And what would you have librarians give up to do that work? (Especially in a rapidly changing environment, where even keeping up with the options takes a handful of hours a month, never mind actually doing anything with them?)
Do we give up story hours? Helping patrons use computers to apply for jobs or file their taxes? (The fact the government is dumping more and more general computer help on public libraries without any funding help is a big issue, especially in more rural areas.)
It's not that I don't agree that ebooks are a thing that needs attention. But it's a lot more complicated than "Make some lists of awesome stuff and it'll be all available." Every new technology means patrons who have lots of questions about it - awesome, but someone needs to be able to help them with devices, or explain why this book is available, but that one isn't. Learning to do those things takes time (and administrative support). Training every librarian on staff to do them takes more.
Back to the rural areas: I'm living these days in a town of 8000 people, that's the largest town for 45 minutes. If you don't live in the center of one of the town, you can't get DSL or cable - just satellite, which is expensive and flaky enough that I'd think twice about it, and I've been on the 'Net for nearly two decades.
The public library has, I think, 2 public access computers, and they've got relatively limited hours, especially for people who work during normal business hours (they're open past 5pm two nights a week, and a few hours on Saturday).
The university I work at allows community patrons (and that's a part of what I do I really *like*.) But at the same time, the bulk of our own focus has to be our students and faculty.
So, we're doing some careful ebook exploration beyond the stuff we get from the state and sytem, but we can't afford to support one of every device to be able to do really excellent testing and explanations of how to download/organise/loan. (And there are the issues of staffing already mentioned: those two people are already plenty busy with the existing materials we maintain.)
It's a question of "What do we give up, to do this new thing." And libraries quite reasonably have a variety of answers to that, and a lot of them are currently in the "The benefits - given that stuff is *so* scattered and chaotic right now - aren't there for us to invest massive staff time or collections budget in it."
A lot of librarians are exploring things privately, on their own time (and on their own, privately owned and funded devices, mind you.) But that takes time to trickle into work practice.
Finally, add to that that a lot of the small press stuff - there's great stuff out there, but there's also some *lousy* stuff out there, and it's hard to tell the difference between the two without either reading it yourself (outside the scope of most librarians in the quantity of titles we buy), or getting actual reliable reviews.
One of my hopes is that we get much more reliable systems for reviewing ebooks (in terms of reviews that talk about the things librarians care about: audience, particular concerns, ways to market the material to "if you liked X, try this", etc. that library publications currently do for print materials.) But we're not there yet either.
Re: Well...
Do we give up story hours? Helping patrons use computers to apply for jobs or file their taxes? (The fact the government is dumping more and more general computer help on public libraries without any funding help is a big issue, especially in more rural areas.)
It's not that I don't agree that ebooks are a thing that needs attention. But it's a lot more complicated than "Make some lists of awesome stuff and it'll be all available." Every new technology means patrons who have lots of questions about it - awesome, but someone needs to be able to help them with devices, or explain why this book is available, but that one isn't. Learning to do those things takes time (and administrative support). Training every librarian on staff to do them takes more.
Back to the rural areas: I'm living these days in a town of 8000 people, that's the largest town for 45 minutes. If you don't live in the center of one of the town, you can't get DSL or cable - just satellite, which is expensive and flaky enough that I'd think twice about it, and I've been on the 'Net for nearly two decades.
The public library has, I think, 2 public access computers, and they've got relatively limited hours, especially for people who work during normal business hours (they're open past 5pm two nights a week, and a few hours on Saturday).
The university I work at allows community patrons (and that's a part of what I do I really *like*.) But at the same time, the bulk of our own focus has to be our students and faculty.
So, we're doing some careful ebook exploration beyond the stuff we get from the state and sytem, but we can't afford to support one of every device to be able to do really excellent testing and explanations of how to download/organise/loan. (And there are the issues of staffing already mentioned: those two people are already plenty busy with the existing materials we maintain.)
It's a question of "What do we give up, to do this new thing." And libraries quite reasonably have a variety of answers to that, and a lot of them are currently in the "The benefits - given that stuff is *so* scattered and chaotic right now - aren't there for us to invest massive staff time or collections budget in it."
A lot of librarians are exploring things privately, on their own time (and on their own, privately owned and funded devices, mind you.) But that takes time to trickle into work practice.
Finally, add to that that a lot of the small press stuff - there's great stuff out there, but there's also some *lousy* stuff out there, and it's hard to tell the difference between the two without either reading it yourself (outside the scope of most librarians in the quantity of titles we buy), or getting actual reliable reviews.
One of my hopes is that we get much more reliable systems for reviewing ebooks (in terms of reviews that talk about the things librarians care about: audience, particular concerns, ways to market the material to "if you liked X, try this", etc. that library publications currently do for print materials.) But we're not there yet either.