Now I Need to Learn Romanian

Here's a little story that might amuse you on a Saturday.

Once upon a time, when I was a younger librarian, I noticed that Hilary Mantel had won the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall. A historical novel based on the life of Thomas Cromwell? Exactly up my alley, my very boring, geeky alley. I made a note to read it, but promptly forgot about it for the next shiny novel.

Then Hilary Mantel got into hot water for some comments she made about Kate Middleton. And I noted she had a new book, Bring Up the Bodies, a continuation of her series about Thomas Cromwell. (Honestly I had forgotten about the first book, but when I looked up the second it all came flooding back.)

The second book had also won the Man Booker Prize. At this point I double checked that the Man Booker prize was what I thought it was and they weren't just giving it out like candy. It is the prize for the best full length original novel in the English language by a citizen of the Commonwealth of Nations won it twice in the last five years. That's crazy.

Clearly I have to read those books. They're between 400 and 700 pages each. That's a lot of weight in a hardcover novel. And my days of lugging around huge hardcovers are over. So I logged online to check it out as an ebook or downloadable audio from the library's system.

No audio. Bummer, that's my preferred method for long books - it got me through Atlas Shrugged and Middlemarch. Hey we have the ebook! Click on it and in that split second before I check it out I notice I can't read the description.

Closer inspection, it's in Romanian. We only own the ebook of the best English language novel of 2009 in Romanian.

Quick google to make sure I haven't missed a large Romanian population lurking around Alaska. Nope.

Email the librarian in charge of buying ebooks (through Overdrive if you're curious about those things). It's only available for purchase in Romanian. Someone (not this librarian but we're not investigating too closely who since we are partners with about 20 other libraries in our ebook system) didn't look too closely and bought the only listing of the ebook without noticing it was in Romanian.

One more quick search. It's published by Macmillan which doesn't allow its ebooks to be bought by libraries. (That's an entire other discussion.) But they have started a new project allowing ebooks to go to libraries through Overdrive (and other vendors). So far it is mostly crime novels, but I am holding out hope. I can wait until they decide to offer it, even though that might be a few years.

Or should I get over my lazy self and just carry around the huge hardbacks? Or get over my cheap self and buy either the paperbacks or ebooks? (For a librarian, I don't own a ton of books. That's what I use the library for.)

Moral of the story: check the language before you buy ebooks.

Five Things on a Friday

I'm back... I went on vacation for 12 days and apparently blogging vacation for a month. I've half written a bunch of posts, but here are some of them condensed, five things style.

1. If you're a librarian or at all tuned into the library blogoverse, twitter feeds, or listservs at all in the last few weeks then you're aware of the controversy over Harper Collins ebooks. A short recap, Harper Collins (one of the biggest United States publishers) decided that all of the ebooks they sell to libraries through distributor Overdrive (the most popular service used by libraries to provide downloadable ebooks and audiobooks) will expire after 26 checkouts. Library Journal had a good article about it and then Overdrive weighed in with their response. Lots of librarians/bloggers/library systems also weighed in. Google it or search for the twitter tag #hcod and you'll get thousands of responses. I particularly like the response of Librarian in Black.
   
   
2. Our collection development librarian has decided that our system will not be buying Harper Collins ebooks whenever we can avoid it. Paperbacks have a limited number of checkouts before they're in such bad condition that they can't circulate anymore. We try to avoid buying those whenever possible unless the book is super popular and that's the only way to get it (such as graphic novels). Our budget is small and we make tough choices like that. We try to buy books that will last the longest and be enjoyed by the most patrons. 26 ebook circulations just won't do it.
   
   
3. Keeping with my ereader theme, there's another rumor circulating that Amazon will start giving away Kindles as soon as November. The gist of the rumor is that if you're an Amazon Prime subscriber (you pay $80/year for unlimited free 2-day shipping) then you get a free Kindle. Amazon Prime is a good deal for Amazon because even if they're consumers use it often enough to make their money back on shipping, Amazon still makes money because people aren't likely to stray from Amazon even if another seller has a lower price. Giving people a free Kindle just further locks them into the Amazon world and it's a very viable business model if they can get the Kindle hardware production costs down enough. Plus it would entice more people to join Amazon Prime. It will be interesting to see in the next few years how many more places follow this model.
   
