Kindles and magazines

I'm not sure how I feel about "subscriptions" to weekly magazines on kindles or other e-reader devices. We have kindles in our library, but each one only has a preloaded set of books on it.

And how can you make magazine content more accessible to the visually impaired if it is on a Kindle?

And then there is the lack of archivability with an e-reader with content that may "expire" on a certain date...

The one reason I *might* enjoy magazine or even newspaper content on an e-reader would be that the soy ink would not rub off on my hands as I am reading an article!

Now that they are getting "programmable" paper that can be reused, I am sure some of the magazine providers will want to go into that format as well. I can hardly wait. No more worries for the stores about "please display until...." because on that date, the paper can change itself!

Britannica Fiche

Where do I start with my feelings on Britannica Fiche? An odd quote about "Britannia ruled the waves and waived the rules..." comes to mind....! I do not think the creators of this technology thought beyond the space saving feature.... Where I work we still have collections of this stuff and it is now impossible to read. We have a new micro form machine that zooms up to 96X and can also scan it directly (on a flatbed scanner), but the print is still unreadable. I all but stood on my head and tried to find a way to get a coherent copy of an article for a patron and still had to request it through inter-library loan.

I *like* technology. I find it fascinating -- I even have a Masters in Information Technology Management -- I just wish some of this purveyors of information would *plan* ahead. Obsolescence is a fact when it comes to technology. Tablets and papyrus gave way to the book and now we have e-books and readers... But at least with tablets, papyrus and books, one could still (theoretically) be able to read from the text 40 years after it was created...!