RE: Licensing books

["Rick Anderson" <rickand@unr.edu>]

To some degree, they already have -- online databases are replacing 
printed reference books at a significant pace (or so it seems to me). 
The problem with your question, though, is the word "books," which isn't 
precise enough to permit a meaningful response.  Novels are books, and 
so are directories, and so are encyclopedias.  Directories and 
encyclopedias have basically no business being published in print, and 
are sure to essentially disappear in that format before too much longer.

But I think the timeline is less clear for books that are 
designed to be read from cover to cover.  At some point someone 
will probably come up with a killer ap for extended electronic 
reading, and that will be that.  When the world's ten-year-olds 
choose not to line up outside Barnes & Noble the night before 
release of the new Harry Potter novel, but rather to stay home 
and have it automatically downloaded to their readers while they 
sleep, we'll know that the era of print-based publishing has 
essentially come to an end.

---
Rick Anderson
Dir. of Resource Acquisition
Univ. of Nevada, Reno Libraries
(775) 784-6500 x273
rickand@unr.edu

________________________________

From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu on behalf of Joseph J. Esposito
Sent: Fri 2/24/2006 3:29 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Licensing books

I was in an interesting discussion this morning in which the
question came up as to whether scholarly books would follow a
digital path similar to what journals experienced beginning, say,
10 years ago.  At the risk of this sounding a bit like a "compare
and contrast" assignment that is the bane of high schoolers, I
was wondering if other members of this list had pondered this
analogy.  Will books follow journals, albeit several steps
behind, or will they forge their own way in the brave new digital
world?

Joe Esposito