With the real-estate freed-up for other purposes, $500 grand will starts to look like a real bargain.

Not to mention all the income from that coffee bar. :o)

-=®=-

Outdated technology my arse!

Hooray for engadget stating their opinion in no uncertain terms: "So, excuse us for our cynicism, but unless there are only 18 students at Cushing Academy, we're pretty sure the e-reader supply is going to come up short."

Sadly, not enough students use libraries
these days, so 18 might actually cut it. :-/

hhp

According to my son, who works in a library at his university, there are plenty of students who use the library the night before a paper is due. :o)

Which kind of paints an unappealing picure of the line-up to use the e-readers.

-=®=-

Simon, hrant could be right, perhaps you should consider renaming the thread "The end of literacy".

Why not just call it EOT? I understand that name will be free soon. ;)

Cheers!

This discussion on an internet message board about the end of literacy due the the death of print is kind of ironic. (At least to me it is.)

>This discussion on an internet message board about the end of literacy

LOL :-)

"Why not just call it EOT?"

You might have to lighten up on that :-)

ChrisL

i am a huge proponent of e-books,
and have been for several decades.

so i think i can speak with authority
when i say this is a stupid decision.
heck, i'd call it monumentally stupid.

-bowerbird

Dan, maybe I was too tragic. But is reading blogs one line at a time "literacy"? Or reading a bill at the grocer's or a stop sign?

Oh for pete's sake. If there's any decline literacy, it has nothing to do wth the Internet, computers or e-readers. Ot even Twitter.

-=®=-

The end of print? Again?

Well... The end of a useable library at Cushing Academy.

-=®=-

>The end of print? Again?

Noooooo, no never. As long as nearly all the computer screens in the universe are enabled only or primarily to preview print on computer screens, print will never die! ;)

Cheers!

A coffee bar? I'm not sure this story isn't a put-on. If it isn't, there must be some mitigating circumstance like a public library right down the street or something.

And as for sii's mischievous, ironic, and attention-getting title...

Cheers,
rich

The story is not a fake. I read the Baltimore Sun take on it sitting here in my 'jammies. Print is not dead yet, but dying a slow cancerous death as an unneeded middle medium. I can probably get anything from here at my desk that I could have gotten from the 20,000 books at the Cushing Library. However, access to a $12,000 cappuccino maker is something I really do need to go there for.

> As long as nearly all the computer screens in the universe
> are enabled only or primarily to preview print
> on computer screens, print will never die! ;)

believe it or not, david, in spite of all those clues you left,
i didn't know that was sarcasm until i hit the winky smilie,
because lots of people actually _believe_ that line o' crap.

print will never die. not until most of the trees die first.
(and humans won't have long to live after that happens.)

but bookstores, especially the big chains? well, borders
probably has 2-5 years left, and barnes & noble 5-10...
spare us your whimpering. didn't help record-stores any.

-bowerbird

Actually, the trees will kill us first: it turns out if (read: when) global
temperatures go up a little bit more, trees start releasing CO2 instead
of absorbing it... Intelligent Design? :-/

hhp

>...until i hit the winky smilie, because lots of people actually _believe_ that line o’ crap.

What line of crap? Adobe, Apple and MS all claim to "render the screen as close as possible to the printed page".
One over does it, one does it right, and one under does it. Until they care more about the screen, people will need to print from the screen to read it, or buy books. Reading will die before printing, because french fries need to be boxed.

Cheers!

Everytime they renovate the library at my college, the area for books gets smaller and more PCs are added. I would say that about 15% of the space is for books now. (They recently eliminated the LP record collection, and stacked them up on the staff lounge table, free for the taking. Someone more industrious than me could probably clear a grand or more selling those things on Ebay.)

david said:
> What line of crap?

well, i said "line o' crap", not "line of crap". but, it was this one...

