Arriving Somewhere

Today I gave a phone interview to a reporter at the Washington Times who is writing a story about eBooks. When I agreed to the story I was a little nervous because I honestly haven’t thought about eBooks since, well… since the Ebooks Take The Ivory Tower webcast back in November. Lately all I’ve had on my mind is getting MPOW’s website updated, institutional repositories (because of school) and dirty diapers.

Before the appointed time I sat down to jot out a few ideas - just to jog my memory a bit on eBooks and related issues. Before I knew it I had written two pages of prose and I realized that the reporter probably didn’t want an entire lecture about eBooks so I had better pick a few points to cover.

When the interview commenced she told me that the main point of her article was to discover why eBooks haven’t been as widely adopted as it had been predicted even five years ago. So I stepped onto my soap box and launched into a diatribe about the evils of DRM and how open standards can save us all. Okay, maybe not quite like that, but I did talk about DRM being a major hurdle and open standards as well as things like convenience, accessibility and preservation. I also mentioned that librarian’s need to be more proactive on these issues (and stop letting vendors push us around).

I should also mention that the reporter was very nice and had some good questions. I hope I didn’t overwhelm her with my zeal.

The article should be in print August 17. Keep your eyes pealed.

Technorati tags: ebooks, library science