TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘Isabelle Fetherston’ Category

By David Rothman

“The questions posed run a wide gamut, including patron complaints about the weight of books to why do large print titles go out of print so quickly, to criteria used for weeding large print to where to shelve them…” - From Library Journal summary of large-print seminar.

Related: Older adults and e-books—and how E could be the new ‘large print’  and E-books as the new large ‘print’: An eye doctor speaks out. In the first piece, librarian Isabelle Fetherston noted that “large-print books tend to be too heavy and unwieldy for many older people with arthritis to hold.”

Library image: CC-licensed photo from Michael K. Pate showing large-print collection from Laurens County, S.C., library.

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By David Rothman

The adrenaline-pumper of the week? American Libraries has just run an article titled “The Elusive E-book,” by Stephen Sottong, former associate librarian at California State University, Los Angeles, whose faculty home page appears with the headline, “Retiring on September 26, 2003.”

Dissecting the Sottong piece, an information manager named Stephen Leary writes: “People won’t read entire books on these readers, Sottong assures us, yet that’s exactly what I have done myself. I’ve read dozens of books on my Sony reader, and on my desktop computer as well. Somehow I didn’t make it into Sottong’s academic research. Like other book lovers, I read many at one time. A reader is a great leap forward for many like me who don’t want to carry around a load of print books.” Exactly.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if librarians recognized the full potential of E and started worrying in a major way about e-book standards and the need to back off from an excessive reliance on DRM? Public libraries urgently need to consider new access and business models. Articles like Sottong’s, alas, steal time away from more useful efforts, including those by Isabelle Fetherston to educate the library world about the benefits of e-books for the elderly.

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By David Rothman

Barton Hodes, MD,  an eye doctor in Tuscon, Arizona, heartily approves of Older adults and e-books—and how E could be the new large ‘print,’ a TeleBlog post by Isabelle Fetherston of the Senior Friendly Libraries blog. He writes in:

“As an ophthalmologist, I see many patients every day who have limited vision, most with macular degeneration but many more with a wide variety of other untreatable eye diseases. Large print books and periodicals have been available for decades but do not fill the void that easily can and should be filled with user-friendly i-devices. Amazon’s Kindle is a good start, but it has limited ability to enlarge font size. It should be painfully simple to increase that font size to at least double its present capability and help many more vision compromised individuals enjoy the near endless array of available offerings. To many of these people reading is the only recreation left in life. How about adding Sudoku, Scrabble, and other games to the menu? Keep beating the drums. This void must and will be filled, hopefully sooner rather than later.”

Note: By “i-devices,” I assume Dr. Hodes means Apple products. If he meant “e-devices” instead, he can let us know. Meanwhile, thanks, Doctor! Isabelle will be tickled you appreciated her essay.

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By Isabelle Fetherston

Moderator’s note: Isabelle Fetherston, a reference librarian in central Florida, writes the valuable Senior Friendly Libraries Blog. - D.R.

Could e-books someday be the new large “print” for older people in the U.S. and elsewhere?

As a reference librarian, I speak with many who must struggle with regular print books, magazines and newspapers. Consider the ironies. The eyes of millions of retirees are failing just when these seniors finally have the time for leisure reading.

Frustratingly, too, arthritis might prevent them from holding the heavier large-print editions. And those are far from the only problems here—the reason why e-books might be the solution in many cases with appropriate devices and titles available.

With the right e-book standard in use, moreover, just about every book could be the equivalent of a large-print book. Readers could easily adjust the font size.

Granted, many elderly people love audio books. But others understandably prefer text so they can enjoy books in the usual way.

Arthritis as a challenge

Yes, arthritis is a major challenge for the elderly. The National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion says that “In 2003–2005, 50 percent of adults 65 years and over reported an arthritis diagnosis.” Moreover, “By 2030, an estimated 67 million of Americans aged 18 years or older are projected to have doctor-diagnosed arthritis.”

Unfortunately, large-print books tend to be too heavy and unwieldy for many older people with arthritis to hold. Many library patrons tell me that they cannot use large-print books because of their arthritis. So they are stuck—they can hold paperbacks, weighing less, but they can’t read the smaller print! I really sympathize with people in this predicament. I want to be able to provide them with the books they want to read.

A shortage of large-print titles

Unfortunately, I have just a limited selection of large-print titles that I could recommend to them even if they could hold the books.

What are the numbers? Researching this essay, I looked at the Bowker’s Books in Print professional database and found that only two percent of the books printed from 2000 – 2007 were published in large print. (more…)

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By David Rothman

Millions of elderly people suffer from fading vision. And large-print books are not always nirvana—not when many retirees also have arthritis, which makes it hard for them to hold the books and flip pages.

With the above in mind, the TeleBlog will soon publish an important essay from Isabelle Fetherston, the reference librarian behind Senior Friendly Libraries, who shares my enthusiasm for e-books as potential life-enrichers for the elderly. May library-related sites and senior citizens’ groups spread Isabelle’s message! Read on, and you’ll see that my own interest in these issues is personal, not just professional. [Update, Dec. 12, 2007: Isabelle’s essay is now here.]

The bottom line: Patron choice—and people ahead of medium!

Granted, many in the library community fear that E will drive out P. I myself doubt that will happen soon. Whether it does or not, something counts more than cardboard and ink and glue—and that’s the words, the stories, the facts, the emotions, in books.

Without E available, millions of seniors will be left out of the world of text, given the limits of large-print books, ranging from price to scarcity to their challenges for people with arthritis.

(more…)

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By David Rothman

So will the Kindle go international soon or a least reach Europe? Best of luck to MobileReaders who are trying to make that happen in Germany and elsewhere, perhaps through Vodafone.

