Pliable. That’s how most librarians are. So far they’ve seemed reconciled to expensive proprietary standards–threats to reliable archiving–rather than insisting on format standardization. Sure we hear some pro-standards rhetoric. But come buying time, the tune is different; and so the Tower of eBabel grows taller. In a very much related vein, I’ll reproduce below the latest from the Proprietary Format Promoters’ Forum dominated by Microsoft, Adobe and PalmDigitalMedia. If librarians feel compelled to go to the March 16 conference ballyhooed in the news release, they should raise hell and look beyond the comforting cliches that the Forum uses in its PR campaign. They should demand that library-oriented distributors get serious about the use of a Universal Consumer Format.
Looking to Checkout a Good eBook? Try your Public Library – “eBooks in the Public Library Conference” to Examine Growing Digital Book Adoption in Libraries
New York, NY (November 12, 2003)
