Manchurian Books

With Lycos in trouble in
Europe, Tripod may well follow suit shortly. Earlier this
year, Microsoft has shut down ListBot (a host of discussion
lists). Suite101 has stopped paying its editors (content
authors) effective January 15th. About.com fired hundreds of
category editors. With the ugly demise of Themestream, WebSeed
is the only content aggregator which tries to buck the trend
by relying (partly) on advertising revenue.

Paradoxically, e-publishing's main hope may lie with its
ostensible adversary: the library. Unbelievably, e-publishers
actually tried to limit the access of library patrons to e-
books (i.e., the lending of e-books to multiple patrons). But,
libraries are not only repositories of knowledge and community
centres. They are also dominant promoters of new knowledge
technologies. They are already the largest buyers of e-books.
Together with schools and other educational institutions,
libraries can serve as decisive socialization agents and
introduce generations of pupils, students, and readers to the
possibilities and riches of e-publishing.


Pages:
4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28