Nudges into the E-book Future
Posted by: Rebecca Vnuk
On my way to work this morning, an article on the front page of a fellow Chicago Transit Authority rider’s Wall Street Journal caught my attention. The article is part of WSJ’s Future of the Book series, and explores how e-books will change bookselling. Of course, e-books are changing libraries too, and are also having an impact in my little corner of the library world.
A few months ago Cambridge sent reviewer materials for its new nine-volume Dictionary of Irish Biography. But instead of sending the entire set, Cambridge sent volume 1 and a login for the e-version to access the rest of the content. I reviewed this myself to get a sense of what the reviewing experience would be like. Except for the fact that I couldn’t tell whether the print set had any indexing, it was fine. (The review will be published in Booklist‘s June 1 and 15 issue.)
Sage is releasing a six-volume Green Society series that is only available in digital form. I just finished editing our review (coming up in the July issue of Booklist) of the first volume in the series, Green Energy: An A to Z Guide. Again, no problems to review this. All the usual apparatus reviewers look for–further readings, introduction, A-Z list of entries, subject index, etc.–is there and easy to find.
I once asked someone at Sage how much longer he thought he would be publishing both print and electronic versions of the same work. He guessed about five years. I think it’s been five years now since we had that conversation. Green Society is still the exception, though; most reference works are currently published in both forms. Over the next few months, Reference Books Bulletin will start to phase in a new way of writing our reviews, using the e-versions instead of the print ones. My aim is to make the reviews platform neutral, since it’s the content that matters, whatever the mode of delivery.
As we march–or are pushed–into the digital future, it’s interesting that though most RBB reviewers are perfectly willing to work from e-versions of the materials they review, they still want to receive that print copy. This is their tangible reward.
