what a difference a day (where books are free) makes

More thoughts on the De Lange conference...

Brewster Kahle monetized the process of digitizing all books and the cost was surprisingly low. Provided that will eventually happen and that the results with be open to all (ha, right?), that leaves the next decade or less for us to figure out how to turn around the publishing process. I was having fun figuring out what my li-berry could do with its book budget if we never, ever, had to buy books again. First, we could purchase some of those nifty print-on-demand machines. Next, we could spend time building portals and other means of guiding our users to good resources, all of which they could then access immediately. Finally, we could spend the majority of our time getting users up to speed on how to locate, access, evaluate and use the materials they find. What a novel concept, eh? Pun absolutely intended.