Boston prep school nixes all the books in its library, replaces them with 18 e-readers
By Laura June 
posted September 5th 2009 8:45AM
posted September 5th 2009 8:45AM
We love looking to the future here at Engadget. And while real, paper books hold a special place in our heart, we're fairly certain no one will accuse us of being Luddites for scoffing at a recent development at a Boston prep school. James Tracy, the headmaster of Cushing Academy, says that he sees books as an "outdated technology," and to that end, he's taken the drastic and expensive step of ridding the school's library of every single one of its books. Replacing the books will be a high tech "learning center," housing three flat screen televisions, laptops, 18 e-readers, and a coffee bar. The project -- which is costing somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000 -- is one of the first of its kind. So, excuse us for our cynicism, but unless there are only 18 students at Cushing Academy, we're pretty sure the e-reader supply is going to come up short.
They probably assume that all the parents will buy a reader for their child now, in addition to all the other nonsense they already have to buy them (including an overpriced tuition, I'm sure).
Coffee bar? Pretty sure mixing caffeine and Ritalin is a bad idea.
Overpriced education? But how else will the Dean buy his Yacht? He earned high price tag by be going to college! Remember if you spend a 100 to 300k for college you have self entitlement to MILLIONS! Gotta love egos!
When you need to sign out a book, no longer is your sig required, but a $300 deposit, and a credid card number.
Dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb.
@Ryan
"He earned high price tag by be going to college!"
"Remember if you spend a 100 to 300k for college you have self entitlement to MILLIONS! Gotta love egos!"
As evidenced by your stellar grasp of the English language I am going to guess that you conversely earned your minimum wage price tag by not graduating high school...
@ryan
Gotta love the guys who think they are smarter than everyone else because they skipped out on college. For some reason I always find that cable guys have this attitude. One tried to tell me my computer science degree was worthless while making small talk. Ya...I'm a 24 year old software engineer doing pretty damn well for myself and you're 30 something making house calls and getting confused over which wire goes where in the cable box. Don't get me wrong, I respect tech jobs in general, but please don't act like you are a tech genius because you hook up cable boxes.
Ignorance is bliss.
Hey that was my picture first. Also I hate big fat heavy books.
Aren't we supposed to save some energy?
I doubt if you can do this with a lot of computers and electronic devices.
@THizzle7XU
Gotta love the holier-than-thou guys who think they're better than everyone because they did go to college. My husband's a cable guy who is also doing pretty damn well for himself and it's always people with attitudes like you that give him the biggest trouble when trying to fix an issue. The ones who think that just because they're 24 year old software engineers they by default know everything there is to know about a tech issue, and repeatedly tell him he's doing his job wrong even though they still needed to call him out there in the first place. Just because you're a software engineer doesn't mean you know the steps to fix messed up cable, and just because you had one stupid cable guy tell you that your degree was worthless doesn't mean that all cable guys are dunces who think they know everything. Some people have to wait until they're 25 to go to college because their parents didn't have the cash laying around to send them to school straight out of high school.
I get your comment, pretty funny otherwise, but insulting an entire profession just because one moron told you something isn't really called for. If it were I should probably think all software engineers are jackasses.
Maybe 18 is the average or average+1 number of visitors to the library at any given time.
Sounds about right, except when you've got a whole class in there doing research. I guess then they'd have to get creative.
By creative do you mean that anyone without an eReader will have to use their iPhone or laptop instead?
I don't know about you, but I check books out and take them home from the library to read them. Not many 700+ page novels I can read in one sitting in the library.
Also, consider that many research papers require at least 2 physical books for references. I realize that everyone cheats by going to Wikipedia then citing the book sources at the bottom, but now the school is basically condoning the act of pretending you read the book for real.
@DeoWulf
eBook isn't just a fancy word for Google. These are real books, they have words and everything.
Usually at these types of prep schools, 18 might be the most kids in any given class.
I have to agree with Jim on this one. Even though people like to preview a book at the library, nobody reads the entire book there.
I am a network tech in a library. The problem is that there are still a lot of print books that dont exist in digital form. So by going and getting rid of all of them you just through out a whole bunch of information available to your students.
