Story in the Chicago Tribune.
Libraries short on cash, parking and staff are looking at self-service options to reach customers during off hours without adding work for employees. Tucked into vending machines or train station lockers, robolibraries allow patrons to pick up or drop off DVDs and books at their convenience during a time when many suburban libraries are cutting operating hours. Others might take the form of kiosks that serve nearly the same function as satellite branches and can allow patrons to access books, movies, videos, music, audio books, games or anything else the library lends. Eva Poole, president-elect of the Public Library Association, said she sees robolibraries as part of what people expect today from their libraries. "People don't want to be limited by time or location," Poole said. "It's instant gratification. They want to get it when they want it."
Showing posts with label Social change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Social change. Show all posts
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Friday, May 21, 2010
Bookless library
Stanford University prepares for 'bookless library'
One chapter is closing — and another is opening — as Stanford University moves toward the creation of its first "bookless library." Box by box, decades of past scholarship are being packed up and emptied from two old libraries, Physics and Engineering, to make way for the future: a smaller but more efficient and largely electronic library that can accommodate the vast, expanding and interrelated literature of Physics, Computer Science and Engineering.
"The role of this new library is less to do with shelving and checking out books — and much more about research and discovery," said Andrew Herkovic, director of communications and development at Stanford Libraries.
Well put, indeed.
Libraries are the very heart of the research university, the center for scholarship. But the accumulation of information online is shifting their sense of identity. For 40 years, the metal shelves of the modest Physics and Engineering libraries were magnets to thousands of students and faculty, including Nobel Prize winners Douglas Osheroff, Robert Laughlin and Steven Chu, who now directs the U.S. Department of Energy. On the wall of the Physics Library are 16 original prints by photographer Ansel Adams, dedicated to pioneering physicist Russell Varian. A cardboard cutout of a cheerful Albert Einstein greets visitors. A playful collection of clocks — illustrating the randomness of time — decorate a wall.
The future library — on the second floor of "The Octagon," the centerpiece of the university's new science and engineering quad that opens later this year — will offer a stark contrast. It is only half the size of the current Engineering Library, but saves its space for people, not things. It features soft seating, "brainstorm islands," a digital bulletin board and group event space. There are few shelves and it will feature a self-checkout system.
It is developing a completely electronic reference desk, and there will be four Kindle 2 e-readers on site. Its online journal search tool, called xSearch, can scan 28 online databases, a grant directory and more than 12,000 scientific journals.
Several factors are driving the shift. Stanford is running out of room, restricted by an agreement with Santa Clara County that limits how much it can grow. Increasingly, the university seeks to preserve precious square footage. Adding to its pressures is the steady flow of books. Stanford buys 100,000 volumes a year — or 273 every day.
"Most of the libraries on campus are approaching saturation," Herkovic said. "For every book that comes in, we've got to find another book to send off." This fierce competition for space on campus means that many, perhaps most, books will be shipped 38 miles away to a Livermore storage facility.
Stanford's plight is not unique. Four miles off its Durham, N.C., campus, Duke University has a high-density storage facility, with shelves 30 feet high, to hold 15 million books. Harvard's repository is 35 miles away in the rural town of Southborough, Mass.
"You just get to the point where you're busting at the seams," said Lori Goetsch, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and dean of libraries at Kansas State in Manhattan, Kan. — which stores its books more than 80 miles away, in Lawrence.
The sciences are the perfect place to test bookless libraries, librarians say. In math, online books tend to render formulas badly. And those in the humanities, arts and social sciences still embrace the serendipitous discoveries made while browsing. Johanna Drucker, UCLA professor of information studies, asks: "What version of a work should be digitized as representative? Leo Tolstoy's original Russian text? Or the Maude translation? Should we digitize the sanitized version of Mark Twain's classics, or the originals?"
That serendipity can also work in the sciences, no?
But technical information is readily and conveniently accessed online. "Physics was one of the first disciplines to really develop a strong electronic presence," Goetsch said. Science and engineering students agree, saying there is little nostalgia for paper.
"As far as research articles go, physics publication is already essentially entirely online," said physics graduate student Daniel Weissman. "And old journal editions from before the Internet era have largely been digitized, so you can get those articles online too. So that just leaves reference books — and yeah, you're starting to see more and more of those in online versions, too."
But the transition is tougher for Physics librarian Stella Ota, who is responsible for the fate of thousands of old books as she prepares for the June 9 closure. "It is challenging — I'll look at a book and say, 'This is important work, but not currently used,' " she said. So the 1937 edition of Webel's Technical Dictionary, German-English, is moving to Livermore. So is the huge and heavy Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies, with glossy photos. "Or perhaps it is worn, or damaged, or food was spilled," so it will be given away, she said. That is the fate of the 1970-79 Bibliography of Astronomy, as well as the decrepit Selected Physical Constants. A lucky few will be selected for the few shelves at the new library.
"When I look back, then there is a certain sadness for me. Any change is hard. And there are moments of joy, when I see bookplates of former faculty who owned and donated the book, and sometimes made notes on the side," Ota said. "But looking forward, I see an opportunity to create something new."
One chapter is closing — and another is opening — as Stanford University moves toward the creation of its first "bookless library." Box by box, decades of past scholarship are being packed up and emptied from two old libraries, Physics and Engineering, to make way for the future: a smaller but more efficient and largely electronic library that can accommodate the vast, expanding and interrelated literature of Physics, Computer Science and Engineering.
"The role of this new library is less to do with shelving and checking out books — and much more about research and discovery," said Andrew Herkovic, director of communications and development at Stanford Libraries.
Well put, indeed.
Libraries are the very heart of the research university, the center for scholarship. But the accumulation of information online is shifting their sense of identity. For 40 years, the metal shelves of the modest Physics and Engineering libraries were magnets to thousands of students and faculty, including Nobel Prize winners Douglas Osheroff, Robert Laughlin and Steven Chu, who now directs the U.S. Department of Energy. On the wall of the Physics Library are 16 original prints by photographer Ansel Adams, dedicated to pioneering physicist Russell Varian. A cardboard cutout of a cheerful Albert Einstein greets visitors. A playful collection of clocks — illustrating the randomness of time — decorate a wall.
The future library — on the second floor of "The Octagon," the centerpiece of the university's new science and engineering quad that opens later this year — will offer a stark contrast. It is only half the size of the current Engineering Library, but saves its space for people, not things. It features soft seating, "brainstorm islands," a digital bulletin board and group event space. There are few shelves and it will feature a self-checkout system.
