Boston prep school nixes all the books in its library, replaces them with 18 e-readers
By Laura June 
posted Sep 5th 2009 8:45AM
posted Sep 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 James Tracy, the headmaster of Cushing Academy, says that he sees books as an "outdated technology," and to that end, he's taken the drastic and expensive step of ridding the school's library of every single one of its books.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.
you do realize that enrollment deposits actually subtract from the actual tuition right? It's meant to commit the student to going to the school. Think something almost like bail bonds. also, alot of private high schools are around that price. Infact I went to cushing ('04) and as expensive as it is, cushing provided a really different experience that i will never ever experience in a public school. I had very very good professors and access to anything I need. Even the tech department are extremely competent people. I can personally tell you the tech guy (Bruce Lemieux) is freaking awesome and he's a guy that will help you the best he can and even more.
I can go on all day on why it is almost worth the expense (almost) but in the end, prep school offers alot of things that a public school can not offer and that is why you pay more. It also gives you a higher chance to get into the college or university of your choice. I am an advocate of prep schools because my experience (disclaimer: this is my experience and mine alone, it does not speak for anyone elses) was that I had a ton of fun there and I learned alot there. It's more than just education, it's networking, education, how to take care of oneself, and so much more.
my 2 cents.
p.s. Yeah, I said almost back there because as great an experience it is, it still is a pretty freaking expensive place to go to. there is not arguement to that :P
eBooks are great and all, but why would you want to get rid of all the paper copies? Just supplement them with new eBooks...
They want to be be first and feel important about it. Unfortunately early adopters are only good if they're spending their own cash.
$10.000 for book readers, 12.000$ for a cappucino machine for the $50.000 coffee shop planted into the library.
Real reason for the change?
Coffeine addict as a headmaster?
eBooks will have to go a long long long way before they can replace paper books
no, actually they don't.
Stop by your local Target, and take a look at the e-ink screen on the Sony ebook reader. It is amazing. At first, I thought it was a fake reader, and the screen was printed on paper. And then I flipped to the next page.
I have read ebooks almost exclusively since 2001, using pda's and laptops. I thought a dedicate ebook reader was kind of a niche product; why would I want to carry that instead of a full-featured PDA (or a full blown computer like the Everun UMPC that I carried for the past two years).
But these eink screens are amazing. I might have to break down and get one.
Not all books are available electronically. But starting this year, some of the biggest university textbook publishers are offerring electrionic versions. With the google open-library project, NY Public Library and Sony, and electronic bookstores like Mobipocket (owned by Amazon!) for DRM-less books, Kindle (owned by Amazon!), B&N (not owned by Amazon...yet), I think ebooks are going to take off.
I was worried for awhile in 2005-2006 that the ebook concept would fade away, deliberately smashed by publishers with huge capital investments in printing facilities, but they are starting to recognize the future, and starting to promote ebooks.
As that article said "The future is now".
Actually the screen is only one part of a reading experience. I very regularly stick a finger in one spot in the book and go to another spot, then flip back. This is not seamless on an e-book, I also cannot view 2 pages at the same time, something that is often needed when studying a subject (such as psychology) or reading artistic literature (such as "Idles of The King" or poetry). The book is not simply a page with words on it, it is a user experience that has yet to be beat by tech (regardless of how amazing the screens look).
Until tech can completely replicate the real book experience (and even when they do) paper based books should remain.
On a random note, wouldn't it be really bad if we had a Rome style library "burning" because someone set off a EMP?
Barnes & Nobles is owned by Gamestop. I seriously doubt Amazon will be buying them out in the next few decades.
They should have at least kept the books to look cultured like many Americans who don't have much of an interest in reading with books laying around do...
Wow the year is flying! I wasn't aware it was April 1, 2010 already!
Although books are BECOMING an outdated source for information, they aren't yet. I find this a severely stupid choice on their part, only 18? maybe if you got in the range of say...50-60 e-readers, things would probably turn out better. Probably should have kept the books too, would have been a smart idea in case the shit hits the fan for this plan.
Look on the bright side, free book for a lot of other local schools!
