As gung-ho as we are on e-books and efficient use of technology in K-12, we'll always argue against substituting gizmos for librarians who can help students find the right books--and serve them as mentors in person. In fact, the cost-savings of e-books might even make it possible to hire more librarians.

Skeptics about the need for humans may want to read a study of scores on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills--done by Dr. Esther Smith of EGS Research and Consulting for the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. She writes:

The Texas Study demonstrated higher TAAS performance at all educational levels in schools with librarians than in schools without librarians. Over 10 percent more students in schools with librarians than in schools without librarians met minimum TAAS expectations in reading. On average, 89.3 percent of students in schools with librarians compared with 78.4 percent in schools without librarians met minimum TAAS expectations in reading.

I wouldn't wish cancer or any other life-threatener on Bernadine Healy, MD--the ex-director of the National Institutes of Health and author of a disappointing column in U.S. News and World Report. Still, if she'd been sick and on a lean budget, would she have been so easy on medical info-gougers and so skeptical about the Public Library of Science?

In Sick on the Great Plains, I applauded the idea of PLoS, which, in medicine, biology and a number of other scientific areas, is to post articles online for free access. Authors and their institutions, rather than readers, will foot the bills. Gasp, as I see it, we could even use federal tax money as well. If nothing else, some major operating funding might come from foundations, including maybe even the Gates Foundation if Bill Gates can actually live up to all the "electronic Carnegie" ballyhoo. Commendably, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation already has made PLoS one of its pet projects, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has offered in-kind support. Perhaps other philanthropies could follow through in big ways to reduce the burden on authors without institutional affiliations; if nothing else, "publication money" could be part of research grants. Anyway, if PLoS is run well, will the costs to authors really be that great, at least after the idea scales up? What's more, instead of relying simply on payments from individual authors or their individual schools, PoS could encourage consortiums of institutions to provide it with long-term funding in ways that encouraged objective judgments.

But in her September 9 column against PLoS, Dr. Health ignores the many enticing options and protests:

First, it's unlikely scientists will pay a "publishing tax." But even more, scientific publishing is a huge business, simply because of the productivity of science itself. Someone needs to police the quality of all this new knowledge. Historically, that's been the job of specialty journals. The journal system has an especially esteemed role in clinical medicine, where it, in effect, certifies work that influences patient care. Furthermore, there's already lots of that kind of work available free online from prestigious medical journals. So what's the fuss?

In a word, cash. Marquee journals support themselves with advertising, but smaller niche journals cannot. So they charge higher subscription fees, and, indeed, many have become part of a highly profitable commercial publishing apparatus to survive. These conglomerates, mostly based in Europe, are the real target of PLoS's and others' ire. So dominant have they become that the normally meek librarian community recently appealed to the Justice Department to block a merger of two European giants.

Libraries should serve readers, not politicians and bureaucrats. If, however, you want to see genuine Soviet propaganda digitized into electronic books, a UK-based site can oblige. Housed on FreeUK, this Cold War buff's delight says:

In the USSR the English language publishing was regarded as a propaganda tool. After the USSR disintegrated the financing stopped and most of those publishing houses collapsed. The books are not likely to be published again in the future. Some of them are class struggle motivated and very intollerant. Some, especially children's books, make nice reading. But they all make a monument of the epoch.

Steven Levy, a Newsweek tech columnist, blogger and author of Hackers and other books, wants "a Kid's Computer Bill of Rights."

His big wish in his September 8 column is "Universal Internet access" for schoolchildren and teachers; and oh how we agree. The boxes and wires, though, should be just the start. Since the early '90s, TeleRead has been calling for a well-stocked national digital library system that as much as possible would be in the "free" Carnegie vein and even pave the way for file-sharing without the financial ruin of authors and publishers.

Not that we forgot about the hardware element of "access." TeleRead's early on suggested wire-up efforts as well as low-cost tablet computers optimized for e-books, other written material and K-12 tasks such as essay-writing.

Levy doesn't have all the particulars in his column, not one mention of the actual word "book," but I hope he'll add the missing items to his vision and recognize the importance of appropriate content, especially the "printed" kind. Already he correctly warns against too much multimedia, a Good Thing, but only if subordinated to genuine educational objectives. We've said as much for years.

Some of his other existing thoughts:

...While nothing can replace a flesh-and-blood teacher, computers are essential tools for learning, and every kid should be able to use one in his or her quest for knowledge.

Dare I go farther and insist that every kid should have a computer? Some years ago, the then Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich got flack for suggesting this as a federal mandate.

People noted that such a multibillion-dollar initiative was unrealistic, and the financial condition of the schools now is much, much worse.