It is developing a completely electronic reference desk, and there will be four Kindle 2 e-readers on site. Its online journal search tool, called xSearch, can scan 28 online databases, a grant directory and more than 12,000 scientific journals.
Several factors are driving the shift. Stanford is running out of room, restricted by an agreement with Santa Clara County that limits how much it can grow. Increasingly, the university seeks to preserve precious square footage. Adding to its pressures is the steady flow of books. Stanford buys 100,000 volumes a year — or 273 every day.
"Most of the libraries on campus are approaching saturation," Herkovic said. "For every book that comes in, we've got to find another book to send off." This fierce competition for space on campus means that many, perhaps most, books will be shipped 38 miles away to a Livermore storage facility.
Stanford's plight is not unique. Four miles off its Durham, N.C., campus, Duke University has a high-density storage facility, with shelves 30 feet high, to hold 15 million books. Harvard's repository is 35 miles away in the rural town of Southborough, Mass.
"You just get to the point where you're busting at the seams," said Lori Goetsch, president of the Association of College and Research Libraries and dean of libraries at Kansas State in Manhattan, Kan. — which stores its books more than 80 miles away, in Lawrence.
The sciences are the perfect place to test bookless libraries, librarians say. In math, online books tend to render formulas badly. And those in the humanities, arts and social sciences still embrace the serendipitous discoveries made while browsing. Johanna Drucker, UCLA professor of information studies, asks: "What version of a work should be digitized as representative? Leo Tolstoy's original Russian text? Or the Maude translation? Should we digitize the sanitized version of Mark Twain's classics, or the originals?"
That serendipity can also work in the sciences, no?
But technical information is readily and conveniently accessed online. "Physics was one of the first disciplines to really develop a strong electronic presence," Goetsch said. Science and engineering students agree, saying there is little nostalgia for paper.
"As far as research articles go, physics publication is already essentially entirely online," said physics graduate student Daniel Weissman. "And old journal editions from before the Internet era have largely been digitized, so you can get those articles online too. So that just leaves reference books — and yeah, you're starting to see more and more of those in online versions, too."
But the transition is tougher for Physics librarian Stella Ota, who is responsible for the fate of thousands of old books as she prepares for the June 9 closure. "It is challenging — I'll look at a book and say, 'This is important work, but not currently used,' " she said. So the 1937 edition of Webel's Technical Dictionary, German-English, is moving to Livermore. So is the huge and heavy Carnegie Atlas of Galaxies, with glossy photos. "Or perhaps it is worn, or damaged, or food was spilled," so it will be given away, she said. That is the fate of the 1970-79 Bibliography of Astronomy, as well as the decrepit Selected Physical Constants. A lucky few will be selected for the few shelves at the new library.
"When I look back, then there is a certain sadness for me. Any change is hard. And there are moments of joy, when I see bookplates of former faculty who owned and donated the book, and sometimes made notes on the side," Ota said. "But looking forward, I see an opportunity to create something new."
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
This Book Is Overdue
From Wisdom to Wi-Fi: A library is no longer a mere home for books. It is a wired-up information center.
There are many unsung heroes of ordinary life—nurses, trash collectors, accountants—whose job it is to take care of things that the rest of us take for granted. So too the librarian, that iconic figure who long presided over a sanctuary of books and guided readers, young and old, to the treasures of a vast print culture. But the profession has undergone a dramatic transformation of late because libraries themselves are not what they used to be. Today they have less to do with books per se than with computers, films, community events and children's activities. They are, above all, public portals to the world of "information," especially the online version. In "This Book Is Overdue!," Marilyn Johnson, a former staff writer for Life magazine, takes us on a tour of the modern library and introduces us to the men and women who call it their professional home.
I am not comfortable with the concept of the quotidian being heroic. If we call these folks heroes (and I am a proud librarian), then what do we call the firefighter who runs into flames to rescue a person trapped inside?
As I'm blogging this, a call came in from a patron who wants to reserve a new book: Brava, Valentine : a novel, by Adriana Trigiani. Summary: A once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity takes shoe designer and businesswomen Valentine Roncalli from the winding streets of Greenwich Village to the sun-kissed cobblestones of Buenos Aires, where she finds a long-buried secret hidden deep within a family scandal. Once unearthed, the truth rocks the Roncallis and Valentine is determined to hold her family together as she longs to create one of her own. So, do patrons get what they as for, or should they be steered to 'quality'?
Ms. Johnson's enthusiasm for libraries and the people who work in them is refreshingly evident throughout the book. In a charming if meandering style, she samples from her conversations with traditional librarians and with "cybrarians," a catch-all term for a generation of librarians intent on finding ways to integrate the old mission of the library with the new possibilities of technology.
Some librarians are positive on change, and some resist it with zeal.
A good observer with a keen eye for detail, Ms. Johnson attends conferences where librarians cast off their staid image to perform cheeky dance numbers with rolling book carts; she unearths the 'zines of tattooed librarians, who write about vegan wedding cakes and political activism; she visits librarians from St. John's University who are teaching computer skills to people in developing countries; and she interviews the founders of Radical Reference, a group that grew out of the protest of the Republican convention in New York in 2004, when the group's members provided roving reference services to demonstrators and journalists. An early version of its Web site carried the banner: "Answers for Those Who Question Authority."
Ms. Johnson succeeds in making us like librarians, but she avoids digging too deeply into the controversies roiling around the future of books and their keepers. Something seismic is happening when a culture casts off old words ("librarian") for new ones ("information scientist") and conventional ways of pursuing knowledge (reading on paper) for novel ones (reading on a screen).
Casts off seems an overly strong and sweeping term; change is occurring, and library is an academic science, but librarians and paper have not yet disappeared.
One of the more disturbing stories in "This Book Is Overdue!" is Ms. Johnson's description of the New York Public Library's decision to upgrade its image from that of a stuffy research library, replete with reference librarians whose knowledge and expertise are of incalculable value to researchers, to a place where parents and toddlers might want to pick up a DVD and a latte.
This Book Is Overdue!
By Marilyn Johnson
Harper, 272 pages, $24.99
In a poignant interview with John Lundquist, the former head of the now-defunct Asian and Middle Eastern Division of the NYPL, Ms. Johnson learns that the library's leadership feared that the institution was becoming "archaic, dead, outdated" and so restructured it to suit the times. "They want the library to be active and hip, they want us to put in a cafeteria and schedule entertainments," Mr. Lundquist tells Ms. Johnson. He worries that by jettisoning so many of the library's research divisions, administrators made the mistake of assuming "that everything is now on the Internet, in digital form," when in fact it is not.
