Gen: Educating Administrators

[Jeff Kirkpatrick <jeffkirk@SNI.NET>]

LM_Netters:
        As with the recent USA Weekend thread, the seductive lure of
electronic media as the apparent be-all and end-all to our literary and
informational needs is perhaps understood.  That this perspective is flawed
is apparent to most in the library profession, but many in school
administrations--the holders of the purse strings--are simply ignorant of
the true realities, and must be educated, somehow.
        The following quote comes from a new business, whose primary
mission is to (earn a profit and) produce books, which, due to traditional
publishing costs, might not otherwise ever get into publication, and to
also keep these books in print indefinitely.  The quote should be quite
effective in educating administrators to the reality of the continuing
demand for hard copy collections of books, and from the pragmatic
perspective of a business which has the capability (and the option) of
producing books either electronically or on paper.
        Check it out!

        "A number of small companies operating on the Internet today are
offering authors the opportunity to publish and sell their works in the
form of downloadable files over the Internet.  The main problem with
electronic downloads is that very few people will buy them today.  Display
and other technologies have simply not arrived at the point where reading a
book on a computer screen is a palatable option for most people.  It is
possible for a reader to print a download on their own laser printer (at a
cost to the reader of about $0.10 per page), but reading a stack of loose
sheets of paper isn't much fun, either.  Readers want to buy printed
books."

       --from Xlibris website: http://www/xlibris.com/html/author_services.html

(That 10 cents per page is very telling, too, when we consider that former
library budgets may be being expended in one time student personal research
use, where the same research information has heretofor been accessible time
and again, from the same shared in-house volumes... .)

        Have fun!

Jeff Kirkpatrick

*****
        Life lesson: when someone shares something with you, it is likely
they are not inviting you to beat them up for having shared it.

Jeffrey E. Kirkpatrick
Profession: adventurer (in Aurora, CO)
Present Occupation: Self deployed
e-mail address: jeffkirk@sni.net

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