InfoTeacher

Mike Shatzkin is founder and CEO of The Idea Logical Co. (IdeaLog.com). He has been involved in “digital change issues” in the book publishing business. Here is his informed imagination about what the book publishing business will look like in ten years. 

Some highlights:

The robust e-book market—more than 50 percent of the sales of many titles (also a bit more than 10 years off)—will have been fueled by features built into e-books that can’t be replicated in print versions. For example, e-books will frequently use moving images as illustrations, rather than stills. And, of course, e-books all will have links, which will be consistently listed as the No. 1 deficiency responsible for the rapid abandonment of paper books.

One can only imagine how these radical changes will affect libraries, the teaching of technology and information skills, and teaching in general. We had better be prepared for more and more change, fast-paced change, and doing things in new ways. The library as the central book collection headquarters for the school is already an old paradigm. If the library (and the meda center, computer lab, etc.) is to maintain its place as a central hub of the school, it had better become a place where teaching occurs and students come not just to access information but to synthesize and build a project around all of the information that they access in various places.

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