E-books and Internet Cafes

As I sit here contemplating technology, I'm looking at a book shelf full of books. I do wonder what the information sources will look like in a few years.
Don't get me wrong. I believe that books (paper books) will persist through my life time. I'm not saying anything about the upcoming technologies by saying this. This is a comment on the people involved -- the people age 25 and up will continue to want to hold a book in their hands for a long time. That period of time will probably be for the rest of their lives. Professionally, for me, that means that books will be sitting in libraries for a while.
Now, for the other side of that problem. The books will continue to exist, but they might not continue to exist with the same prominence that they currently enjoy. I don't think this is too much of a stretch, really. Black and white movies and silent movies are still available, but they aren't the main thing. So the paper books will eventually work their way into the "literature" section of the library with the other old stuff.
The interesting piece though is what happens next. Let's say that someone were to make a nice interface for an electronic book (or really, an electronic library) with all the things that go along with it. The purchasing, lending, leasing, reading, printing, and searching have all been worked out. Let's then say that this trinket actually catches on. Apple could do this, for example. Let's just say that they decide they want to and do it.
Then in a period of five years, all the paper books would be relegated to a different category in the library... and most libraries would be configured incorrectly. In fact, in that case, libraries would be in big trouble. An Apple computer-like site that provided books for download for purchase or rent would make a library a very difficult sell.
I suppose this gets a the question of what a library is. In one sense I think that a libary is like a Blockbuster or Family Video version of Borders. The main difference is that the library generally has better meeting facilities and the computer facilities are free. If Borders opened an Internet cafe and had a "party room" the differences would be even smaller. Consider that a public library is a government subsidized book and media rental place, with the fees charged only (or mainly) on overdue items.
Having said that, if someone does start offering e-books, Borders and all those sorts of stores will be worse off than the libraries, so that is something. In fact, that might be one of the reasons that all of the books stores sell music and DVDs also. They want to be able to sell media when the time comes -- or else they will cease to exist.
The reason that this sort of change will be difficult for librarians is that the change will mark a further change in the design of libraries. If the books are not current -- not in the main stream anymore -- but the content is available through other means, then something strange happens. Take away all the sections of the building that are dedicated to storing, moving and finding books (specfically) and huge chunks of existing library buildings just go away.
The library will become something more like an Internet Cafe than it is now. The good news is that I like coffee. In that sort of environment, the library staff will be largely the sort of staff that you'd find at an internet cafe. That would be techie types and quite possibly people serving up beverages. There will be ample opportunity for assistance, but it will be a different kind. It will look a lot like technology training, I think. The reason I think this is that Apple (or whoever else pulls off a "nice" ebook) will surely have a quality interface, with training and tutorials and references and whatever, built into their service. That is a necessary component for the ebook to be "nice."
Well, anyway, I was just trying to contemplate what a good ebook would do to a library. I think it's coming, and when it comes it will happen fast. By fast, I mean Apple iTunes fast. Well, it will be interesting to see what happens.

Slugging it out

Today I learned something with the computer at the school. The ICP teacher and I worked on a test today. The first part is something that I had done before. The first part is the part where you make the test. That I've done before. However, today I got to experience the joy of bubble sheets.
I don't think I'd used the bubble sheets as a teacher before, mostly because I generally didn't make multiple choice tests before this year. This is partly because when teaching computers (which I have tended to teach) I normally had a "hands-on" portion, and when creating code, I normally had a part of the test where students wrote code.
Also, multiple choice questions are sort of hard to write. They are wonderful to use, but they are hard to write (well, comparatively, I suppose).
So, back to the bubble sheets. I've used the "fake" bubble sheets before, but for this coming test we are using the really, real scantron sheets. The reason for this is that we are going to analyze how well students do on the test. Hopefully, they do well. It will make the analysis (and grades) much more fun. Anyway, to to do the analysis, some computer somewhere (through the web) gets copies of all sorts of stuff along with a list of state standards.
The thing that I did today was "pre-slug" the answer sheets. One of the steps is to send the answer sheets through the printer and get names and so forth printed on them. That is known as pre-slugging apparently. Who knew.
And, I might add, as I have mentioned before, printers are basically evil. The report (with ten dozen pages) went to the wrong (color laser) printer instead of the printer that the tests were in. The program assumed that I wanted to use the other one. Probably the printer tricked it. Printers are sneaky. Always keep an eye on your printer.

Google was down

Well, I have actually had two sorts of difficulties trying to post to the blog so far. The first problem is one that is persistent, and won't go away. The problem is that all blogs (personal sites) are blocked by the firewall at the school that I work for. This means that I can't post anything during the day, sadly. It would be handy, because that would provide for a little break in the day. It would at least be a change from grading papers.

The second problem I had was that Google's server was down on Saturday for a period of time. It had completed a post, and blogspot ate it. I don't know what the deal was, but that was kind of a sad thing.

However, the one thing for me to consider is that for me, as a teacher, the fact of firewalls means that there are certain things that a school librarian (and perhaps a librarian for youth even in a public library) shouldn't put on a blog exclusively. If the purpose of the blog is to serve students and teachers in a K-12 setting, and if those people do not have continuous access to a blog, it wouldn't make sense to post things to a blog to serve them.

Having said that, it might still help them after hours or when they are in a public library.

Also, since I've been the one to set up a school's firewall (not this school, but a different one), I understand why the blogs are blocked, and I don't have a problem with them being blocked. In fact, I'm rather happy they are. However, for this particular project it does make things a little more interesting. Oh well.

Oh, and hopefully this one will go through.