Do publishers need to rethink their approach to egalleys? Or, where I whine about my inability to get everything I want for free

It started when I read Michelle from Galleysmith's review of Carrie Philby by Caren Lissner. The heroine sounded quirky and independent, and I wanted to check it out. She had gotten it through NetGalley, but I couldn't find it there. I did find three other novels while browsing around to request. Imagine my disappointment when the first was returned within minutes with this email (identifying information removed):

I noted the suggestion about the profile, but my twitter, my blog, my website, and my K12 public school email address are all there. I don't know what other credentials I could supply for the publishers to vet me. I have used NetGalley lots, and have praised its excellent environmental model for delivering materials for selection. And since I am paying to have these files converted for my Kindle, I have a vested interest in being selective as far as requests and have made less than a dozen total.

This rejection plunged into a momentary crisis. Obviously, I had been judged by someone and found lacking to be granted access to this digital file. But the more I thought about it, the more offended I became. To me the refusal of the ARC was an absence of professional courtesy. I'm not a book blogger per se, but I have attended kidlitcon and have chaired and am chairing national library association committees. I write about books here and there, I present about ebooks and wrote about them for the June issue of VOYA. And I know I've sold dozens of copies of Sources of Light, which I first read on NetGalley, through glowing recommendation, and more than a handful of Wildthorn which I read from them as an e-galley, too.

But is it strictly a digital anxiety? I have have publishers mail me copies of ARCs, including the publisher in question. I could digitize and distribute those if piracy was my true intention. But it doesn't make me want to look for the ARC at NCTE or ALA Midwinter. Sour grapes, maybe, but still. So I began to think about what requires the publisher to mediate these requests in the first place. Was it an issue of which book I requested? It was a paranormal romance. Does that make it ripe for pirating?

One of my other requests was granted. I'm waiting to hear about the third. And Carina Press, the digital-only imprint, is going DRM-free...

ebooks: modern-day travel checkers?

One of my favorite moments of the School Library Journal Summit on the Future of Reading involved one of Frances Harris's self-possessed and articulate students saying he didn't purchase first-generation hardware. I admire him from a philosophical point-of-view, and while I believe all files should be device-agnostic as well, I have a real weakness for gadgets, even the ones riddled with the DRM the students also cannily rejected.

I remain convinced that the Kindle delivers the superior reading experience and am working on an ereader pilot project. But, unlike many librarians who have been lauding Amazon for allowing access for up to six simultaneous devices, I plan to begin by using only public domain text without DRM restrictions to manage manually. Isn't that utterly scalable? And we have enough call for spare copies of The Count of Monte Cristo, Ethan Frome, Edgar Allan Poe and Alice in Wonderland that Gutenberg alone could keep hundreds of devices in constant use. Of course, I believe the ultimate leap will be to student-owned hardware that kids can manage themselves.

I have been thinking about ereading for pleasure in terms of thinking about my own adoption of digital video. I purchased my first modern piece of Apple technology as soon as the video iPod became available. Prior to that shift, I had been using a Sony player with a similarly proprietary format and software management system. But the video capabilities proved sufficiently enticing to pull me to the other side. I found it fascinating I was able to download a digital file of a Hollywood blockbuster, a network series that updated itself each week, and converting my own files to watch on that tiny screen or hook into the television.  I remember watching Psych and Heroes for the first time from iTunes.

But my digital consumption habits have shifted in the past year. I realized that I have only purchased one series, from the BBC, in almost 18 months, and I haven't watched any of those episodes yet. The Kindle had supplanted the iPod video in my estimation. I have never used the Kindle daily, it was almost always a device for either travel or convenience, and sometimes for sheer novelty as with the videos or games. The fact of the matter is that there is too much good video content out there for free for me to continue paying the prices demanded for corporately controlled files which, as Francey's students noted as well, I cannot share or convert.   

Because the models are so unfriendly to libraries, the shift to ebooks produces equity issues as well. I bristled when one presenter mentioned requiring permission slips for ereaders. After all, those aren't required for texts of comparable cost or the reference books it's all the rage to interfile and circulate. And there are issues of access. I would never invest in browser-based ebooks (rather than downloadable files) because so many of my students wouldn't be ABLE to connect from home. I'm also concerned about prohibitions against simultaneous use, and 24-hour minimum checkouts when seven periods of students could be using the same print text. 

