3 format, so I can play them almost anywhere. I\u2019ve listened to free BBC versions of Greek plays, which is much easier for me than reading the texts.<\/p>\n A lot of attention has been given to Google\u2019s offer to scan the works held by various libraries. However, access to some of these works will be limited because of copyright concerns. Google Books (http:\/\/books.google.com\/<\/a>) is officially a \u201cpublic beta test\u201d but already thousands of books are online. Those books not covered by copyright are scanned as images and stored in Adobe\u2019s Portable Document Format. The benefit to this approach is that the original look of a book is preserved, including any images. However, the files are also much larger than those stored by Project Gutenberg.<\/p>\n You can search the text of books while connected to Google, but some of the PDF editions cannot be searched using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader<\/a> software once you download a particular work. I find myself preferring the aesthetics of Google\u2019s scanned books, but using the Gutenberg editions more often. A scanned illuminated manuscript might look great, but it isn\u2019t easy to read.<\/p>\n For a master list of online libraries, I suggest the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Online Books Page (http:\/\/onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu\/<\/a>). This Web site has dozens of links to free online libraries, including many book collections in Europe and Asia. If you want to read a classic work in French, German, or Spanish, this is the place to find it.<\/p>\n Because I tend to read when I\u2019m not connected to the Internet, I\u2019ve grown fond of AvantGo (http:\/\/www.avantgo.com). AvantGo supports handheld devices from every major PDA and phone manufacturer. After setting up a free account, you can read the New York Times<\/em>, Washington Post<\/em>, or any of more than 100 publications on your handheld \u2014 even when you can\u2019t connect to the Internet.<\/p>\n When I synchronize my Palm calendar with my laptop computer, AvantGo updates the daily editions of several major newspapers. I can read the newspapers throughout the day, anywhere I happen to be. The International Herald Tribune and Reuters include photos with their stories, and the photos look great even on some phones.<\/p>\n I look forward to the day when any book, from any library, can be read via the Internet or on my PalmPilot<\/a>. The New York Public Library<\/a> has started \u201ceNYPL\u201d for just this purpose, but you have to either live in NYC or be willing to pay $100 a year for access to their online collections. The books checked out from the eNYPL expire after three weeks, using special Digital Rights Management (DRM)<\/a> software from Adobe and Microsoft.<\/p>\n I\u2019d love to have the ability to checkout books from the Tulare County and Fresno State libraries for three weeks without having to return them. I\u2019d read Chaucer on my computer or Palm and after three weeks the book would simply \u201cvanish\u201d from my system.<\/p>\n Publishers might imagine an online reader would be a bad customer, but the opposite is true. The more I read online, the more \u201creal\u201d books and magazines I seem to buy. Yes, I like convenience, but I also want the best books to be on my shelves, no batteries required. I still can\u2019t imagine reading my computer screen by the pool, or taking my PalmPilot to Pismo Beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 2007 Issue May 10, 2007 Libraries without Hours I love books. Our apartment has bookcases standing in our living room…<\/p>\n