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Elfwreck's pretty much said it. Library research always, for me, took over my table, bookmarked reference books lying scattered around. And a lot of my researched consisted of simply browsing the relevant Dewey-Decimal section of the stack shelves. Having to squeeze all that down onto a single 5" screen just won't do.
In addition, aside from PDF there just isn't an ebook format that comes close to handling the formatting needs of reference or textbooks. Imagine trying to duplicate a math textbook in epub.
Eric Hellman wonders whether it's more important for each child to have an electronic reader or for every school to have a librarian.
False dichotomy. Ebook readers don't replace librarians, they replace pbooks. Unless someone thinks all a librarian does is reshelve books.
As also noted, ebook readers are just way to fragile to survive most high school students.
Each reader would be loaded with an array of textbooks, reference works and reading material tailored for the student's grade level, in quantities that surpass almost any physical library.
I don't recall my library stocking textbooks, for the simple fact that every student already had his or her own. One of the primary efficiencies of a library is that it acts as a single repository from which one or a few copies of a work can be shared amongst a large number of people. What the above scenario suggests is replacing, say, the single, shared copy of the library's encyclopedia with a thousand or so individual copies installed on each student's ereader. How is that going to be cost-effective?
Conversely, no student needs to be walking around with the entire contents of his school's library in his backpack. Talk about overkill.
And what about library acquisitions? I shudder to think of a world in which libraries are locked into a single source. Imagine a teacher being told the library can't stock the book she's requested because the school board signed an exclusive contract with a different publisher.
I just don't see it happening.
--Nathanael
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