Hardly. NYPL itself is digitizing particular collections to make them available more widely than they are in physical form. Again, the question is whether the library changes to adapt to changing demands, or if it stays unchanged and forces people to adapt to it.
The question that Mr. Lundquist tries to address, but that Ms. Johnson does not, is whether we lose something when a library "upgrades" itself: It isn't just the old-fashioned card catalog that disappears but a whole culture.
This age can hardly be the first one to face this challenge; libraries have changed before, and survived, eve thrived.
Although Ms. Johnson adopts a balanced approach to the new technology, she accepts uncritically some of the canards of our techno-positivist age. A younger generation of "digital natives" doesn't learn by listening to lectures, she reports, but by "collaborating, networking, sharing." But as several recent reports have made clear, the browsing, skimming and multitasking of this younger generation also leads to less retention of what it is reading.
The younger generation always makes the older generation rue change, and yearn for a better, simpler, more enlightened time.
Later, Ms. Johnson dismisses as "old-fashioned" a speaker who expresses concern about modern society's dependence on technology, even though the question he asks about our many gadgets—"Have they freed us for more quality moments, or simply made us busier?"—is surely a reasonable one. A library whose main appeal is the presence of free wi-fi and movies is exchanging one community function (encouraging the consumption of the written word) for another (encouraging the consumption of images).
The library I work in has many books, and few patrons. It has wi-fi and DVDs, MP3 ebooks, books on CD (cassette tape now an anachronism, and nearly obselecent). And yet it is underused. TV was criticized in the age of radio programming and movie theater attendance. VHS tapes were criticized in the TV age. It is an endless cycle.
Even Eric Schmidt, the head of Google, recently told the Davos World Economic Forum that he worried about the loss of deep reading skills. "As the world looks to these instantaneous devices," he said, "you spend less time reading all forms of literature, books, magazines, and so forth." Ms. Johnson's chapter about the New York Public Library ends with a description of twentysomething New Yorkers filling one of the building's grand rooms to watch a video series created by the library. As they plop down before the large screen, Ms. Johnson is optimistic, likening the crowd to "large children, gathered around a virtual rocking chair for story time." This "fresh crowd" is "new, alive, and up-to-date, playing with new media," she writes. "That's the future of this library." If so, how sad—for readers and for the excellent librarians who might guide them.
Woe unto us.
Ms. Rosen is senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.
There are many unsung heroes of ordinary life—nurses, trash collectors, accountants—whose job it is to take care of things that the rest of us take for granted. So too the librarian, that iconic figure who long presided over a sanctuary of books and guided readers, young and old, to the treasures of a vast print culture. But the profession has undergone a dramatic transformation of late because libraries themselves are not what they used to be. Today they have less to do with books per se than with computers, films, community events and children's activities. They are, above all, public portals to the world of "information," especially the online version. In "This Book Is Overdue!," Marilyn Johnson, a former staff writer for Life magazine, takes us on a tour of the modern library and introduces us to the men and women who call it their professional home.
I am not comfortable with the concept of the quotidian being heroic. If we call these folks heroes (and I am a proud librarian), then what do we call the firefighter who runs into flames to rescue a person trapped inside?
As I'm blogging this, a call came in from a patron who wants to reserve a new book: Brava, Valentine : a novel, by Adriana Trigiani. Summary: A once-in-a-lifetime business opportunity takes shoe designer and businesswomen Valentine Roncalli from the winding streets of Greenwich Village to the sun-kissed cobblestones of Buenos Aires, where she finds a long-buried secret hidden deep within a family scandal. Once unearthed, the truth rocks the Roncallis and Valentine is determined to hold her family together as she longs to create one of her own. So, do patrons get what they as for, or should they be steered to 'quality'?
Ms. Johnson's enthusiasm for libraries and the people who work in them is refreshingly evident throughout the book. In a charming if meandering style, she samples from her conversations with traditional librarians and with "cybrarians," a catch-all term for a generation of librarians intent on finding ways to integrate the old mission of the library with the new possibilities of technology.
Some librarians are positive on change, and some resist it with zeal.
A good observer with a keen eye for detail, Ms. Johnson attends conferences where librarians cast off their staid image to perform cheeky dance numbers with rolling book carts; she unearths the 'zines of tattooed librarians, who write about vegan wedding cakes and political activism; she visits librarians from St. John's University who are teaching computer skills to people in developing countries; and she interviews the founders of Radical Reference, a group that grew out of the protest of the Republican convention in New York in 2004, when the group's members provided roving reference services to demonstrators and journalists. An early version of its Web site carried the banner: "Answers for Those Who Question Authority."
Ms. Johnson succeeds in making us like librarians, but she avoids digging too deeply into the controversies roiling around the future of books and their keepers. Something seismic is happening when a culture casts off old words ("librarian") for new ones ("information scientist") and conventional ways of pursuing knowledge (reading on paper) for novel ones (reading on a screen).
Casts off seems an overly strong and sweeping term; change is occurring, and library is an academic science, but librarians and paper have not yet disappeared.
One of the more disturbing stories in "This Book Is Overdue!" is Ms. Johnson's description of the New York Public Library's decision to upgrade its image from that of a stuffy research library, replete with reference librarians whose knowledge and expertise are of incalculable value to researchers, to a place where parents and toddlers might want to pick up a DVD and a latte.
This Book Is Overdue!
By Marilyn Johnson
Harper, 272 pages, $24.99
In a poignant interview with John Lundquist, the former head of the now-defunct Asian and Middle Eastern Division of the NYPL, Ms. Johnson learns that the library's leadership feared that the institution was becoming "archaic, dead, outdated" and so restructured it to suit the times. "They want the library to be active and hip, they want us to put in a cafeteria and schedule entertainments," Mr. Lundquist tells Ms. Johnson. He worries that by jettisoning so many of the library's research divisions, administrators made the mistake of assuming "that everything is now on the Internet, in digital form," when in fact it is not.
Hardly. NYPL itself is digitizing particular collections to make them available more widely than they are in physical form. Again, the question is whether the library changes to adapt to changing demands, or if it stays unchanged and forces people to adapt to it.
The question that Mr. Lundquist tries to address, but that Ms. Johnson does not, is whether we lose something when a library "upgrades" itself: It isn't just the old-fashioned card catalog that disappears but a whole culture.
This age can hardly be the first one to face this challenge; libraries have changed before, and survived, eve thrived.
