Is It Time For A National Digital Library System?

In his essay Why We Can’t Afford Not to Create a Well-Stocked National Digital Library System, David Rothman, a writer in Alexandria, Virginia, and  founder of TeleRead, the oldest English-language site offering general e-book news and views, argues for the establishment of a well-stocked national digital library system (NDLS) for the United States. Beyond addressing issues in literacy and the steady increase in e-book readers, Rothman lays out the following arguments that support the creation of the NDLS:

The NDLS can help mitigate maintenance expenses typically accorded to paper books (processing, storage and checkout costs), and offer families more affordable recreation;

Current e-book repositories have yet to be as extensive as paper book libraries;

The current Google Books settlement may cause libraries to pay subscription fees for access to some digitized material they now own in print–even certain books that some major libraries let Google scan;

The NDLS may address the need for an inexpensive, up-to-date multimedia and other content for job-training;

Differently-abled Americans may benefit immensely if the library provided digitized text that the vision-impaired and others could enjoy;

The library system could popularize e-book standards and perhaps underwrite their development and also develop and promote common Digital Rights Management systems for books and other content;

A national digital library system could offer long-term storage–making e-books more durable, more serious as a medium;

The library system may provide a source of revenue for the book-publishing industry via usage fees paid by access counts;

Read the full essay here

[via Stephen's Lighthouse]

Image via Dewey or Otherwise