The Hidden Value of Books: The Social Reader

There’s a few things that I look forward to each month– Fridays, pay-days, and getting my new Wired magazine.  At the risk of sounding like a commercial, if you’re a librarian– you should be reading Wired.  This month’s issue is full of articles relevant to our field, including a piece entitled Googlenomics (explaining just how Google works their advertising spots),  and another on The Future of Reading (Thompson, p.50). Thompson asks “Can books survive in this ADD, multichannel universe?”  He believes that we need to “stop thinking about the future of publishing and think instead of the future of reading.” He has a few good points that are especially relevant to libraries.  For example, think about all of the forms of media that have gone digital: newspapers, TV clips, blog posts.   What do they all have in common?   Audience members (readers) interact with the media– they are able to comment, send it along to friends, snip out their favorite parts.  Books are the last frontier for this sort of exploration because well, they are “stuck” on paper.   He suggests checking out BookGlutton, a site that has put 1,660 books online (it’s free!)  and allows users to form reading discussion groups, add their own tags, and comment on any paragraph.  As an educator and librarian, I can see the benefits of socially based reading and learning (just think of the conversation to be had around Ulysses!).  What this means for the future of publishing (and the library’s print book collection) remains to be seen.  Thompson points out that many people will still discover a certain book online, and then go on to purchase the book in print.  There remains a solitude found in print books– but I no longer hold the librarian’s romantic notion that the “book” is irreplaceable.  And as Thompson so eloquently puts it, “taking them digital will unlock their real hidden value: the readers.”