Although Ms. Johnson adopts a balanced approach to the new technology, she accepts uncritically some of the canards of our techno-positivist age. A younger generation of "digital natives" doesn't learn by listening to lectures, she reports, but by "collaborating, networking, sharing." But as several recent reports have made clear, the browsing, skimming and multitasking of this younger generation also leads to less retention of what it is reading.
The younger generation always makes the older generation rue change, and yearn for a better, simpler, more enlightened time.
Later, Ms. Johnson dismisses as "old-fashioned" a speaker who expresses concern about modern society's dependence on technology, even though the question he asks about our many gadgets—"Have they freed us for more quality moments, or simply made us busier?"—is surely a reasonable one. A library whose main appeal is the presence of free wi-fi and movies is exchanging one community function (encouraging the consumption of the written word) for another (encouraging the consumption of images).
The library I work in has many books, and few patrons. It has wi-fi and DVDs, MP3 ebooks, books on CD (cassette tape now an anachronism, and nearly obselecent). And yet it is underused. TV was criticized in the age of radio programming and movie theater attendance. VHS tapes were criticized in the TV age. It is an endless cycle.
Even Eric Schmidt, the head of Google, recently told the Davos World Economic Forum that he worried about the loss of deep reading skills. "As the world looks to these instantaneous devices," he said, "you spend less time reading all forms of literature, books, magazines, and so forth." Ms. Johnson's chapter about the New York Public Library ends with a description of twentysomething New Yorkers filling one of the building's grand rooms to watch a video series created by the library. As they plop down before the large screen, Ms. Johnson is optimistic, likening the crowd to "large children, gathered around a virtual rocking chair for story time." This "fresh crowd" is "new, alive, and up-to-date, playing with new media," she writes. "That's the future of this library." If so, how sad—for readers and for the excellent librarians who might guide them.
Woe unto us.
Ms. Rosen is senior editor of The New Atlantis: A Journal of Technology & Society.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Wal-Mart Strafes Amazon in Book War
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched a brash price war against Amazon.com Inc. on Thursday, saying it would sell 10 hotly anticipated new books for just $10 apiece through its online site, Walmart.com.
That was just the beginning.
Hours later, Amazon matched the $10 price, squaring off in a battle for low-price and e-commerce leadership heading into the crucial holiday shopping season. Wal-Mart soon fired back with a promise to drop its prices to $9 by Friday morning -- and made good on that vow by early evening Thursday.
Wal-Mart said the splashy move to discount pre-orders of popular books such as Stephen King's "Under the Dome" and Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" was part of a larger strategy to establish Walmart.com as the biggest and cheapest online retailer.
Going rouge cheap.
"If there is going to be a 'Wal-Mart of the Web,' it is going to be Walmart.com," said Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez in an interview. "Our goal is to be the biggest and most visited retail Web site."
Walmart has such a strong capital base that its website will do the same to e-commerce as it did to commerce.
Wal-Mart's $10 promotion applies to the top 10 books coming out in November but the company is also selling 200 best-sellers for 50% of their list price.
Who eats that 50% discount? Consumers get lower prices, someone doesn't get that revenue (or profit).
The price war sent shivers through the publishing world. Wal-Mart's move, and similarly low prices for electronic books, may ultimately condition consumers to expect new titles to cost $10, a price that would force the publishing industry to re-scale its entire business, including the advances paid to writers.
"The endgame is rather scary for authors," said one book executive.
Publishing is the latest industry to be forced to change, rather than to decide how to change.
Some big authors, however, are looking on the bright side. Dean Koontz, whose soon-to-be released novel "Breathless" is being discounted to $10 from $28, said that he thinks the discounting may prove a good thing for the authors involved.
"Any time people are fighting over your work it's a good thing, especially when you've worked all those years hoping it would be fought over," he said. "I don't think this is going to be a long-term thing. Rather, it sounds like a promotional strategy designed to call attention to Wal-Mart's decision to enter the digital marketplace more heartily than in the past."
Perhaps. But expecting discounting becomes an ingrained shopping expectation.
Mr. Koontz said that Crown Books Corp., a now-defunct book chain that grew to 170 stores in only seven years after launching in 1977, paved the way for book discounting. "They're no longer with us, and perhaps that tells us something, but after they started to discount books hardcover sales simply exploded."
Fascinating point, and logical: lower prices stimulate shopping.
Mr. Koontz said he's more worried about the independent bookstores. Although most limit their stock of best-sellers, a price war on the most popular books may hurt.
James Patterson, whose coming novel, "I, Alex Cross," is being discounted from $27.99 to $10, said he was happy to be in Wal-Mart's top 10. However, he warned any industry that sets low price points may later have a difficult time re-establishing those prices. "Obviously e-books have gotten this thing going," said Mr. Patterson. "E-books are terrific and here to stay. But I think that people need to think through the repercussions....But I'm not taking sides....I'm not the endangered species here."
No, Patterson is not endangered. His new book has 516 holds on first copy returned of 1 copy (ISBN 9780316018784, 179 on order), and 145 holds on first copy returned of 1 copy (ISBN 9780316043731, 14 on order) in the Nassau County OPAC (excluding Great Neck, which has 48 holds on 1 copy, and 14 copies on order, and Syosset, which has 86 holds on 1 copy, and 10 on order: these two libraries have independent OPACs).
Wal-Mart said it wasn't trying to match the price of electronic books. Still, the $10 price tag coincides with the $9.99 that Amazon.com charges for its Kindle e-reader best-sellers.
Coincidence?
Wal-Mart declined to discuss whether it was losing money on the $10 book promotion, which includes free shipping. But the answer is almost certainly yes. Retailers traditionally pay half the list price for a hardcover book. Assuming that's the case with Wal-Mart, its $10 sale price on "Under the Dome" represents a 71% discount of the $35 cover price, which suggests the discounter will lose $7 to $7.50 on every copy it sells.
Loss leader to establish its e-commerce site.
Ten dollars for a hardcover book is a slashing of margins to the bone," said Richard Curtis, a New York literary agent and e-book publisher.
And into the bone, as it were.
Diana Abbott, manager of the Bookworm, an independent bookstore in Omaha, Neb., said that some independents will likely lose some business on the titles involved. "We've been fighting deep discounting for a long time, although $10 is obviously an extreme," said Ms. Abbott. "But there is a strong element of loyalty to independents....We'll survive this."
There is loyalty, but, will it be sufficient?
