Will e-books take off? Last year the publishing industry reached a minor landmark when an e-book, Angels of Russia by Patricia le Roy was nominated for the Booker Prize, a major literary award. And no wonder, since e-books are touted as "smarter" than ordinary hardcovers and paperbacks. In my view, e-book readers have to be pretty smart, too, in order to figure out how to turn the e-pages. But many e-books feature built-in dictionaries that provide the definition of all the big words you don't know. That makes the e-book smarter than most of us.

Resistance to e-books comes from many readers who are not convinced that there was anything wrong with old-fashioned books, and I do mean old-fashioned, as many e-publishers have tried to attract readers by putting a leather cover-like flap over the Palm computer. The e-book might very well cut down on paper consumption and save trees, but animal rights activists will be up in arms about these leatherbound Palms. To add insult to injury, an e-book publishing maven was recently quoted in Newsweek boasting "within five years we'll have front-surface technology that doesn't require you to read behind glass." So much for the well-read bespectacled or bifocaled!

The popular downside response to e-books is "you can't curl up in bed with one." Nevertheless, e-books are friendly. You can loan e-books to friends via email or infra red beam, with the publishers' copyright intact because the original customer will not be able to view the book while your friend has access to it, just like books made out of paper, and other things you loan to friends that they never return.

Despite my skeptical tone, I am a proponent of e-books. Libraries are being revolutionized by the widespread digitization of printed matter. Our book and media collections are greatly augmented by the ability to download your requested resource in the e-text of printed or graphic material on a suitable device. Fifty years ago we were trying to accomplish the same for you when we filled out the carbon form requesting a library-to-library loan, or twenty years ago when we plugged computers into neighboring libraries' collections. The template for electronic collections is already in place: librarians have cut the die for it.

The library institution's democratic responsibility for providing access to information is governed by the cooperation of library professionals and a strong intra-institutional lending agreement, because no library can own, or disseminate, all of the resources that comprise the human record. The "virtual library," or the "library-without-walls", is a great idea whose time has come to rescue librarians from the cross-fire of electronic, voice, and in-person information requests. Locally, we can handle the run on our few copies of a bestseller because many of you are willing to be placed on a waiting list.

Public libraries adhere to a first-come-first-serve policy, although participating institutions which are interlibrary lenders may place restrictions giving local requests priority for high-demand items. Occasionally readers' obsession with a certain author's books turns to paranoia and we are accused of giving the best-seller to someone we like better. Libraries could spare readers this tendency if, for every paper text there was a corresponding e-text. You would experience no delay or waiting list for the information you want. And we all know that to have to wait or to be delayed is anathema to the productivity of humankind living in Massachusetts.

What about rare stuff such as Biglow's History of Sherburne that Ed digitized? The lack of availability makes it, and other scarce and thinly scattered sources, prime candidates for the scanner. The e-book extends copy availability and meets the demand for information and reading material. Someday the e-book will quietly replace your TV and you won't be able to tell the difference.

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