Pals,
How long has the Amazon Kindle been out? A year? The Riverside Press-Enterprise takes their first look today…
Barbara Roberts, director of library services/city librarian in Palm Springs and soon to be sworn in president of the California Library Association, saw a Kindle at a conference. It’s another in a generation of hand-held reading devices introduced since the late 1990s, she said.
The Kindle is very useful for travelers who don’t want to tote lots of books, she said.
But Roberts added, “Those who enjoy reading an actual book may not find this as pleasing because it’s an electronic device. It doesn’t have the same feel.
“You don’t turn the pages; a machine does that.”
Ladies and gentlemen, this woman’s gonna be the president of the California Library Association and she’s convinced that a machine is turning pages inside a Kindle. What she fails to mention is which slot one shovels the coal into so that the steam engine robots might continue their endless, unrewarding page-turning duties uninterrupted.
One also has to worry though, that these electronical reader thingys will mean the end of books. Here are some reassuring words from our resident tech analyst…
But hardbound and paperback books will always be around, she said.
“In my opinion, I don’t believe it’s a threat to books,” Roberts said. “Not at all. The hand-held book will always be the method of choice for the majority of readers.”
Whew! What a relief.
– bob