I have 1172 books. I know this because I've been getting ready for a major re-shelve/re-index project after the first of the year, that is also going to involve moving around a lot of my music collection, too.

1172 books is not much of a collection, for a lifetime as a reader, of now more than 5 decades. But looking it over, as I have whenever I've moved it, this collection is worth moving at least one more time. So, I guess I'll keep it, awhile longer. But in the last couple of years, I haven't augmented it much.

Due to a death, I have a chance to buy a pretty good little private collection, numbering about 600 volumes, in the small town where my inland place is. But I haven't the space or shelving for it here, although I guess I could keep it out there. And frankly, what little additional room I'll gain from the re-shelving project, I'd rather devote to new books, than to classics. OTOH, it's a good collection, going for a song, and the cost of moving it. I could probably get it for just agreeing to keep it together, and move it.

The public library system where I live isn't bad, but it really works to serve its patron demographic, which is skewed towards school students and the elderly. An inordinate amount of its collection is in youth resources, and music and electronic media. They make an effort to have several copies of the NYT bestsellers available, but their budget for periodicals is limited, and the calls I've made through them for inter-library loan haven't been too productive, I think simply because their collection isn't all that attractive to partner libraries.

e-books? Meh. I don't get the point of them. Less useful, less pleasant to read, and require batteries/power. DO NOT TAKE TO DESERT ISLAND.

I have fewer books now than I have ever had. They are dust collectors. If it is important it will be available the next time I want to read it.

If it is important to me and I can't find a new copy of it, then it is a warm small bit of knowledge that I carry with me. If others don't care so what?

Lee Iacocca's book was second in sales only to the Bible. I have not seen a copy in years. I don't think it's a loss.

I long ago felt that clinging to books was a detriment.

And, what paulsc said about e-books.

I think e-readers are going to be part of the future, but for people who have easy access to affordable books and enough room to keep them, draconian copyright restrictions, invasive marketing, limited connection options, and proprietary sales schemes won't persuade them that there's a single reason to try it out.

Unless, of course, Apple markets a version, and then even the one-book-a-year readers will want one. :)

The people who would benefit from an e-reader immediately are people (usually in big cities) who have tiny apartments, people who travel a lot, and people who live abroad and want to read in their native language. The current Amazon arrangement seems to preclude the latter, and severely limit the travelers unless they travel only in the U.S.

I can also see it being a benefit to students, so they don't have to carry 50 pounds of books on their backs every day, and I think it could be very handy for researchers, writers, anyone who deals with masses of reference materials.

E-books can be a valuable reading/study enhancement that doesn't necessarily threaten the existence of traditional books (I don't think book-lovers will let it happen, really), but if all the attention and creativity devoted to their development and utility is basically concentrated on screwing the reader, it's not on.

Well, as far as researchers and students go, the big drawback of e-book thingies is that you can only look at one book at a time, as opposed to being able to spread a dozen books around on a table. Maybe some people don't mind flicking between documents but, for me, it is a pain. Even with two screens on my computer at work, I sometimes print something out as well so I can have more info right there. A book has it's own inbuilt delivery mechanism and is just such a simple, elegant thing that I hope e-readers never become universal. Of course, I also abhor the practice of printing everything out. For reference material that will date, particularly, I hate to see people at work wasting ream after ream of paper printing every useless e-mail that comes their way.

I can't ever see myself curling up in bed with an e-book, though. Yes, I'm somewhat conflicted :-(

I don't see why e-readers couldn't have a tab option that would allow one to flick between different pages of different books instantly... in fact, there are many things that e-readers could borrow from internet sites and browsers to further expand convenience and usability for readers. For example, right now in a standard home library one must choose between arranging alphabetically by author, alphabetically by title, arrange by subject, by genre, by interest, etc. An e-reader could let you tag all your books so you could order them any way you wanted to, instantly.

What about when you remember some quote from some book or author, but can't quite put your finger on it? An E-reader could let you search via various options (books uploaded in the last X months, books by a certain author, books tagged with "X", and so on.) For example.

The thing is that (I believe) developer-marketers are so terrified about how they might ever lose a cent that they really lose the big picture. As a reader could you see yourself buying more expensive, hardbound (and/or illustrated, special-binding) versions of the books that you determine you want to have in your permanent physical library, while also having an E-version? I could. Can you imagine yourself springing for a lot more E-books you might want to just "check out" if the price is low enough - things that you probably wouldn't bother to buy in paper versions, because you aren't convinced that they will be worth the space/price/bother? I would.

I can think of a million ways that E-readers could be excellent tools for usability and exploration for most every kind of reader, but it's not corporate thinking. A seriously great, useful, and benign product, though, ought to go a long way toward making the business model viable.

Ah! Sorry, dg... I didn't read your first comments carefully enough. I see you already were addressing the tab idea.

Yet, the additional option of having that ability, to hand, wherever you are, and even if you don't have a library sized table on which to spread everything out is pretty nice. Especially if we don't imagine that one must choose either/or.