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Kindling? Amazon's eBook Reader, Kindle, Is Latest Device To Fire Up the Market
By now you've heard this kind of ebook hype before. Nevertheless, Amazon.com unveiled its Kindle ebook reader yesterday amid headlines that proclaimed it would spark a "revolution" for books. At a hefty $400 price point, however, potential customers so far just appear revolted.
"Hmmm, let me see, spend $400 on a device where the only thing I can do is read books," observed OCLC's Roy Tennant on the Web4lib electronic discussion list, "or spend the same amount on a different device where I can read books, visit any web site I want, make phone calls, listen to tunes." Tennant, like most everyone so far, had yet to handle the device, but his reaction mirrored those of others across the web: disappointment.
On the surface, the device represents a modest step forward for portable ebook devices. It weighs in at a sleek 10.3 ounces, uses special electronic ink technology for excellent (though black and white) resolution, and can hold roughly 200 books at a time. Its major feature is that it comes with its own free "whispernet" wireless Internet access, which allows readers to purchase up to 90,000 titles from Amazon.com, thanks to an agreement with mobile carrier Sprint. The device comes with a dedicated email address for users to send documents to themselves—at ten cents a pop (moving documents is free if you use a USB cable). The Kindle also offers functionality like the ability to search, make notes, a dictionary, and it offers users the ability to view a selection of periodicals and blogs—for a cost. It also includes exclusive access to Wikipedia, which surely has librarians cringing at the thought of their readers fact-checking the next James Frey there.
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos kicked off the Kindle in style, giving away free devices to assembled press at a New York City news conference. He said that no one will ever "outbook" the traditional book. "You have to have a device that can do things that the print book can't do." Critics, however, suggested that for a $400 device, doing some things books can't do isn't lofty enough: the device should also be able to do everything our computers, or at least our phones, can do.
In the age of the iPhone, which can support books, music, video, and phone calls as well as the full range of the web, and with Google set to pioneer the next generation with an open source device, the Kindle is rife with limitations. "First Blackberries and now the iPhone have demonstrated the kind of unification of functions that has been predicted for many years," Tennant added. "The fact that the same amount of money will buy you either a book reading device or a phone and a music player and a web browser [makes] the Kindle a complete non-starter in my book."
Also significant, the device employs Amazon.com's mobipocket standard for delivering book content. And while the company can offer significant access to titles, many of which it has scanned and converted through its "Search Inside the Book" program, the device raises some vital questions: will competing ebooks or materials scanned at your library in other formats, such as PDF, ever be widely supported on the Kindle? What about library loans delivered to the Kindle? What about library loans delivered to the Kindle? Will your Kindle books be supported on your other devices? With no current standard for interoperable Digital Rights Management (DRM), it also remains to be seen how steady access will change as technology changes or whether different formats from different publishers or other sources will be supported.
These are among the serious questions to be answered that will define whether the Kindle is a true reading device or a mere proprietary Amazon.com device to capitalize on its current relationships with publishers and the content it has amassed. "Amazon has made a single-purpose device and it's pretty obvious from their standpoint why they did it," noted Leo Robert Klein on Web4Lib. "It's less obvious why people should suddenly dump their smart phones for this."
Meanwhile, reviews of the product on Amazon.com were rolling in, with over 320 before press time, many of them were negative or, at best, mixed. While some reviewers found the device light, pleasant to use, and potentially powerful, more complained about its high price and limited function.
"I purchase frequently from Amazon but I also use my public library heavily," noted one reviewer who tested the device. "The inability to get ebooks from other sources make this product considerably less attractive to me, particularly at a $400 price point." Another reviewer noted DRM-related issues. "Right now books are free to trade, share, and even resell. Unless an ebook reader allows that, it's a non-starter for me."
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PRG Releases Survey on Institutional Repositories
Anecdotally, we know that institutional repositories (IRs) are being created at more and more institutions. Now, thanks to a survey conducted by the Primary Research Group, we have some numbers to go with that anecdotal data. The Primary Research Group last week published The International Survey of Institutional Digital Repositories, offering data from 56 institutional digital repositories from 11 countries, covering "cost issues, budgets, software, personnel, open access policies, marketing, relations with faculty and other contributors of content, and many other issues relevant to those managing or designing an institutional digital depository."
So how do IRs look by the numbers? According to the survey, the average institutional digital repository cost $78,802 to start up, with 41 percent of survey participants saying they purchased the software to develop their digital repositories. Just over 15 percent of respondents said their IRs were funded "largely" through grants. The range of IRs was also notable. The average repository is about three years old. Some repositories required less than 500 hours of labor per year and had budgets of less than $9000, while the largest repositories required more than 3600 hours of labor and had budgets averaging $145,444. Libraries also appear to be the IRs' major supporters: five percent of the "overall labor required to run the digital repositories" came from academic departments "not connected to the library." The full, report is available for purchase here.
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OCLC Hires Pace, Cunningham
OCLC (Dublin, OH) the nonprofit giant library service and research organization continued to bring on board some major figures in the library world, announcing last week the hiring of Andrew Pace from North Carolina State University (NCSU), Raleigh, and Cindy Cunningham of Corbis Corporation, Seattle. Both appointments are effective January 7, 2008. Pace, head of information technology at NCSU, was project manager for the university's NCSU Endeca-based faceted catalog. He will become executive director, networked library services, guiding the future development of network services for libraries. He is also columnist and blogger for American Libraries and a contributor to other library publications; he wrote "Dismantling Integrated Library Systems" for the February 1, 2004 issue of Library Journal.
Cunningham was most recently director, media metadata at Corbis; she will join OCLC as director, partner programs. From 1998 through February 2004, Cunningham held a variety of positions at Amazon, including U.S. catalog librarian/program manager. She was also the company resource at Amazon for library industry standards. Before joining Amazon, Cunningham was head of reference and information services at Kitsap Regional Library, Bremerton, WA. Other high-profile OCLC hires in the past year include the California Digital Library's Roy Tennant, now in the RLG Programs Group, and the Cornell University Library's Karen Calhoun, now VP, OCLC WorldCat and metadata services.
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Nomination Deadline Extended for LJ's Movers & Shakers 2008
The editors of Library Journal need your help in identifying the emerging leaders in the library world. Our seventh annual Movers & Shakers supplement will profile 50-plus up-and-coming individuals from across the United States and Canada who are innovative, creative, and making a difference.
Because of a technical problem, nominations submitted before November 5 were not captured. Please resubmit! Deadline for submissions has been extended to November 28, 2007! You can nominate someone here, (scroll down the page) or, if you wish to print out and submit the form, you can fax it to 646-746-6734, or send an email to fialkoff@reedbusiness.com.
Profiling innovators from librarians to vendors to others who work in the library field, our Movers & Shakers 2008 will celebrate the new professionals who are moving our libraries ahead. Movers & Shakers 2008 will be distributed with the March 15 issue of Library Journal.
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Library Journal Academic Newswire
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