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Interlibrary Loan and eBooks: Helping you survive the summer!

By jdupuis on August 19, 2010.

A nice post from computer scientist Amy Csizmar Dalal on Five things that helped me survive summer:

5. Interlibrary loan and ebooks (tie). I am almost certain that I have checked more out of the library through interlibrary loan this summer than I have in my previous 7 years at Carleton combined. And this summer, I bought my first ebooks (because I was too impatient to wait for the paper versions to ship, but still). Recently I've expanded my view of which subfields relate to my research, and by expanding my view, I've discovered a whole new set of literature that will help push my research forward (and possibly in all-new directions!). I'm now way behind on my reading, but I'm also looking forward to scholarly reading in a way I haven't for a long time.

We're happy to help. And don't forget, libraries are getting more and more scientific and technical ebooks every day!

Tags
acad lib future
Computer Science
ebooks
faculty liaison
scholarly publishing

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I'd be onboard with the ebooks thing except for the DRM and the fact that the devices tend to obey their creator, not their owner. Welcome to the future of reading and censorship!

In my book, if a book can be disappeared after I've received it, it's not a book.

(there's more, since I think end-users should be given their Four Freedoms as outlined by the Free Software Foundation and these devices almost universally don't (otherwise, the DRM and creator-obedience would last all of five minutes) but sadly I don't think it'll find wider resonance here. Though perhaps you'd be interested in The Right to Read which was written in 1997 but has recently become extremely insightful: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html))