Exactly. I would have thought that the thing to do would be to slowly replace older books with digital equivalents as they end their useful life.
Did you mean "threw"?
Yeah and wait till the Apple snatchers goes thought there while the guards away for 31 seconds. "All e-readers stolen, books remained"
As someone who works in a library, you ought to know that it's "threw out" not "through out".
Your point is still valid, of course.
D
I dont know about the laws pertaining to e-books, but is it possible to create your own ebook by scanning the book, or does an ebook have to be published by the publisher? Im sure you cant just make a bunch of copies of one book, but are there ways to get around waiting for the publisher to make an electronic form of a book, like if these guys wanted to completely digitize their collection.
Another problem is that censoring can be done much more subtle.
And yet another problem that they will steal the damn things, books are less attractive to steal than electronic devices.
this is a stupid idea. the "prep" in prep school stands for "preparation." library skills are basic to any complete education: you need to know how to find and read something other than harry potter, danielle steel, and a few mass-market text books to succeed in college--let alone graduate or professional school. i'd sort of almost understand if this were a desperately cash-strapped public school, but a private academy? heads should roll.
@ Stefan:
It is possible. I own an eReader, and have tested out what you just said. My scanner has a program which can convert scanned images from magazines, books, newspapers, etc... into text. Then i put it into PDF format, put it onto my SD card, and you can read it on there :)
It's a hassle, but it can be done.
@Moris,
There probably are still quite a few errors when OCR a picture to regular text. The text has to be proof read for errors but yes it can be done.
James is just doing it because he's just sick and tired of flipping through a book in the library and having to read, "J. Tracy is a jerk!" in the margins.
I put a lot of effort in writing it in all the books
You can still make notes on eBooks :P
No problem. If James doesn't throw away the instruction books, I can write "J. Tracy is a jerk!" in those. Besides, instruction books take up less space anyway, right?
Close. We rarely reference his first name though...the Dr. label is a much easier target.
All that stuff is nice, but dang, I just want a coffee bar.
I cant believe how stupid this guy is.. ridding a library of books!! now children will never get the feel of browsing and reading a book.. its hard to believe an educator can take such a stupid step.. instead of promoting books (and having e-readers as an extra convenience).. i hope the parents have the brains to object.. im sure 500k can be put to better use
(n i am 20 yrs old and love gadgets.. nothing can substitute a book.. gadgets just add to it)
Recalling my own high school days, I never used the school library except to look up specific information. For all my pleasure reading I went to the public library (better selection). I made a clear distinction between reading for pleasure and reading for information. So while converting to an electronic format may diminish some of the joys of reading (the smell and feel of a book, wandering and finding new things serendipitously, etc..), it may enhance the information retrieval aspect of it.
If I were hypothetically a student at this school, it would not affect my reading habits in the least. At first reading I thought this move would be a pretty bad idea, now I'm not so sure...
I would have thought that shiny gadgetry would appeal to a wider audience.
Maybe the point is that the principal recognizes that the ebook readers could easily have access to all the books in the New York Public Library (ala Sony)? Or all the books in the google book library? Which means that the students will have access to hundreds of thousands of books, instead of the scant few hundred that probably fit in their little bitty two-bit library.
I love ebooks, and would rather pick up an ebook reader, rapidly find that book that I want out of a searchable directory of several thosand, instead of fruitlessly searching through shelves and shelves of books. I stopped buying paper books 3-4 years ago.
I didn't realize that kids read anything longer than 140 characters anymore. Seriously this sounds like a fantastic idea in theory, but in practice it's a short while away from meetings its "crash and burn" fate.
Kids these days will never know the joy of scraping their own vellum, grinding plants and minerals to make their own inks, or copying out their own scrolls in the scriptorium...
It's funny how "nothing can replace the [blank]", until something does.
"im sure 500k can be put to better use"
Why don't we start by keeping the books. Then, let's see.... There are 445 students at Cushing Academy. Buy each one a Kindle (445x$300=$133,500). You need good laptops, buy 100 MacBook Pros (100x$1700=$170,000). You need good TVs, try the 55" 1080p 120Hz Samsung LCD-LED TV...say 10 of them (10x$2400=$24,000).
