On 1/25/2012 8:15 PM, pabitra saha wrote:
>
>
> I do not think Apple will make such facility. iBooks 2 is targeted as
> text books for students and easy affordability. They should not be there
> in library. The purpose of libraries was also the same. In electronic
> books age, libraries will vanish. ISBN will no longer be required for
> unique identity, search or whatever else. Those roles will be provided
> by iBook store.
[snip]
I don't think libraries will ever vanish because there will always be
poor people (unfortunately) who won't be able to afford the electronic
devices for reading electronic books.
And even if the libraries do disappear, computers work best and fastest
with numbers, so even in a truly paperless ebook world, books will need
to be identified by number for fast searches, fast retrieval and
purchase. Every on-line web merchant has a part-number assigned to each
item, just like brick-and-mortar stores have their SKU number. And the
ISBN system, already in place and clearly defined, will continue to be a
great system for an all-electronic book world so that each
publisher/retailer/whatever won't have to devise their own numbering system.
Do you really think iBook store will be the only electronic bookstore in
the future? I doubt that -- and just because Apple has come out with
its "enhanced" ePub format for interactive textbooks, that doesn't mean
that A) all textbook publishers will want to bother creating interactive
textbooks or B) if they do create interactive textbooks, competing
"enhanced" ebook standards may well emerge.
This marketplace is way too young, still in its infancy, to make
accurate predictions about the future. Heck, textbook publishers may
well find that so few professors assign their enhanced textbook versions
through the iBook store that the publishers stop making such versions in
a year or two. Creating enhanced interactive electronic formats takes a
heck of a lot of design time and huge servers to feed the enhanced
materials that this could be a short-lived pipe-dream by someone at
Apple. Only time and widespread acceptance by colleges/universities
will tell.
--
David H. Bailey
dhbailey@davidbaileymusicstudio.com