Wal-Mart is far and away the planet's largest mass merchant with annual sales topping $400 billion. It doesn't release its on-line sales, but analysts say they trail those of Amazon, which notched $19.2 billion in sales last fiscal year, a 29% increase.
Well put: the planet's largest.
That was just the beginning.
Hours later, Amazon matched the $10 price, squaring off in a battle for low-price and e-commerce leadership heading into the crucial holiday shopping season. Wal-Mart soon fired back with a promise to drop its prices to $9 by Friday morning -- and made good on that vow by early evening Thursday.Wal-Mart said the splashy move to discount pre-orders of popular books such as Stephen King's "Under the Dome" and Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" was part of a larger strategy to establish Walmart.com as the biggest and cheapest online retailer.
Going rouge cheap.
"If there is going to be a 'Wal-Mart of the Web,' it is going to be Walmart.com," said Walmart.com CEO Raul Vazquez in an interview. "Our goal is to be the biggest and most visited retail Web site."
Walmart has such a strong capital base that its website will do the same to e-commerce as it did to commerce.
Wal-Mart's $10 promotion applies to the top 10 books coming out in November but the company is also selling 200 best-sellers for 50% of their list price.
Who eats that 50% discount? Consumers get lower prices, someone doesn't get that revenue (or profit).
The price war sent shivers through the publishing world. Wal-Mart's move, and similarly low prices for electronic books, may ultimately condition consumers to expect new titles to cost $10, a price that would force the publishing industry to re-scale its entire business, including the advances paid to writers.
"The endgame is rather scary for authors," said one book executive.
Publishing is the latest industry to be forced to change, rather than to decide how to change.
Some big authors, however, are looking on the bright side. Dean Koontz, whose soon-to-be released novel "Breathless" is being discounted to $10 from $28, said that he thinks the discounting may prove a good thing for the authors involved.
"Any time people are fighting over your work it's a good thing, especially when you've worked all those years hoping it would be fought over," he said. "I don't think this is going to be a long-term thing. Rather, it sounds like a promotional strategy designed to call attention to Wal-Mart's decision to enter the digital marketplace more heartily than in the past."
Perhaps. But expecting discounting becomes an ingrained shopping expectation.
Mr. Koontz said that Crown Books Corp., a now-defunct book chain that grew to 170 stores in only seven years after launching in 1977, paved the way for book discounting. "They're no longer with us, and perhaps that tells us something, but after they started to discount books hardcover sales simply exploded."
Fascinating point, and logical: lower prices stimulate shopping.
Mr. Koontz said he's more worried about the independent bookstores. Although most limit their stock of best-sellers, a price war on the most popular books may hurt.
James Patterson, whose coming novel, "I, Alex Cross," is being discounted from $27.99 to $10, said he was happy to be in Wal-Mart's top 10. However, he warned any industry that sets low price points may later have a difficult time re-establishing those prices. "Obviously e-books have gotten this thing going," said Mr. Patterson. "E-books are terrific and here to stay. But I think that people need to think through the repercussions....But I'm not taking sides....I'm not the endangered species here."
No, Patterson is not endangered. His new book has 516 holds on first copy returned of 1 copy (ISBN 9780316018784, 179 on order), and 145 holds on first copy returned of 1 copy (ISBN 9780316043731, 14 on order) in the Nassau County OPAC (excluding Great Neck, which has 48 holds on 1 copy, and 14 copies on order, and Syosset, which has 86 holds on 1 copy, and 10 on order: these two libraries have independent OPACs).
Wal-Mart said it wasn't trying to match the price of electronic books. Still, the $10 price tag coincides with the $9.99 that Amazon.com charges for its Kindle e-reader best-sellers.
Coincidence?
Wal-Mart declined to discuss whether it was losing money on the $10 book promotion, which includes free shipping. But the answer is almost certainly yes. Retailers traditionally pay half the list price for a hardcover book. Assuming that's the case with Wal-Mart, its $10 sale price on "Under the Dome" represents a 71% discount of the $35 cover price, which suggests the discounter will lose $7 to $7.50 on every copy it sells.
Loss leader to establish its e-commerce site.
Ten dollars for a hardcover book is a slashing of margins to the bone," said Richard Curtis, a New York literary agent and e-book publisher.
And into the bone, as it were.
Diana Abbott, manager of the Bookworm, an independent bookstore in Omaha, Neb., said that some independents will likely lose some business on the titles involved. "We've been fighting deep discounting for a long time, although $10 is obviously an extreme," said Ms. Abbott. "But there is a strong element of loyalty to independents....We'll survive this."
There is loyalty, but, will it be sufficient?
Wal-Mart is far and away the planet's largest mass merchant with annual sales topping $400 billion. It doesn't release its on-line sales, but analysts say they trail those of Amazon, which notched $19.2 billion in sales last fiscal year, a 29% increase.
Well put: the planet's largest.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Books on Drinking
A well-stocked library will include these books on the pleasures and hazards of drink, says Iain Gately
1. Under the Volcano. Malcolm Lowry. Penguin, 1947. FIC Lowry
Malcolm Lowry wrote of this novel: “The dream I cherished in my heart was to create a pioneer work . . . and to write at last an authentic drunkard’s story.” He succeeded—it is amusing, poignant and macabre. Lowry sobered up to write the book, which is set in a provincial Mexican town during its annual festival celebrating the dead. The story describes the last days of Geoffrey Firmin, a British diplomat who had been posted to this backwater so that he can kill himself, with mescal, discreetly. “Under the Volcano” offers vivid descriptions of what it feels like to be under the influence, including the dubious pleasure of vomiting in your neighbor’s garden and the shame of being incontinent and legless. Moreover, the novel shows great literary merit as Lowry plays with our sense of time, intercutting flashbacks and black-outs in stream-of-semiconsciousness. Above all, Lowry is a sympathetic observer of humanity, sober or not.
2. Prohibition. Andrew Sinclair. Little, Brown, 1962 973.9 S
I like my history dry. “Prohibition: The Era of Excess” documents, with an appropriate degree of cynicism, America’s flirtation with enforced sobriety. The champions of abstinence were frauds or megalomaniacs; the politicians they blackmailed to amend the Constitution without a vote were equally amoral; and the gangsters who profited from keeping Americans wet pushed the murder rate back to frontier-era levels. National Prohibition lasted from 1919 to 1932, encompassing the Roaring ’20s, the Great Depression and the birth of the modern age. The book is as much testament to the changes that occurred during that period as to the failure of the “noble experiment.” There is a supporting cast of fanatics, lunatics and thieves and final salvation via the intercession of a president promising a new deal. A master of his material, Andrew Sinclair also has an eye for pleasing ephemera, such as this bumper sticker from Michigan in 1929: “Don’t shoot—I’m not a bootlegger.”