Now, what should we spend the remaining $172,500 on?
this type of story sounds to me like a publicity stunt pulled by a mediocre prep school. Clearly there are holes in the logic and yet they still did it. Maybe they want to be able to boast OOH LOOK WE HAVE AN ALL DIGITIZED LIBRARY BUT EXETER AND ANDOVER DON'T!
It sounds to me like they're more interested in being pioneers than being practical.
@ arrbee
mediocre prep school? you must know nothing about prep schools. Cushing is a pretty good school, not mediocre, and it is also one of the oldest prep schools in the country. You sound like a complete idiot by making up things about a school you don't even know about. This who ebook crap is this generation's board member's decision on what to do with books, it has zero bearings on the school's ability to teach their students at all.
it is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.
yes, exeter and andover are great schools (infact i'm pretty sure they're ranked # 1 and 2.) but it does not mean they need to dump their books in favor of freaking digitized book. The feel of a book is so much better than this crap concept of a screen with buttons that needs to be recharged. The energy hungry consumers of today seriously need to learn to not depend so much electricity.
I really wish some of you guys knew to the extent what kind of school cushing. I had a friend who was a complete mess. He never did anything in school, classic lazy but smart kid. I believe he got straights Ds and Fs. His dad though, was the richest man I ever knew. For last christmas he got a 30,000 dollar sound system for his 100,000 dollar car. Last year he enrolled at cushing.
I can only imagine that
1, Cushing is tiny.
2, Each student has money flowing from the ass.
That means this isn't like YOUR highschool. Kids most likely RARELY used or took out books from the library, because they most likely had it already. These kids probably already have sony ereaders and kindles already, with all their textbooks already digitized. The dean probably saw that and digitized the entire library.
This is only stupid in a public school when every student might not be able to afford to have no library in his school or a ereader. But for these kids it is. Remember, that if this was a bad idea, tons of rich parents would have opposed it. But unless you make an upwards of 250,000 a year I don't think you have much a say, as those people live VERY different from us less than 250,000 folks, and they don't live like the way they are portrayed on TV.
My parents make 180k a year but damn, everytime I compare my life to his, I feel poor.
Dude, eReaders and portable computers can completely replace books. I've got a few thousand pages of case books for classes, but about 1/3 to 1/2 of our reading is online, or pdf/.ppt/.doc files. The convenience of online resources, compared to carrying around 20 lbs of books. I'd love to have all ebooks for all of my class materials.
You do realize that you can annotate, highlight, link, search with digital files. It's cleaner and more readable than marked-up books (in my case, as my hand writing sucks). My ophthalmologist even told me that reading from a display is better for my eyes than printed pages because print is more near-field and causes more strain.
it's not like there aren't public libraries and bookstores around.
Maybe 18 is sufficient to accommodate the number of people actually physically visiting the library at any given time but what about the average number of books checked out from the library at any given time? In my high school the library often stocked many copies of material that was assigned reading. What's going to happen the first time a teacher assigns a book to a class and all the readers are gone for a week?
to be blunt, they get screwed.. hard. Which is why I'm still opposing this idea of replace a large amount of the library with digital versions of the books.
18 ebook readers is hardly worth a use. They should've experimented with it rather than jump into such a big investment.....
digg. digg. digg.
Looking at how much they're spending is like pocket change in their eyes, I'd be assuming after seeing their tuition costs:
Boarding? $42,850 for the year. Then a $4285 "Enrollment Deposit", $2014 "Tuition Credit Policy", $1500 "Technology Fee" (includes basic phone service, access to the Internet, and basic computer services), $1500 "Health Center Fee", and for seniors an extra $250 "Commencement Fee".
Just going there day-by-day? $31200, $3120, $1466, $500, $800, and $250, for the respective fees.
And looking at project costs: $42,000 for THREE large TVs? $12,000 for a CAPPUCCINO maker? What is this, a Clover machine?
For a private HIGH SCHOOL this is ridiculous.
Wow if those numbers are right, then they are doing something wrong. You can pick up a 42in plasma for around £900 so wtf they need $42000 dollars for is beyond me. I smell fraud.