An e-book for Mr. Herriot
The audio versions of James Herriot's books are awesome. The books are narrated by Christopher Timothy, who played Herriot in the BBC series based on the books, and the man's got a gift for the Yorkshire dialect.
And I've been thinking (because listening while I drive to work means there's plenty of time for such ponderings) that Herriot's books are about a technology gap. Sure, they're also about small-town life and family and animals and the bygone world of rural England and what it's like to be on call 24 hours a day - but look at how many of the stories boil down to conflicts between the young university-educated vets and the farmers who want to keep doing what's worked for them for 50 years.
Sound familiar?
In Herriot's books, the vets aren't always right - but neither are the farmers. Sometimes there is a new medicine that works better than the familiar, easy-to-use iodine. But there's a clash, over and over, because both parties fail when it comes to convincing the other that they're right.
That's what came to mind when I wandered into the librarian blogosphere this week to read reactions to a recent SLJ article that covered, among other things, the need to understand and use technology and web-based tools in a school environment. Responses ranged from "I think it's important to renew our efforts to reach out to those who are interested but don't know where to start" to "We have been having this kind of conversation for at least 10 years—how much longer are we going to have 'slow down' in order for people to catch up?" to "Our brand really can't be social media. It can't be databases. It can't be 2.0" to "And I don't want to apologize. And I want my colleagues to lead, not complain" to "These librarians should take it upon themselves to find other library employment or be gently bumped from the field".
It's also what came to mind when I read Katherine Fergason's description of her niece's reading habits. And when I read Mike Shatzkin's theory that "Nothing can grow the market for print books in the years to come...".
And especially when I read this bit of yes-it's-about-movies-but-just-think-how-it-applies-to-books: "We love going to the theater. But when we walk out to the lobby I want to be able to pick up the DVD... The answer has to be 'yes.'... Some of [consumer expectations] are very unpopular even in concept and some of them are very hard to incorporate into strategic thinking, but that doesn't make them any less avoidable or inevitable." Yes, that statement is dripping with entitlement. But that doesn't mean it's not worth considering. We need to figure out who has the iodine and who has the new stuff.
Other news:
An Internet era ended this week with Yahoo's closure of GeoCities. My first web presence was a GeoCities page. (No, I don't remember the URL, or I'd link to the Wayback Machine so you could go make fun of my high school intellectual pretensions and terrible design skills.)
Congrats to Jessica and Rebecca on Greenlight Bookstore's opening weekend.
A book that a customer has never heard of is a new book to him or her, regardless of when it was initially published - and the release date is something most customers don't know or care about. Martyn Daniels looks at how that fact could change the publishing industry.
Steve Leveen speaks up for book learning.
The Enchanted Inkpot interviews Mysterious Galaxy bookseller (and occasional Omnibus commenter) Maryelizabeth Hart.
"Telephone me Ishmael" is all I have to say to that.
Posted at 02:05PM Oct 30, 2009 by Sarah Rettger in General |