3. Vintage. Hugh Johnson. Simon & Schuster, 1989 641.2209 J
“Vintage” is an excellent reference work on “the story of wine,” distinguished by its genial style and the evident affection of its author for his subject. In addition to charting how our passion for wine has influenced the ebb and flow of civilizations, the book is packed with esoterica, including the taste and price of Falernian red in ancient Pompeii and the menus of Parisian restaurants during the Franco-Prussian war (roast cat garlanded with rats, served with Bollinger champagne). Essential for anyone wishing to know how champagne got its fizz or how claret evolved from the generic name for a pink, sour fluid into the Premier Crus of Bordeaux.
4. Gin. Patrick Dillon. Charles Justin, 2003 363.41 D
In the early 1700s, London was the largest, most dissolute and most exciting city in Europe. People flocked to it from the provinces, inspired by the pantomime of Dick Whittington and his Cat and the rumor that its streets were paved with gold. The king, William of Orange, had come to power in the Glorious Revolution, after sailing over from Holland, the “home of spirits.” He owed his throne to a cabal of landowners and merchants who were suffering from a fall in the price of grain, and he placated them by giving anyone in England the right to distill gin, or Geneva, as it was called, in an approximation of the Dutch word for the juniper berries used as flavoring. Demand soared for grain and gin, which was distilled in basements and sold from shops, houses, the crypts of churches, boats, wheelbarrows and stalls at public executions. In “Gin,” Patrick Dillon sets the scene and details the fall-out of the West’s first spirits craze with charm and a degree of relish. For roughly half a century, until Parliament finally reined in the gin-distilling business, the death rate in London exceeded the birth rate. The city swarmed with “scandalous wretches” (as one Londoner put it) who “ran up and down the streets swearing, cursing and talking beastliness like so many devils” because of “this damn’d bewitching liquor.” While documenting the carnage, Dillon makes space for the sea change in public opinion that enabled Parliament to slay the monster it had created. The book is an outstanding example of how narrative nonfiction can bring an era and its concerns back to life.
5. Headlong Hall. Thomas Love Peacock. 1816. FIC Peacock
The Enlightenment collides with the squirearchy in this Regency novel set in a Welsh manor over Christmas. Guests argue over “Progress” or its absence, and their host, Harry Headlong, moderates their debates with claret, port, brandy and aqua vitae. There are skulls, explosions, landscaped gardens, the Peacock-coined word osseocarnisanguineoviscericartilaginonervomedullary (the bony fleshy bloody gutsy gristly marrowy totality of the body), a ball and later betrothals—all lubricated with lashings of booze. “Headlong Hall” is also a roman à clef featuring Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other Romantic poets, drawn from life. Best of all, it is an enthusiastic and stylish picture of the joys of commensal drinking.
—Mr. Gately is the author of “Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol,” published in paperback by Gotham.
1. Under the Volcano. Malcolm Lowry. Penguin, 1947. FIC Lowry
Malcolm Lowry wrote of this novel: “The dream I cherished in my heart was to create a pioneer work . . . and to write at last an authentic drunkard’s story.” He succeeded—it is amusing, poignant and macabre. Lowry sobered up to write the book, which is set in a provincial Mexican town during its annual festival celebrating the dead. The story describes the last days of Geoffrey Firmin, a British diplomat who had been posted to this backwater so that he can kill himself, with mescal, discreetly. “Under the Volcano” offers vivid descriptions of what it feels like to be under the influence, including the dubious pleasure of vomiting in your neighbor’s garden and the shame of being incontinent and legless. Moreover, the novel shows great literary merit as Lowry plays with our sense of time, intercutting flashbacks and black-outs in stream-of-semiconsciousness. Above all, Lowry is a sympathetic observer of humanity, sober or not.
2. Prohibition. Andrew Sinclair. Little, Brown, 1962 973.9 S
I like my history dry. “Prohibition: The Era of Excess” documents, with an appropriate degree of cynicism, America’s flirtation with enforced sobriety. The champions of abstinence were frauds or megalomaniacs; the politicians they blackmailed to amend the Constitution without a vote were equally amoral; and the gangsters who profited from keeping Americans wet pushed the murder rate back to frontier-era levels. National Prohibition lasted from 1919 to 1932, encompassing the Roaring ’20s, the Great Depression and the birth of the modern age. The book is as much testament to the changes that occurred during that period as to the failure of the “noble experiment.” There is a supporting cast of fanatics, lunatics and thieves and final salvation via the intercession of a president promising a new deal. A master of his material, Andrew Sinclair also has an eye for pleasing ephemera, such as this bumper sticker from Michigan in 1929: “Don’t shoot—I’m not a bootlegger.”
3. Vintage. Hugh Johnson. Simon & Schuster, 1989 641.2209 J
“Vintage” is an excellent reference work on “the story of wine,” distinguished by its genial style and the evident affection of its author for his subject. In addition to charting how our passion for wine has influenced the ebb and flow of civilizations, the book is packed with esoterica, including the taste and price of Falernian red in ancient Pompeii and the menus of Parisian restaurants during the Franco-Prussian war (roast cat garlanded with rats, served with Bollinger champagne). Essential for anyone wishing to know how champagne got its fizz or how claret evolved from the generic name for a pink, sour fluid into the Premier Crus of Bordeaux.
4. Gin. Patrick Dillon. Charles Justin, 2003 363.41 D
In the early 1700s, London was the largest, most dissolute and most exciting city in Europe. People flocked to it from the provinces, inspired by the pantomime of Dick Whittington and his Cat and the rumor that its streets were paved with gold. The king, William of Orange, had come to power in the Glorious Revolution, after sailing over from Holland, the “home of spirits.” He owed his throne to a cabal of landowners and merchants who were suffering from a fall in the price of grain, and he placated them by giving anyone in England the right to distill gin, or Geneva, as it was called, in an approximation of the Dutch word for the juniper berries used as flavoring. Demand soared for grain and gin, which was distilled in basements and sold from shops, houses, the crypts of churches, boats, wheelbarrows and stalls at public executions. In “Gin,” Patrick Dillon sets the scene and details the fall-out of the West’s first spirits craze with charm and a degree of relish. For roughly half a century, until Parliament finally reined in the gin-distilling business, the death rate in London exceeded the birth rate. The city swarmed with “scandalous wretches” (as one Londoner put it) who “ran up and down the streets swearing, cursing and talking beastliness like so many devils” because of “this damn’d bewitching liquor.” While documenting the carnage, Dillon makes space for the sea change in public opinion that enabled Parliament to slay the monster it had created. The book is an outstanding example of how narrative nonfiction can bring an era and its concerns back to life.