   
4. The Iditarod is in full swing. I love the Iditarod. This year we have an Iditarod map up and little yellow pieces of paper with mushers names tacked on it. Once a day our Associate Librarian (who rocks so hard it's barely legal) moves all the little people to their new position. It's a lot of work (THANKS TERESA!) but it seems to be very popular up here. Mitch Seavey had to withdraw due to an injured hand which makes me sad. So now I'm rooting for his son - Go Dallas!
   
   
5. I fell into Graphic Novels rather backwards. First I started ordering them for the library, then I started reading them, then I fell in love with them. I've reached the next stage. I'm thinking about taking home an anime to watch this weekend. I'm already kinda crazy with the knitting things so hopefully someone will stop me before I'm going to conventions in costume. (There's nothing wrong with going to conventions in costume but I'd prefer to limit the number of consuming crazy-making passions I have and I want to go to knitting conventions.)
   

A Librarian and Her Nook, pt. 1

Three weeks ago, I cracked and bought a nook. I'd been reading ereader reviews for months, oohing over friends who had an ereader, and endlessly contemplating it. It takes me a little time to talk myself into something like that. (Wherein something like that is defined as something costing more than $50.) Of course once I made my decision, I drove as fast as I could as soon as I could to the nearest Barnes and Noble to pick mine up.

Why did I choose a Nook?
Lately my eyes are really bothering me from spending all day at a computer screen. I knew I couldn't read off a backlit style screen so that kicked out the iPad, the NookColor and anything that wasn't eink. After a lifetime of library work, it turns out I have a pathological aversion to purchasing books at full price. (Though I'm all about used book stores and friends of the library book sales). That meant I had to have a reader which could borrow the ebooks available from my library's website and knocked the Kindle out of competition. (Though my sister has a Kindle and loves it). One nice feature of the Nook is you can walk into the Barnes and Noble store and there is a help desk right up front (like the genius bar at the Apple store) to help you with your device. Local help and support is what won me over to the Nook over the Sony ereader or Kobo. And finally since I already have an iPhone, I didn't need the ability to do 100x extra things on my ereader so I didn't need one with 3G or one with color screen so I was able to buy the cheapest one (at $149).

Buying the Nook
I went to B&N and bought it in just a few minutes on my lunch break. (Love living in Alaska and not paying sales tax.) I also chose out a cover for the Nook and picked up a screen protector. I know myself, electronics need that extra little bit of padding since I'll be tossing it and our bags/purses. There were some really cute Kate Spade covers that cost almost as much as the Nook itself. ($85 for a cover for a $149 device? Nope!) So I went with a less expensive, but still good looking black and white Jonathan Adler cover (if you care about brands).

ebooks onto the Nook
The following came pre-loaded onto my Nook: a Nook user guide, a Nook tour, Pride and Prejudice, and Little Women. I was amazed; I thought that surely these Nook people know me, those are two of my all time favorite books. Then I noticed they also gave me for free Dracula (about which I'm apathetic), and samples of Three Seconds by Anders Roslund (don't care), and Awakened: House of Night Series #8 by P. C. Cast (hate this series). So maybe not.

There are a lot of free books available; they're classics that are out of copyright. Some can be downloaded directly from the nook website or through another website such as Project Gutenberg. And of course many ebooks are available as ebooks from our library's website.

Setting up the Nook
Set up was fairly easy on the Nook end, though using library ebooks was a teensy bit more of a challenge. (Hint download Adobe Digital Editions onto your computer, delete the version on your Nook and let the ADE on your computer recognize/authorize the Nook and reinstall ADE onto it. 5 minutes of googling turned up this solution and it worked.) Also when you sideways load content into your Nook (ebooks and pdfs), you have to turn it off and back on again to see them. When you get them through bn.com, you can just do a check for new content.

The first ebook I downloaded from the library was The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. The first out of copyright ebook I got for free (from the bn.com website) was Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. The first ebook I bought was The Autobiography of Mark Twain Volume 1 edited by Harriet Elinor Smith et al. (That book cost me less that $10 as an ebook but would have cost me between $22 and $35 as a hardcover and weighed my bag down with a hefty 743 pages. Much nicer to just load it onto the Nook.) I also immediately loaded it with some knitting patterns and personalize photos for screensaver and wall paper.

As I said, I've been living with it for three weeks now and I have more opinions. However this is a part one post and is long enough already. Happy Reading be it on paper or a screen!