No bonfire then?
i can't think of the times that i saw more than 18 people reading books in the library at once in our college. most were using the internet for personal use.
I'm guessing the depth of knowledge you receive from real research isn't a skill needed to spend your trust fund money.
Cushing Academy
Enrollment 445 students
Average Class Size 12
I think it is a bold move ... we'll see how it turns out .. my question is 500k. That equipment doesnt cost 500k so are they converting their books into digital form so as not to loose any content?
A lot of the stuff they are paying ridiculous prices for, then a little has to go into some peoples' pockets, then the rest is probably spent on rebuying every book they had in an ebook format.
I understand this is the future of the medium, but how does everybody see this going down for art/architecture books where the images are critical? We currently scan from the books, but I highly doubt the copyright holders will allow high-res downloadable images/plans/sections...
I can't wait until James Tracy is out of a job in a year because of this idiotic move. Enjoy the soup line, moron.
LOL i bet he thought this was going to make him look ~*so cool*~
FAIL!
WTF?
Technology should be an aid, not a replacement for knowledge.
FAIL.
Books are not knowledge - they can contain information, but so can the digital equivalent.
The guy's probably having a library installed in his mansion and taking the books for that, then just pawning off the ebooks where he works.
I chuckled at this when I saw it among my RSS feeds - thinking it was a The Onion article.
I wouldn't say I chuckled. But I still do not believe this is a real story.
With Honda's ASIMO, who says you need a Headmaster? Sorry James, you're outta here.
What an idiot. What happens if someone wants to take a book home? Do they take the e-reader? So no more than 18 books can be viewed and/or checked out at any given time?
Plus not all content is available in an e-reader format. Do all those works just disappear from the library?
Sounds like this was more about political self-promotion than any real benefit to the students.
(my third comment, because I love ebboks, as you can probably guess).
Look at the NYC Public Library model. Individuals can check out ebooks onto the Sony ebook reader, and the book automatically expires and gets erased after 30 days.
Yeah, a hacker could probably get around that protection scheme, but I doubt he really wants to. There are easier ways to get your hands on unprotected books.
I am guessing that students will be required to buy their own ebook reader, so every student can check out whatever books he wants for the purpose of research papers, etc. This is, as someone pointed out, a very expensive, exclusive school. The parents would consider a $200-400 ebook reader as chump change after shelling out $52000 for a years tuition.
How can this idiot do this ? The students can't take anything home to study In their own time and I am sure you can't replace books. 18? $ 500,000 Fire him!
Sounds like the pricinple is acting out on his high-tech fantasies because his ball-and-chain wife wouldn't let him convert the family room to a home theater. Seems like ditching the entire print library is a little premature. Maybe downscale it and get rid if the titles that are available in e-format first and then get permission to scan some of the out of print stuff eventually. There are also many new titles, many academic, ironically, that are not published in e-format yet too.
As far as research goes online is where its at. Hard bound books are almost obsolete for doing timely research. Better to teach kids to use Lexis-Nexis and the like. That isn't the future, that is now.
What are "three flat screen televisions" doing in the library?
Maybe it's so they can watch the Discovery Channel.
No, the children who attend will not be learning much about physics or history. They will, however, be well caught up on the exciting world of ice truckers.
Eventually they'll be connected to video game consoles. Seriously.
it kind a looks like the dean got paid by some ebook producers ... or he just realized he got only 17 smart students who actually visit the library for reading..the 18th device is for himself..you know he's de dean! and the coffee bar is a trainee place for the other numnnuts at school for their career at our friendly neighborhood coffee store...
Research is much more efficient in digital format. I haven't used a real book for research in many years. The only time I read real books is for pleasure and even then I would prefer an eBook. I think this guys is kinda jumping the gun a bit though. Perhaps a better idea would be to provide each student with an eBook reader that could be used to check out eBooks from the library. It is true that some books do not exist in eBook form at the moment, but in all reality how often will it be crucial to cite a specific book (Most likely with outdated information)? There are often thousands of books available on any given subject and one is sure to find several of them in eBook format. I am famous for using Google books and Wikipedia as my only sources when writing papers, although I am a computer science student and my professors are far from Luddites. I simply find it much quicker to be able to search through information rather then wasting time reading the other stuff that is not pertinent. I remember how long it took to find the right information back in 7th grade when we were required to use print sources and I much prefer the ease of digital information retrieval. This should also cut down on that silverfish problem.
you seem to have lived a sheltered existence. students in the liberal arts need to dig further than a wikipedia search. your "famous" abilities would result in a C- (or possibly an F) in many history or english lit courses. that's cut and paste, not research.
fail.