> As long as nearly all the computer screens in the universe

"in the universe"? that's a pretty clear signal you're talking crap.
hyperbole and sarcasm are great friends; they vacation together.

and "nearly all" is yet another clear signal. judging by the numbers
for internet-exploder-6-and-7, many of our computer screens now
(even in the first world) are hooked up to aging p.c. machines which
might not even have (working) printers attached to them any more...
and inkjet printers (and dot-matrix?) aren't exactly known for quality,
especially when their users are stretching the cartridges to save cash.

> are enabled only or primarily to preview print on computer screens,
> print will never die! ;)

again, the word "only" here is an _obvious_ tipoff that this is sarcasm,
and "primarily" right behind it just means that it's not purely sarcastic.

the notion that any significant number of people print out their e-mail
to read it was buried -- along with those oldsters -- in the last century.

and i've never heard -- not even once, not even in jest, mind you -- that
people print out their twitterstream to read it. (but it'd be a good joke!)

nor do we hear about blog posts being printed, or facebook pages,
or myspace pages, or wikipedia articles, or live-journal pages, or...

and if you're gonna print out stuff from a news-site, you might as well
have bought the newspaper, and we all know how newspapers are doing.

so the only way your sentence makes any sense is to turn it on its head:
the only reason people still use print is to proofread stuff for the screen.

and given the apparent absence of proofreading out there in the world,
i'd say there isn't even much of _that_ type of printing going on...

cory said it years ago, and it only becomes more true as time passes by:
more and more we are reading less from paper, and more from the screen.

> people will need to print from the screen to read it, or buy books

well, there you go! bookstores! tomorrow's growth industry! for sure!

-bowerbird

just so you know, i've found that
when i get funny wrapping on my posts,
i can just resize the window and/or the typesize,
and it all straightens out.

so you might want to try that...

-bowerbird

Wow someone woke up on the wrong side of the kitty litter

I was referring to a relationship between print and screen that's obviously eluded you

Cheers

And everyone knows
that french fries
don't need
to be boxed.
In fact most
come in bags.

david said:
> Wow someone woke up
> on the wrong side of the kitty litter

me? um, sorry, i'm in a great mood. :+)

> I was referring to a relationship
> between print and screen
> that’s obviously eluded you

well, that might be the relationship
between print and _your_ screen,
but i don't think it's typical for all,
or even the majority of people now.

and i explained why, clearly, i hope.

but yes, you're quite right, david --
i've lived quite happily without even
having a printer for many years now.

however, i was just trying to discern
if you were being sarcastic, or not...

if you were serious, it's fine with me.
i might not agree with your assertion,
but live your life however you like, ok?

-bowerbird

Hey, it's not "line o' crap" or "line of crap", it's "line o' type", right?
See, I'm learning!

Or maybe even Lino leum :-)

ChrisL

richard said:
> See, I’m learning!

that's right, richard, you're picking up on the puns... ;+)

-bowerbird

>that might be the relationship
>between print and _your_ screen,
>but i don’t think it’s typical for all,

Oh.

>the only reason people still use print is to proofread stuff for the screen.

Oh, thanks. I'll change my mind based on your kittly litter induced acid trip.

Cheers!

david, you funny! :+)

-bowerbird

*will take a book over an e-reader any day*

This link will explain the situation: http://www.cushing.org/misc/library-update.shtml

mgk

Or maybe even Lino leum :-)

Chris, do you know what happens when a grenade is thrown into a French kitchen (I just learnt today)?

Going back to the original thread, Cushing Academy's decision to discard or give away the library books and replace them with e-readers and a cappuccino machine: Why did it have to be either/or? If I were paying in the mid-30s to send my kid to high school, I'd expect e-readers, cappuccino, and books too.

I would ask the same question to publishers and readers: Why does it have to be either/or? Hard-copy books are still a choice; they're often a good choice. They're just not the only choice anymore.

"...do you know what happens when a grenade is thrown into a French kitchen "

I don't know, perhaps all of the escar go out with a bang?

ChrisL

Linoleum Blownapart

I like my made up answer better :-)
But I love the rest of yours!

Thanks for making my day!

ChrisL