LISNews: Librarian News

Novelist Moriah Jovan has come up with a plan for a bookstore without books.

From Media Bistro's Galley Cat, Ron Hogan writes:

"You want a book you can hold in your hands," Jovan fantasizes. "You go to Quaint Bookstore and they do not have what you want in their meager stock. NO PROBLEM! You sit down at one of the book stations. You browse the computer catalog (probably Ingram or Baker & Taylor). You pick your book. You punch in your credit card number (tied to the store's point-of-sale system). The order goes directly to one of the Espresso (print-on-demand) machines behind you. You wait 10 or 15 minutes (by which time you've probably already ordered another 3 books), and out pops your book. You are GOOD TO GO."

Jovan's dream store also allows customers to test drive e-book readers, and maybe even keeps a few old-timey books around on a second floor, for those booksellers who aren't ready to let go completely. So what do you think? Is this where bookstores are headed? Is it where they should be headed?

Is a library without books next?

From San Francisco's Green Apple Books Blog (video piece), Pete writes:

"People keep asking me, as an owner of an old-fashioned brick-and-mortar independent bookstore, what I think of the Amazon Kindle, one of the many “e-readers” available. So I bought one.

I admit, I was curious. The buzz is nearly screeching; and there must be a reason we don’t sell as many John Grisham novels as we did when I started 16 years ago; and who can resist the appeal of a new gadget dedicated to one of life’s necessary pleasures: reading.

Sure, I had heard some bad stories: there’s the class-action lawsuit against Amazon concerning screens that crack. And the recent brouhaha about Amazon silently removing 1984, Animal Farm, and other titles from Kindles (albeit for a good reason—they had sold pirated copies). And having seen Amazon founder Jeff Bezos laughing on Jon Stewart's Daily Show is enough to make anyone scared.

And while there are some thoughtful, balanced articles out there, like Nicholson Baker’s piece in the current New Yorker, I wanted to see for myself.

So Green Apple's crack video crew came at it with an open mind, pitting “The Book” against the Kindle in a smack-down of the most literary sort. We had plenty of help from some, um, "talented" folks, as you'll see."

The Times July 22, 2009. "Oxfam books: the tome raiders cometh: As Oxfam celebrates its role as Europe’s biggest retailer of second-hand books, we send four Times writers to see what used bargains they can find for £10."

How annoying. Had I popped into the Amorous Cat bookshop a day earlier, the proprietor tells me, I could have snapped up an original Elizabethan medical textbook advising on common ailments. One of its solutions for masturbation, incidentally, was suicide.

Oh well. This is the thing about second-hand bookshops. The gems come and go. But the Amorous Cat, which has been in Lark Lane, Liverpool, since 1981, is somewhere you’d be hard pushed to come away from empty-handed, so stacked is it with quality titles ranging from Dickens classics to celebrity autobiographies. It is a treasure trove and a Tardis, seeming from the outside to be tiny but once inside snakes into teeming backrooms, one specialising in children’s books, and up the creaking stairs into yet more. What you don’t get with amazon.co.uk is this palpable smell and texture of history. Perhaps thanks to the credit crunch, business continues to boom. -- Read More

The new Barnes & Noble eBookstore is the latest swipe taken at Amazon.com Inc. and its lead position in electronic books through its Kindle ebook reading device.

Barnes & Noble, the largest U.S. bookstore chain by revenue, said it will be the exclusive eBookstore provider on the Plastic Logic eReader device, aimed at business professionals. The ultra-thin 8.5 x 11 inch wireless eReader is set to make its debut early next year.