First, the day; I'll start with the most interesting part and you can choose to read on if you're interested in my history with ebooks. You may have read my articles in CILIP Update already, but I've included them here in case. I'm not a comfortable speaker at the best of times, my brain goes too fast for my mouth and I'm much more articulate writing, but I do teaching sessions as part of my job, so it wasn't new to me and my presentation went as well as could be. I had my power dress on, the one I always wear if I can when teaching; it makes me feel confident. I don't like London and taking public transport, though I love trains, but everything went swimmingly, couldn't have gone better, that goes for everything all day. The venue was the UCL's Student Venue and it's a great place, with a swimming pool, bar and a library that's like no library I've ever been to with music and a table football table. I had a bad cold, one that had been lingering for weeks and I was worried my voice wasn't going to last the day, living off Airwaves so I could breathe and Strepsils so I could swallow without pain and to save my voice. I needn't have worried, though I was quite croaky on the way home, debriefing with Jayne, the ebooks administrator who came with me and who runs ebooks@cambridge.
There were talks from two publishers and two information professionals providing etextbooks and then there was me. I had severe imposter syndrome as Nic, the first publisher, has been working with ebooks for a long time and showed us the history of ebooks; Liz, the second publisher, really got down into the specifics of ebooks and how to create them; the two information professionals talked about how they're delivering etextbooks, Tif in a very assertive way working with the publishers and Catherine from the project perspective. Much of what I was going to say was covered by Tif and Catherine, but I told myself that I was coming from a different point of view and was going to say it in a different way, even if Catherine did use the same image as me on one of her slides (for the future, great minds think alike!) and Tif the same quote as the title of my dissertation. But as someone said to me, it's good to reiterate these things as it drives the point home and I certainly felt part of something at the end of the day; it's good to know everyone feels the same way about ebooks, it's comforting.
All the speakers were brilliant either in their content or delivery or both. You can see all the presentations on the JIBS website. Yes, I had the final slot of the day, but it was inspired as my presentation seemed to be a summary of all that had gone on before. My presentation is up on Slideshare, so you may want to look at it before you read on.
When I was asked to talk about the future of ebooks, I immediately thought about the past, I'm contrary like that. So I used history as my hook, my theme. It was basically a case study of our experiences, here at the Judge, but also as a university. The core ideas running through my presentation were: it's about choice, not forcing people to use ebooks but giving them the opportunity to use them as personally, I don't use ebooks but when forced to I have done as that was the only option available and I resented the fact I didn't have the choice as I'm a book lover, the feel of them, the scent of them, new books and old, and the look of them, but I know how useful they are to our students and value the importance of them in academia; that we're stuck in the present while also being in all time periods at once with ebooks: no ebooks, basic ebooks and ebooks tied to print; the unrealised potential of ebooks, this TED video from 2011 being a case in point. It's 5 years old now! I also had a little moan about things from us librarians' perspectives, from the publisher Pearson, the blame culture which persists us blaming publishers and publishers blaming us which doesn't get us anywhere and how we need to work together with publishers, between us and with faculty especially with reading lists, but overall about the lack of consistency.
So to my talk. It went by in a blur, but the moments leading up to it seemed to go on forever. My heart was pounding, my hands were sweaty and I couldn't remember what I was going to say. I suffer from anxiety, but I won't go into details as I've written about it in the past, on this blog too. Being the last person to speak on the day didn't help matters. For this reason, I had written prompt cards, but I didn't need them in the end. As soon as I saw my first slide, I was alright and all the symptoms faded into the background. Everyone laughed in the right places and got all the jokes, even the in-jokes I thought they wouldn't. There were nods of familiarity, they reacted to my questions and pauses for thought and even the slightly controversial bit I put in, deliberately in case no one was engaged, went over well. Some people even agreed with me that ebooks should cost more than print; Elizabeth, the JIBS chair, asked that exact question at the end to gauge opinion. My reasoning is that ebooks have more functions than print, and what I wanted to say, but didn't have time to, but someone helpfully commented afterwards, that some ebooks are the equivalent of more than one printed book, allowing more than one person to use them at a time so should be priced accordingly. So thank you, that man!
By far the most popular slide, as it was tweeted the most, was this one:
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| Jurassic ebooks |
There was a tea break straight after my talk and I had lot of people coming up to me, yes chatting to me and asking questions, but also to think at me. What I wanted to do and succeeded in doing beyond all my wildest expectations was to inspire and provoke thought, and judging by the stream of consciousness I provoked in quite a few people who wouldn't let me get in a word in edgeways even though they were talking to me, I definitely achieved that.
I wasn't nervous about the panel discussion at the end, mainly because there were other people with me who I could pass on to, and I did once as I didn't have anything to add to what had been said, agreed with the previous person and passed the microphone on! What surprised me, though it may have been just because I had done my talk just before, was that when answering the audience's questions, the other speakers referred back to what I said in my presentation, more than once. It was very gratifying and more than a little bit flattering. My imposter syndrome disappeared for good after that! The event ended and I was one of the last to leave because people still wanted to talk to me. I also got invited to do a presentation on ebooks for a CILIP event in Brighton, though I'm not sure anything will come of it, but it was nice to be asked. When I said I would have to think up another theme, she said there's no need, just do the exact same presentation! Like all events and conferences, it was a great networking opportunity.
Anyway, enough ego-boosting. Here is how I came to be mixed up in the crazy world of ebooks. I have been at my current job as an Information and Library Assistant at Cambridge Judge Business School, part of the University of Cambridge, for seven years now. In my first year, I was given the task by my manager of investigating an ebook platform: Dawsonera. I purchased a core collection of ebooks and have been administering them ever since. I quickly realised how important ebooks were for our students, allowing them access to the text when all the printed books were unavailable, but particularly for our distance learners. So when I did my library degree, it was only natural to write my dissertation on ebooks, which is now on academia.edu for you to read. I used a Stephen Fry quote as my title: "Books are no more threatened by Kindle, than stairs by elevators." Instead of concentrating on the user, I analysed the key people who ensure ebooks are used in the first place: suppliers, us librarians and faculty.
Rather than let all my research go to waste, I was urged to get it published. So I contacted CILIP Update and they were happy to publish it. The first one was made into a blog post, but I include all of the articles here. I want to thank Rachel Middleton, the editor of CILIP Update, who has allowed me to publish them freely on my blog and my LinkedIn page and commissioned the articles in the first place. Upon hearing my topic, she said it was too much for one article so we decided on a series of what became the four articles:
I always think of this quote when dealing with a problem with ebooks as I believe ebooks were adopted too early; the technology wasn't ready yet, the suppliers weren't ready and we weren't ready to receive them. Now, what do you think?
