Quote:
Originally Posted by tubemonkey
This ruling is ridiculous in that it requires all devices purchased to be accessible by anyone with a disability. What it will do is force many libraries to abandon the purchase of ereaders altogether.
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Would that really be a bad result?
To discuss this, it is worth looking at the Sacramento Nook collection:
http://find.saclibrarycatalog.org/ii...e=&target=nook
Lending out dozens of books only one person can read at a time makes little sense. It's true that some (but far from all) libraries allow patrons to borrow that many. But most patrons only take out a few books at a time.
Also, when I take out multiple paper -- or Overdrive -- books, I plan on reading, or at least starting, all of them. If I lived in Sacramento and took out a Nook, it would be because I had found one book I wanted to read. They apparently try to address this by making most devices single genre (romance, mystery, sci-fi, urban), I presume with the hope that more than one book will interest the borrower. I find this slightly insulting to readers -- as if all they care about is one genre. Even if it is true that some people only read in one genre, surely the library should be encouraging patrons to broaden themselves.
A goodly number of those Nooks look to be seriously overdue to the point of having been stolen. I expect Apple products to be stolen at a much higher rate.
If librarians in other cities read about this, and consider the disability issue as one more reason not to do it, good.