LangsdaleLink Vol. 13 No. 2 FALL 2013
The Ways We Read Books
UNIVERSITY OF BALTIMORE LANGSDALE LIBRARY
HTTP://LANGSDALE.UBALT.EDU
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t the end of last year, sometime right around the beginning of the holiday shopping season, it seemed editors and writers in just about every popular news- and editorial-based magazine and website were complaining that publishing was coming to an end as we know it … or, at least, there’d an end to print. That turned out not to be the case, and probably never will be. The end was not so nigh as some may have had us believe. But that’s not to say that there is no massive sea change in the ways people are now buying and reading books, in the ways publishers are disseminating and promoting books, and the ways libraries are lending books. There absolutely have been changes, profound ones, and all these new processes of buying, selling and lending e-books, and the copyright rules and rules of ownership that are paired with e-books—not to mention the decisions inherent in choosing from all the different file types and device requirements and the terms of use from the publisher, from the retailer, etc., etc…. This can all get really confusing and really murky—really quick.
quick chat with our circulation staff).
At Langsdale, though, we are trying to make your choices, digital or print, as easy as possible. For all students, staff and faculty, it was and will continue to be easy to get books not only from our shelves, but also to have books delivered to Langsdale from any public university in the state within a few days (just a few clicks on the website or a
E-books though were a bit trickier. For some time now, Langsdale has had thousands of e-books available for patrons to “check-out,” but that paled in comparison to the number of physical books held in our collection. Over the past year or so, we have been steadily bolstering our collection of digital media of all kinds, including books, but that process takes a while and we simply cannot get everyContinued on page 2
EDITORIAL STAFF NATALIE BURCLAFF ADELE MARLEY DELORES REDMAN AIDEN FAUST EDITOR; LAYOUT AND DESIGN ADAM SHUTZ LIBRARY DIRECTOR LUCY HOLMAN