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OH TANNEN-PALM, OH TANNEN-PALM!

Why not hula on over here and visit my fellow HoHoDooDa Doodlers!

Do you have a Simian Line?

So what are you doing on this blazing Sunday afternoon? I am reading the posts from GreenRead and doing research on eBooks. What the heck is GreenRead, you ask? Let me tell you all about it.

In today's society there are few pleasures left that give us any kind of relief and entertainment. We've got books! But books can be expensive, they can be hard to store, so some genius along the way created eBooks! What a great idea! Not only are eBooks portable, but they are friendly to the environment. There is a huge debate on whether the eBook will replace the paper versions. This will only occur if one of two things happens: we run out of trees or someone finds a way to destroy all the books already in print. This simply isn't anything we need to worry about in our lifetime, or hopefully the next. So consider your options, and go with what works for you.

How the heck does an eBook work? It's really quite simple, actually. You can go online, download a file, and pick where you read it. Some people prefer to read on their desktop computers. Some use their laptops as they wait in airports or train depots. Others, the more gadget oriented, purchase handheld devices like the Sony, Kindle or a Palm. I hear tell that some phones will even be able to read eBooks. These devices can be used in a variety of places, most especially when traveling. One device can hold dozens of books along with all your other necessary information. How cool is that?

I am putting this up as an option for you to consider as a reader. Want to learn more about eBooks? You can join a new group called GreenRead and ask all the questions your heart desires.

I read the web4lib mailing list in RSS format. It’s fascinating because not only is there a lot of good advice, and a lot of familiar faces, but I also learn a lot in terms of what people do and do not know about technology which helps me do my job. There are also some more thought-provoking longer threads sometimes about things like the 2.0 bandwagon, whether Twitter/Facebook type applications are a flash in the pan, or the recent thread about whether libraries innovate.

It all started, I think, with a lita-l mailing list topic that I didn’t see concerning the “ultimate debate” happening at ALA. The event was blogged on the LITA blog and debated a lot on web4lib though the thread is sort of all over the place. And then the topic was picked up by other blogs, which someone on web4lib graciously added to the mailing list as a list of links.

I wonder about the topic myself. The libraries I work with around here are very innovative, but mostly in stretching a super-small [usually five-figure] budget and rarely in technological ways. However, when you’re the only free internet in town, taking a step like offering free wifi when the library is closed, or having a way that people can use your computers to download ebooks checked out from other libraries in other states seems pretty innovative indeed.