When Every Student Has a Kindle | From the Bell Tower
Steven Bell reflects on the impact on library collections and service of a Kindle in every backpack.
Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA -- Library Journal, 9/3/2009
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When several universities announced a partnership with Amazon to test the new Kindle DX as a device for providing and using e-textbooks I considered how that could create some new and interesting possibilities with dramatic implications for academic libraries. I surmised that as long as every college student had a Kindle for their textbooks, why not take that one step further and allow every student to carry their own personalized version of the academic library.
Some academic librarians are exploring the potential of patron-driven acquisitions, in which new additions to the collections are decided by the library community. Such systems are based more on a just-in-time rather than our traditional just-in-case model of collection building. The Kindle could lend itself to this new model rather well.
A Kindle library scenario
It’s not that far-fetched an idea. Let’s take a typical mid-sized university library as an example. It probably spends about $3 million per year on acquiring new monographs. What if the administration decides to buy each incoming freshman a Kindle DX? For $1 million from the library budget you can by 2000 DX devices at $500 a piece. That might be enough to cover the freshman class. Spend a few hundred thousand or so and you could buy a DX for the entire faculty, too.
Once the institution provided these folks with a Kindle, the next logical step would involve book purchases. The administration could take another million from the library and give $400 each to 2500 students and faculty. That’s right; just put the money right in their accounts. Students could use this for textbooks, but hopefully for a novel or two as well or a newspaper subscription. Faculty could purchase books appropriate to their scholarship.
Not without problems
It’s far from a perfect scenario. For one thing, taking library money to subsidize individual ownership of books obviously defeats the function of an academic library as an information commons. But, consider this: what if there’s an academic purchasing plan where any book purchased with institution funds becomes part of the pool of materials anyone at the school may put on their Kindle? That’s fairly library-like.
Another challenge is the selection. I have no intimate knowledge of Amazon’s Kindle offerings, but I suspect their catalog overlooks the sort of scholarly content faculty want and would recommend to their students. And then there is perhaps the most significant barrier of all. What would all those library workers whose jobs involve book selection and acquisitions do when it all moves to user selection via the Kindles?
Far-fetched? Maybe not
The idea of every student having their own Kindle or some sort of e-reader device for their books may sound undoable, and even border on folly, but nothing seems out of the question these days. It turns out that the influential Democratic Leadership Council has drafted a proposal titled “A Kindle in Every Backpack: A Proposal for eTextbooks in American Schools.”
True, the document focuses primarily on e-textbooks on Kindles, but why stop with textbooks? The report suggests that the devices would give every student his or her own “mini-library” to take everywhere. In the heated competition for students, it is not outlandish to imagine a college or university touting a “mini-library for every student” along with rock climbing and luxury dorms. It would hardly be the first time an institution gave every student a hi-tech device, and the promise of “your own academic library” could just entice a few students into enrolling.
Ebook readers are in our future
Now that Sony has announced its latest entry into the ebook market expect some good competition between two opposing platforms. The winner is usually the consumer who benefits from lower prices and more choice. Right now the prospects for higher education to divert library funds to ebooks as a library substitute seem rather slim. No matter what happens, academic libraries should be exploring options for patron-driven selection, and introducing more options for students and faculty to acquire the books they need when they need them.
As consumers use e-readers they’ll grow accustomed to simply downloading whatever book they need and having it ready to read in minutes. If academic libraries can adjust to those types of on-demand, just-in-time book orders, we may be in a position to pleasantly surprise the user community.
Steven Bell is Associate University Librarian, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA. For more from Steven visit his blogs, Kept-Up Academic Librarian, ACRLog and Designing Better Libraries or visit his web site.
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