The Good, the Bad, and the Sexy: Our Espresso Book Machine Experience
I’ve given a lot of talks over the past few years, and in virtually every one(along with quite a few of the articlesI’ve written), I’ve rhapsodized about the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) from On-Demand Books (ODB, a truly unfortunate acronym for a bookseller). I’ve gone so far as to characterize this machine, despite its clunky ugliness, as incredibly sexy — while allowing that, as a librarian, my threshold of sexy may be lower than average — and I’ve said that it has the potential to change utterly not just the nature of the library collection, but the whole world of publishing. By freeing publishers from the tyranny of the print run and libraries from the enormously wasteful practice of building huge just-in-case collections based on inevitably erroneous guesswork about future patron needs, the EBM could greatly increase both efficiency and effectiveness, allowing a library or bookstore to give researchers exactly what they need within minutes of the realization that they need it, all while reducing the clear-cutting of rainforests, the carbon emissions from pallet-laden delivery trucks, and the twin scourges of returns and remainders.
Reader, we bought one.
And almost two years later, I don’t regret it. However, in the spirit of “How We Done It Bad,” I want to share some of the lessons that we’ve learned from our experience so far. …
Der ganze Bericht: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/08/02/the-good-the-bad-and-the-sexy-our-espresso-book-machine-experience/