When I read about the Publishers Association suggesting that physical barriers to downloads limited to library premises, I realized I had to consider my own consumption habits. It's important to not to support models that don't take the missions of libraries and schools into account. On the whole, the Summit reinforced for me the absolute distinction between reading for pleasure and reading for information. Most of the speakers focused on factual retrieval rather than leisure reading, and while that is one role of the school library program, it is not the only one. I think of Elizabeth Hardwick, 

"The greatest gift is a passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination."

And, like the video iPod, I almost only opt to use the Kindle when traveling. And I wonder what the next miniaturized toy for the airplane will be? I once compared ereaders to electronic football games, but now I think they might be closer to those tiny versions magnetic of travel checkers. Effective and diverting, but no real threat to the more robust and pleasingly tactile objects.

Cell phones, ereaders, and NATC

This week, more than 500 educators from 9 systems and 5 private schools came to Sparkman High School for the North Alabama Technology Conference, expertly coordinated by Vickey Sullivan for the sixth year.

My first session Wednesday introduced iNow, the new student information system. I sat with two members of my school faculty, which made the workshop more useful.

I found the keynote, delivered by retired detective and FBI consultant Richard Love and entitled "Child Sexual Exploitation via Media and Technology,"  to be designed to manipulate his audience in the worst possible way. I think using a clip from Saturday Night Live (which was itself terrible dated, as were Love's references to AOL chatrooms) really brought down the tone of his whole presentation. His caveat never to post a picture of yourself online seemed to somewhat contradict his proviso that we set up a facebook account to experience what younger people are doing. I found it quite telling that his own wife had ignored his expert advice. I think Love is a Luddite and a reactionary. Sexual offenders have always existed, and I have seen studies that instances of child sexual abuse have actually decreased over the last few decades because of awareness campaigns. I resent the implication that technology has facilitated this sort of predation, when it has simply recast it. I am disappointed that the conference chose to begin on a fear-mongering note rather than focus on constructive and innovative uses of technology. I think media awareness and literacy can largely mitigate the uninformed and reactionary anxieties that Love has evidently made his career feeding.

I gave a 3-hour workshop Wednesday afternoon on the Instructional Uses of Cell Phones (slides below, but the website may be more useful). Ironically enough, we didn't have cell phone reception in the classroom, so chose to make a series of field trips in search of a signal. There was palpable excitement as the participants practiced SMS-ing Google queries, responding to polleverywhere surveys, and writing to wifitti walls. Again, twitter let us down, only a handful were able to create new accounts, but I think they got the idea of backchanneling.

I won a 500GB hard drive in Wednesday afternoon's door prizes. It only seems to work with the Mac, but I guess it will be my new Time Machine device.

Thursday morning, I decided to forgo the Moodle session in lieu of some shorter concurrent session. The first I'd chosen was cancelled, and I ended up in another on Moodle after all, this time for language arts. It discussed some really interesting elements of Moodle design. When I mentioned these capabilities to two of my Moodle-using colleagues, they told me that they aren't able to upload a picture to the Madison County district Moodle server. That is the only disadvantage I see in having so many practice-based workshops with teachers from different districts -- the local policies and technologies do vary radically.

Then the next session I'd planned to go to was cancelled as well, so I ended up in one on Glogster... I had used a glogster for the splash page for my afternoon workshop. The presenter was a librarian who had seen the poster technology at AIMA (now ASLA) in June.

There was a small but enthusiastic crowd for my concurrent session on ereading (slides below). I had a petting zoo, too, so they could experiment with Kindle, Stanza on iPod Touch, iBooks, and Tablet ereader applications.

I ended the day as the only participant in a session on VoiceThread, so it became a private tutorial. The presenter put together a VoiceThread where second graders talked about their favorite books. Instead of a series of photos with a single voice or two voices in tandem, which is how my students have always used VoiceThread, these students all spoke over a single piece of clipart. It was interesting to contrast those different uses. She helped me figure out that you can only use the doodle tool when in recording mode with a live mic, and I had an educator account, which allowed me more VoiceThreads, which was something she had only just learned about at AETC.

It was a good conference, full of sharing and rather practical tips. I was really gratified to see so many teachers from my school faculty there as well as many librarians I knew. It seems to bode well for our district.