Nonetheless, experimental programs have proved that students benefit tremendously from having a laptop they can take back and forth between school and home.

Just as we can't imagine a business without computers these days, it's absurd to think that students--the ultimate knowledge workers--shouldn't have their own machines.

If we mustered the will to try to get every kid wired, we might find that it's more feasible than we thought. Once experts agreed on a reference standard--a minimum set of requirements tailored to basic reading, math, and connectivity--manufacturers would move mountains to meet a low target price. (This effort would generate breakthroughs in computer design and probably re-energize the industry, but that'd be just a bonus.) Amortize it over five years and we're talking maybe a hundred bucks per annum per student. It might be the invest investment we could ever make.

One of the beauties of low-cost, low-risk electronic books is that you can merrily mix genres without a sales director or other corporate thug getting on anyone's back, especially if you're self-published. Ed Howdershelt, a regular on the eBook Community List, has been doing just that, mixin' it up. This real-life Vietnam veteran has written a vampire war novel called Hunt Club. As summed up in O h n o s e c o n d:

The first person narrator, a combat medic, has been transformed by a virus into a vampire. He needs to drink blood, but in return he can make himself invisible, fly, and heals so quickly he's immortal. Along with two Army nurses, the "hunt club" of the title, he regularly heads out into the bush to kill Viet Cong, fulfilling his need for blood and secretly helping American forces at the same time. Feeding seems to make vampires terminally horny, so the fraternization is quite intimate. As the author says, it's not porn!

So you want to read small "type" on your PDA screen--to see more words at once? But you don't want to squint? Well, here's a great commonsensical tip from Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg:

I find plain $1 reading glasses solve these problems just fine for eBook reading on a PDA.

I just use stronger ones for the PDA than for this monitor. Then I get plenty of words per line, and I can upgrade the entire system for another dollar to make it appear larger, but still with the same files and formats. I find that anything else is overkill, and overly expensive, hard to implement, etc.

Earlier we told how China looks well on the way to becoming E-Book Central--thanks in part to the backwardness of Washington's policymakers, who've essentially opted for a helter-skelter approach rather than a coherent TeleReadish one. Below are new details from a Culturecom press release in Asia Economy:

Starting from this academic year, "Peking University e-Learner," pre-installed with teaching materials, will be gradually introduced nationwide to 1,200 schools under the umbrella of PKU School.com. This step is instrumental in encouraging other schools and students all over the country to adopt e-book as an essential learning tool, due to the status and influence of Affiliated High School of Peking University in the Chinese education sector. Closely related to Peking University, the affiliated high school enjoys an excellent reputation in training and academic excellence, thanks to its outstanding team of teaching professionals, many of whom are Peking University graduates.

While America's schools and libraries are budget-strapped, some other people are living high on the hog. A fortune in tax money is going to well-connected U.S. contractors "rebuilding" Iraq, including Vice President Cheney's old firm. Whether you were for or against the war, you need to read an Iraqi blogger's credible discussion of the boondoggles. Would you believe, one U.S. contractor said it would cost $50 milion to rebuild a bridge when a more realistic estimate might be $1.2 million or less.

Beyond helping Iraqis restore essentials like reliable electricity and transportation, mightn't some of the billions spent in Iraq go toward giving the country a modern digital library system and encouraging the spread of e-book-friendly hardware there--as opposed to just making the fatcats fatter? And if some more moiney can be spent on libraries here at home, then so much the better. Even the elite Library of Congress is hurting, according to an Associated Press story in today's Washington Post:

If the Smithsonian Institution is America's attic, then the Library of Congress is the basement. And like so many other cellars across the country, there is stuff everywhere.

Librarians must maneuver around books stacked on the floor because there is no room on shelves. The space problem began 200 years ago and has only worsened as the library accumulated 127 million items, with 10,000 more coming in every working day.

Most of the books are in the Madison Building, which is among Washington's biggest but can't meet the needs of the world's largest library collection.

Now that the young are into computers and the Internet, shouldn't we use the Net to drive down the prices of books and make as many free as possible?

If you doubt the need for a well-stocked national digital library system here in the States--blended in with local schools and libraries--just consider Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's recent comments to the Washington Post:

Back in its heyday, Playboy ran interviews with such luminaries as Marshall McLuhan, Martin Luther King Jr. and Allen Ginsberg. Now it runs interviews with Lisa Marie Presley, Jimmy Kimmel and Tobey Maguire. Hefner blames this editorial devolution on the times.

"There has been a certain dumbing down of society," he says "What do you do when you're trying to create a contemporary magazine for young people? Well, you try to make it as good as you can, but you have to stay in touch with what's going on..."