Meanwhile, here in the States, Amazon is downplaying the fact that if you live in certain locations, Whispernet might not be able to whisk your e-books to you via wireless. The fine print is too far down on the Kindle products page. To Amazon’s credit, the company does say that Montana and Alaska lack Kindle coverage, and as Isabelle Fetherston, a TeleBlog contributor, discovered, Amazon has a Check Wireless Coverage warning, but you need to call or fill out a “contact us” form. Besides, most shoppers would never notice the caveats. Luckily, Isabelle has tracked down a page that can immediately show whether you’re covered—right down to the street level. Why isn’t Amazon itself so helpful? This is a company with all too many gotchas, such as the current refusal of Jeff Bezos and friends to let  the Kindle read DRMed Mobipocket books even though Amazon owns Mobi.

The alternative to wireless: As I recall, you can get books into your Kindle via your computer and regular Net connection. Still, isn’t one of the main points of the Kindle to simplify downloading via the wireless feature?

(Updated at 12:48 p.m. Dec. 10 to reflect Isabelle’s discovery of the “Check Wireless Coverage” form. Perhaps even added since she first looked? I’m just wondering. Meanwhile thanks to Mike Cane for raising the geographical issue for the TeleBlog.)

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By Isabelle Fetherston

In the 1890s, libraries were debating whether to provide fiction to their patrons.

William Stevenson, the head librarian for the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, went to great lengths to remove popular fiction titles from his library.

“It is certainly not the function of the public library to foster the mind-weakening habit of novel-reading among the very classes—the uneducated, busy or idle—whom it is the duty of the public library to lift to a higher plane of thinking,” he said.

Horatio Alger tales weren’t “high” enough for him.

Even classics controversial in the 1890s

During Stevenson’s time, it was controversial for libraries to provide even classic works of literature.

As libraries moved into the 20th century, libraries offered fiction books but considered genre fiction to be inferior. Librarians often tried to convince people to read books that the librarian believed were either “good books” (classic literature) or of an educational nature. (more…)

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By David Rothman

With more than 70 millions baby boomers headed toward retirement age in the U.S. alone, publishers are pushing large-print books.

But what if every book could be fit for elderly eyes? That’s the case with e-books in formats that allow readers to enlarge the type and read without left-to-right scrolling.

The challenge, however, isn’t just to simplify the software and hardware for people who did not grow up with high tech. It’s also to educate librarians and taxpayer-patrons about the possibilities, and not about just ease of reading for those with vision difficulties. With e-books, libraries can come to to the patron at home, even in locations where geography or budget does not make bookmobile service practical.

And so I’m pleased to introduce the latest TeleBlog contributor, Isabelle Fetherston, author of the blog Senior Friendly Libraries, which “provides resources and discussion of library services for older adults.”

Serving the underserved

Isabelle holds a Ph.D. from Boston University in biology and has taught in that area, but found herself more and more interested in the public library world, signing up five years ago as a staff member at the Tampa-Hillsborough Public Library System. There she “became interested in ‘older adult’ services and library outreach to the underserved. So, I decided to become a Librarian. I have worked as a part-time Librarian for two years and have recently graduated from Florida State University’s College of Information with my Masters in Library and Information Studies.”

Welcome, Isabelle!

She is, by the way, interested in a number of library-related topics, beyond those of the needs of the elderly alone, and, in fact, her first contribution will be on the importance of fiction in libraries, a topic that the TeleBlog has taken up several times lately. I hate the idea of fiction not gracefully surviving the transition to E in the library world, and I suspect that many others, librarians and nonlibrarians, would agree with Isabelle and me.

Related: Growing Older in America Study, a recent post in Isabelle’s blog.

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By David Rothman

Will cats—see photo—be the only ones left to watch Seinfeld reruns someday?

“The average American consumer spent 3,530 hours with media in 2006–down 0.5% from 2005, according to the just-released estimates from the 21st edition of Veronis Suhler Stevenson’s Communications Industry Forecast,” reports MediaDailyNews.

One reason supplied? Digital media can more efficiently convey information. “For example, consumers typically watch broadcast or cable television at least 30 minutes per session, while they spend as little as five to seven minutes viewing consumer-generated video,” says a report quoted in the article.

Book angles

So what does this mean for p- and e-book? For one thing, editors had better sharpen their real and virtual pencils and help writers be succinct in books—well, at least in utilitarian and popular writings, as opposed to literary works. Good use of hyperlinks could help consumers go directly to facts of most interest.

But is that the only real answer? Is the signal-to-noise ratio of a YouTube mashup the same as that of one of a well-done PBS documentary—or a long but well-written and informative book? Perhaps schools and libraries need to do a better job of helping students make books (and detailed information) a part of their lives.

Where fiction enters the picture

At a time when some educators and librarians are suggesting that fiction is less valuable than nonfiction, we need novels more than ever—to engage young people in lengthy works. A forthcoming TeleBlog item, by Isabelle Fetherston, a librarian in Florida, will examine the importance of fiction in the library world.

The actual Forecast: Here—for $1,995. Or if you feel you don’t need in-depth info, you can be efficient and content yourself with just a news release from Veronis Suhler Stevenson.

An advertising angle: VSS and the related MediaDaily article discuss the impact of media trends on advertising. The decreased time with traditional media is not great news for traditional outlets. On the other hand, maybe this could mean more income for smaller sites. “In what would be a watershed moment in communications history,” says the release, “VSS predicts that Internet advertising—including pure-play websites and digital extensions of traditional media—will replace newspapers as the largest ad medium in 2011.” (more…)

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