I can't believe they ruined the coffee bar by adding e-books!
Why do I think of Fahrenheit 451 when I read this?
Lets move all libraries to this format. How much waste and space will be saved moving everything to digital. Information can be updated to the latest research and pushed to the ebooks. How light your backpack will be now and so much less burden on "the children."
What? What's that you ask? No No, that would never happen. You'd never have political leaders, especially in America that would, over night, order certain books erased from the digital libraries, The Bible, or the Works of Charles Darwin for instance. You'd never have history easily rewritten or holy books changed in "their" image.
Besides you silly reader, they would not have the ability to oh, overnight, erase certain copies of certain books you have on your ebook reader while you sleep.
You and your tin foil hats...come on.
What, me...what am I doing, why am I burying these books in this concrete lined hole in my back yard...um...well...it's for compost....yea, that's the ticket.
Erase? Why erase when you can 'improve them', search and replace 'evolution' with 'intelligent design' in darwin's books, easy as pie, and certainly the christian thing to do...
They better have these books on read-only ROM.
That's freaking awesome!!!
I can't believe all these people that are so behind the times. Catch up or get left behind i say.
I think this is an awesome way to move forwards...the only thing i can't understand is the Coffee Bar.
I alway wondered when someone would be brave enough to lead the way for all the other timid souls out there. Now that someone has done it more will follow and they will find they have just opened up alot more space in their institutions.
The real shame is the fact that all the publishers are so far behind in providing data versions of their books. I love reading on my lappy so i don't have to strain my eyes reading dark print on nasty yellow pages.
The future is here board now or stay stuck in the mud.
what we in the netherlands need for our school:
-laptop with at least 2.2GHZ/2gb ram/200gb HD/4 usb porst
- grafic calculator
- external hd 60gb
- tablet
- someting to make pics with (at least 3mp)
this is all needed to become a technical car mecanic (highest rank of mecanics over here)
How much is the school going to make with the contract on the coffee bar. This isn't only about going "high tech" but about generating more income. $4 latte's for students and staff, cha-ching.
And the higher paid librarian can be replaced with a lower paid barista!
I'm truly surprised by the reaction here, especially the Engadget post.
The original article states that anyone who doesn't have an e-reader can use their computer. I am assuming that anyone with a network connection in the school will have the entire library accessible from their dorm.
As an avid reader and amateur writer I can't see why folks are so tied to the paper pages of books. It's the words on them that interest me. Moving those words to electronic form doesn't bother me in the least.
"It's the words on them that interest me. Moving those words to electronic form doesn't bother me in the least."
This is a beautiful, beautiful way of thinking in this day and age when formats are changing almost annually.
Why not just keep the library and buy the eBook readers? I'm in the middle of revamping a media center at a school, and I can see how things like eBook readers and netbooks are super useful, but so are real books. We've got digital projects in all of our class rooms and carts for netbooks and laptops, but none of these replace searching through and comparing books in a real library. As a kid or even young adult, how many of you walked around libraries/bookstores to find something that interested you, which you might not have known about before. That's not possible with new technology.
If you're strictly doing research, I see no reason to use paper books over amazing tools like JSTOR. But presumably, since this is a lower school, most the books they're replacing are for pleasure.
What a waste.
I think it costs more money to get rid of the books than to just keep them. Unless they SELL them. Or donating would be a nice gesture.
Also, this is a very rich school, so they can afford only 18 e-readers because everyone else will go, "Oh, mummy, I need an e-Reader!" and the mummy says, "Why, of course dear, there's a couple $100 bills on my desk, why not take the segway to the store?"
Problem solved. Technology is great. Money is, too.