5. Headlong Hall. Thomas Love Peacock. 1816. FIC Peacock
The Enlightenment collides with the squirearchy in this Regency novel set in a Welsh manor over Christmas. Guests argue over “Progress” or its absence, and their host, Harry Headlong, moderates their debates with claret, port, brandy and aqua vitae. There are skulls, explosions, landscaped gardens, the Peacock-coined word osseocarnisanguineoviscericartilaginonervomedullary (the bony fleshy bloody gutsy gristly marrowy totality of the body), a ball and later betrothals—all lubricated with lashings of booze. “Headlong Hall” is also a roman à clef featuring Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other Romantic poets, drawn from life. Best of all, it is an enthusiastic and stylish picture of the joys of commensal drinking.
—Mr. Gately is the author of “Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol,” published in paperback by Gotham.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Mean Streets
Home buyers signed a statement saying they would 'not permit the premises to be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.'
In "Levittown," a vigorous and often surprising narrative, David Kushner journeys into the racially charged heart of what newspapers once trumpeted as "the most perfectly planned community in America." Today Levittown serves as condescending shorthand for suburban conformity. But just after World War II, Levittown, N.Y., and its sister community of Levittown, Pa., symbolized liberation from crowded urban neighborhoods for families whose idea of the American dream was a private home and a patch of grass.
Both Levittowns were conceived from the start as complete communities, themselves prefabricated, so to speak, with shopping centers, churches, pools, parks, curved streets for a rural feel and cul-de-sacs where children could play safely. The Levittown customer, declared Bill Levitt, was "not just buying a house, he's buying a way of life." By 1952, the Levitts were building one out of every eight homes in the country. Time magazine dubbed their company the "General Motors of the housing industry."
But there was a snake in paradise: racial segregation. Buyers of Levittown homes were required to sign a statement that declared, in bold capital letters, that they would "not permit the premises to be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race." Like many developers, the Levitts believed that racial integration was commercial suicide.
Mr. Kushner suggests that the demand for housing in the years after the war was so great that the Levitts could have integrated their towns from the start and thus set a national pattern. Instead they capitulated to what they perceived to be Americans' darkest fears. "The plain fact is that most whites prefer not to live in mixed communities," Bill Levitt repeatedly declared.
The core of Mr. Kushner's story focuses on the campaign to desegregate Levittown, Pa., in 1957. He deftly splices together the experiences of two families at the center of what became a terrifying ordeal. Bill and Daisy Myers and their children were educated, friendly, quiet people – just the sort of folks anyone would want to have next-door – except that they were black. Their staunchest local allies were Bea and Lew Wechsler, labor organizers and longtime members of the Communist Party. The Wechslers were among the few whites who remained uncowed by the venomous racism that gripped Levittown that summer.
In "Levittown," a vigorous and often surprising narrative, David Kushner journeys into the racially charged heart of what newspapers once trumpeted as "the most perfectly planned community in America." Today Levittown serves as condescending shorthand for suburban conformity. But just after World War II, Levittown, N.Y., and its sister community of Levittown, Pa., symbolized liberation from crowded urban neighborhoods for families whose idea of the American dream was a private home and a patch of grass.
Both Levittowns were conceived from the start as complete communities, themselves prefabricated, so to speak, with shopping centers, churches, pools, parks, curved streets for a rural feel and cul-de-sacs where children could play safely. The Levittown customer, declared Bill Levitt, was "not just buying a house, he's buying a way of life." By 1952, the Levitts were building one out of every eight homes in the country. Time magazine dubbed their company the "General Motors of the housing industry."
But there was a snake in paradise: racial segregation. Buyers of Levittown homes were required to sign a statement that declared, in bold capital letters, that they would "not permit the premises to be used or occupied by any person other than members of the Caucasian race." Like many developers, the Levitts believed that racial integration was commercial suicide.
Mr. Kushner suggests that the demand for housing in the years after the war was so great that the Levitts could have integrated their towns from the start and thus set a national pattern. Instead they capitulated to what they perceived to be Americans' darkest fears. "The plain fact is that most whites prefer not to live in mixed communities," Bill Levitt repeatedly declared.
The core of Mr. Kushner's story focuses on the campaign to desegregate Levittown, Pa., in 1957. He deftly splices together the experiences of two families at the center of what became a terrifying ordeal. Bill and Daisy Myers and their children were educated, friendly, quiet people – just the sort of folks anyone would want to have next-door – except that they were black. Their staunchest local allies were Bea and Lew Wechsler, labor organizers and longtime members of the Communist Party. The Wechslers were among the few whites who remained uncowed by the venomous racism that gripped Levittown that summer.
With the support of local Quakers and the NAACP, the Myerses moved into their Cape Cod-style "dream house" on Deepgreen Lane. They got more than they bargained for. Crosses were burned. Mobs waving Confederate flags staked out their home night and day. Rocks were thrown through their windows. Malicious callers rang their phone around the clock: "I will not let my children drink chocolate milk again as long as I live!" one irate woman yelled at Daisy Myers. Threats were made to burn them out. The local authorities refused to intervene. The police, for the most part, claimed that they were helpless to control the mobs. Many residents in fact blamed the Myerses for provoking all the "agitation."
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
The Obama Generation
New York : Doubleday, 2009.An interesting excerpt from what promises to be a good book. A couple of interesting phrases.
"I'd like Barack Obama to be president," Mr. Young said, to a burst of applause from a small hometown audience in 2007. But then he added: "In 2016." The applauders were caught up short. A few booed. At that point, Mr. Young was still supporting his old friend Hillary Clinton. Mr. Obama, he decided, wasn't even close to ready. "It's not a matter of being inexperienced," Mr. Young said in a matter-of-fact tone. "It's a matter of being young."
In 1968 he was 36. Being young didn't get in his way.
What Mr. Young exposed that night in Atlanta was a rift between black politicians born in the 1930s and 1940s and those born in the 1960s and 1970s. "I had a hard time believing the Obama phenomenon," he admitted a year later. The world view of the older politicians, many of them preachers like Mr. Young, was defined by limitation. They couldn't eat at lunch counters. They couldn't sit where they liked on buses or vote how and for whom they liked. They couldn't attend the schools they preferred or aspire to the jobs they believed they were qualified to hold. Every time one of those barriers fell, it was power seized, not given. They marched, they preached, and they protested.
