Thursday, October 02, 2008

Meet the new library, same as the old library

For the first time, I decided to check out a book in electronic format yesterday - through NetLibrary - since it would save me the trouble of having to travel to the actual library. Now, you would think that the advantage of reading an eBook through the school's library is not simply the convenience of reading from home, but also the fact that you don't have to worry about someone else having already borrowed the book and leaving you high and dry.

And if you thought that, you would be wrong, since it's not uncommon to get a message like this: "This book is already in use. Please try again later."

Inexplicably, every library only gets one "copy" (?) of each eBook, and if someone is reading that copy, well you're shit out of luck. But it's comforting to know that someone took the time to examine the library's weaknesses and, having identified them, subsequently duplicated those weaknesses in an entirely different medium.

1 comment:

Darling Magpie said...

That is just entirely befuddling. Wow, what a waste of innovation.