Why isn't the library online yet?

[ShaidarHaran]

This may not apply to your area, but where I live (Twin Cities) we have plenty of local libraries. In fact, I believe we were recently selected the most literate community in the U.S. so we read about Nascar EVERY saturday and we even read our Playboy articles!



There's a million books I'd like to view over the interwebs on my PC at work. Printing is a nice option too. PDF would be fine, thanks.

In a somewhat more pressing matter: does anyone know where I could obtain a copy of any of NV's GPU Gems series of books? I had the first in the series (borrowed from a friend just starting off in the game industry) but other than the refresher course on GPU progression over time (T&L, programmable shaders, unified shaders, dxnext, etc.) and a decent description of things like fragments, fragment shaders, filtering, etc.

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

Amazon has them. A little on the pricey side though. I did a quick search and they have the whole series if you want more then just the first volume.

And yeah the library should be online. Google books is a good start but not nearly wear it needs to be. I can't wait until the day we can ditch paper altogether.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

I think the problem is that if youd put the library online, there is no longer any incentive to buy books

 

[ShaidarHaran]

I think the problem is that if youd put the library online, there is no longer any incentive to buy books

So?

 

[Freak'n Big Panda]

you also don't buy books from the library. There would be various problems with putting it online though. I would be hard to stop people from just downloading the books for free and keeping them.

 

[ShaidarHaran]

you also don't buy books from the library. There would be various problems with putting it online though. I would be hard to stop people from just downloading the books for free and keeping them.

Johnny, did you remember to upload your book to the library last night? We don't want another late fee...

I don't think that's how it'd work

 

[Humus]

In a somewhat more pressing matter: does anyone know where I could obtain a copy of any of NV's GPU Gems series of books?

You can read the first one online:
http://developer.download.nvidia.com/books/HTML/gpugems/gpugems_part01.html

 

[Albuquerque]

The Louisville City Library has a bunch of "books on tape" over the internet in .RM format. My wife listens to those pretty regularly at the office...

 

[Bludd]

I think the problem is that if youd put the library online, there is no longer any incentive to buy books

I don't agree. Unless the e-book readers become just as good as physical books (ie. noiseless, reflected light instead of emitted light etc.) people will continue buying books. There are few things that are better than getting cozy with a good book.

 

[vazel]

I don't think book publishers would like this online library idea. I know I'd buy less books if that were to happen.

I don't agree. Unless the e-book readers become just as good as physical books (ie. noiseless, reflected light instead of emitted light etc.) people will continue buying books. There are few things that are better than getting cozy with a good book.

Amazon.com's Kindle is a real good e-book reader. It's got a real nice texture to the way things look. I don't know how many people are actually buying e-book reader devices though... Especially Kindle which costs $400.

 

[epicstruggle]

So?

I think many authors like the idea of putting food on the table.

 

[MulciberXP]

...

 

[Albuquerque]

I don't agree. Unless the e-book readers become just as good as physical books (ie. noiseless, reflected light instead of emitted light etc.) people will continue buying books. There are few things that are better than getting cozy with a good book.

I've printed several ebooks on real paper for reading. I can even print it at a size that's more comfortable for my reading habit versus whatever the publisher thought they would do...

 

[V3]

I think many authors like the idea of putting food on the table.

Do Authors and publishers get more money if the books are in the library ? If the don't perhaps the state can compensate for lost sales.

I prefer eBook, its just so much more convenient, my house isn't clutter with books now days. Companies just need to come up with a good eBook reader. Something the size of A4, with bright and realy high res screen (300+dpi), slim and light. I'm sure the technologies needed aren't too far away.

 

[soylent]

Physical libraries already let many people read a single copy of a book, almost certainly reducing the amount payed to the author per reader(unless none of its readers would have otherwise purchased the book).

If you're comfortable placing arbitrary usage restrictions on books that would limit readership per book to roughly the same level then you could quite easily do that.

Just add a cool-down period on how often the virtual library is allowed to distribute a copy of the book. If it has a license to distribute the book to one person each month and they want to do so more often they'll have to get some more licenses.

Depending on whose taxes paid for the licenses the virtual library will want to put some geographic restrictions on who can borrow their books, but that doesn't have to be in the license agreement.

If you feel such artificial scarcity is what you desired to avoid by having a virtual library then no one is preventing you from buying the actual book, digital or otherwise.

 

[Cheezdoodles]

Do Authors and publishers get more money if the books are in the library ? If the don't perhaps the state can compensate for lost sales.

Not by alot (if at all) as they usually have max 5 copies of any given book. So the number of people reading it for free is very limited. Wheras if its avaliable on the internet for anybody the amount of people reading it for free will drastically increase.

(However that "cool-down" solution in the post above mine sounds good)

 

[nintenho]

I think that a library site could work if they made it so that you could only download the ebooks to a smart-phone or an iPod (or just print all or part of the book). If they made the downloads a low-res jpg, it could look all right on a cell phone screen but not be worth the hacking and torrenting for a PC monitor. Of course, there would need to be an intuitive software for the phones to be able to easily navigate the text (well technically a picture of the text).

I don't know, maybe that's crazy? I mean, having everything as a jpg could make it take a lot of space and there'd have to be a reasonable yearly or a per book/page fee since there is no limit on how many copies of the book can be made. I really do think there'd be a market for it though.

I would never read an eBook over a book, because there is a connection to the physical book, and they're much easier on my eyes. But lordy searching would be so much easier if all books were online. How much time I've wasted tagging books in libraries with thousands of little post its, or copying pages to highlight certain text, or flipping through pages and pages to find a certain passage that I need.....miserable.

I normally use Google books' advanced search to search for a passage in a book. It usually lets you preview around 10 pages or so, so you just have to type in a keyword exclusive to that section. I remember doing a report on a book I've never physically read using google last semester. Great feature.