Excellent point: Andrew Young had to fight for power; he couldn't understand that Obama didn't have to, in good part because of what he had done.
Another reason Mr. Obama had some trouble convincing black voters is because it had seldom been done this way before. Most black elected officials would never have been elected to office if they had to rely on white voters. Instead, they benefited from a civil-rights movement that created power through artfully drawn black majority districts. Once inside the circle, officials elected from these districts -- especially in Congress -- acquired a power of incumbency that virtually guaranteed re-election, year after year after year. The white political power structure, happy with separate but equal, generally looked the other way to protect their own politically safe preserves.
Separate but equal; a fascinating phrase.
Mr. Obama and other new generation politicians like him correctly saw the change coming. The most well-known black leaders had begun to age out. The big names -- Jesse Jackson Sr., Vernon Jordan and Colin Powell -- are in their sixties and seventies.
Joseph Lowery is 87. Martin would have been 80.
The Obama generation is, for the most part, in their thirties, forties, or at most fifties, with their own networks and ideas about the best way to seize power.
At most 50s; whew! I just make it.
With few exceptions, most younger black politicians around the country embraced Mr. Obama immediately as a kindred spirit. For the civil-rights icons, it was more complicated. Oakland, California Mayor Ron Dellums, 72, chose to support Mrs. Clinton over Mr. Obama, but even he acknowledged the shifting winds. Black leaders, he said, have got to stop treating change as a threat. "You have to update your analysis, update the nature of your politics," he says. "You can't be 1958, you can't be 1968, you have to be 2008, but you build on those realities."
Meanwhile, civil-rights luminaries like Roger Wilkins, a 76-year-old historian, journalist and veteran activists saw Mr. Obama's rise as a natural evolution. "I love this transition," he said, "because my generation has done its work. Whatever one thinks of the result of that work, it was consequential work, and it did help change the nation."
"But now we're old," he continued, "and there are people whose path we made possible who see the country very, very differently than we did."
Monday, October 20, 2008
4,800 Books and 10 Legs
In a ritual repeated nearly every weekend for the past decade here in Colombia’s war-weary Caribbean hinterland, Luis Soriano gathered his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto, in front of his home on a recent Saturday afternoon. Sweating already under the unforgiving sun, he strapped pouches with the word “Biblioburro” painted in blue letters to the donkeys’ backs and loaded them with an eclectic cargo of books destined for people living in the small villages beyond.
In a country that has suffered so much violence in the last half century plus, this is a heart-warming story of a man and books, a triumph of the human spirit that is not a cliché.
“I started out with 70 books, and now I have a collection of more than 4,800,” said Mr. Soriano, 36, a primary school teacher who lives in a small house here with his wife and three children, with books piled to the ceilings.
A whimsical riff on the bookmobile, Mr. Soriano’s Biblioburro is a small institution: one man and two donkeys. He created it out of the simple belief that the act of taking books to people who do not have them can somehow improve this impoverished region, and perhaps Colombia.
A breakthrough came several years ago when he heard excerpts over the radio of a novel, “The Ballad of Maria Abdala,” by Juan Gossaín, a Colombian journalist and writer. Mr. Soriano wrote a letter to the author, asking him to lend a copy of the book to the Biblioburro. After Mr. Gossaín broadcast details of Mr. Soriano’s project on his radio program, book donations poured in from throughout Colombia. A local financial institution, Cajamag, provided some financing for the construction of a small library next to his home, but the project remains only half-finished for lack of funds.
He fractured his left leg in a fall from one of his burros in July, leaving him with a limp. And some of his readers like the books they borrow so much that they fail to return them. Two books that vanished not long ago: an illustrated sex education manual, and a copy of “Like Water for Chocolate,” the Mexican writer Laura Esquivel’s novel about food and love in a traditional Mexican family.
And there are dangers inherent to venturing into the backlands around La Gloria. Two years ago, Mr. Soriano said, bandits surprised him at a river crossing, found that he carried almost no money, and tied him to a tree. They stole one item from his book pouch: “Brida,” the story of an Irish girl and her search for knowledge, by the Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho.
Luis Soriano, a teacher from La Gloria, Colombia, traveled to the village of El Brasil with his Biblioburro on Oct. 11. The donkeys are named Alfa and Beto.
Slide show
In a country that has suffered so much violence in the last half century plus, this is a heart-warming story of a man and books, a triumph of the human spirit that is not a cliché.
“I started out with 70 books, and now I have a collection of more than 4,800,” said Mr. Soriano, 36, a primary school teacher who lives in a small house here with his wife and three children, with books piled to the ceilings.
A whimsical riff on the bookmobile, Mr. Soriano’s Biblioburro is a small institution: one man and two donkeys. He created it out of the simple belief that the act of taking books to people who do not have them can somehow improve this impoverished region, and perhaps Colombia.
A breakthrough came several years ago when he heard excerpts over the radio of a novel, “The Ballad of Maria Abdala,” by Juan Gossaín, a Colombian journalist and writer. Mr. Soriano wrote a letter to the author, asking him to lend a copy of the book to the Biblioburro. After Mr. Gossaín broadcast details of Mr. Soriano’s project on his radio program, book donations poured in from throughout Colombia. A local financial institution, Cajamag, provided some financing for the construction of a small library next to his home, but the project remains only half-finished for lack of funds.
He fractured his left leg in a fall from one of his burros in July, leaving him with a limp. And some of his readers like the books they borrow so much that they fail to return them. Two books that vanished not long ago: an illustrated sex education manual, and a copy of “Like Water for Chocolate,” the Mexican writer Laura Esquivel’s novel about food and love in a traditional Mexican family.
And there are dangers inherent to venturing into the backlands around La Gloria. Two years ago, Mr. Soriano said, bandits surprised him at a river crossing, found that he carried almost no money, and tied him to a tree. They stole one item from his book pouch: “Brida,” the story of an Irish girl and her search for knowledge, by the Brazilian novelist Paulo Coelho.
“For some reason, Paulo Coelho is at the top of everyone’s list of favorites,” said Mr. Soriano, hiding a grin under the shade of his sombrero vueltiao, the elaborately woven cowboy hat popular in Colombia’s interior.
Luis Soriano, a teacher from La Gloria, Colombia, traveled to the village of El Brasil with his Biblioburro on Oct. 11. The donkeys are named Alfa and Beto.
Slide show
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