Hardcovers and Internet Archive Updates

So, Target has lowered it's price on hardcovers, following Wal-Mart and K-Mart's lead. The New York Times points out that this might be a bad thing for bookstores, which can't compete with large chains selling books at a loss. But the reaction of readers throughout the blogosphere? My general impression is "Does this mean they'll stop publishing hardcovers? I hope so!" Does anyone like hard-cover fiction? It doesn't fit in your purse, you can't read it in bed, I rarely buy the kind of book you'd want to have in hardcover on your shelf for years into the future. I read trash when I'm not reading for work. And I read series trash, but don't want to spend $20 for the new Harry Dresden novel, let alone the new Amanda Quick.

At any rate, this got me thinking about bindings on legal books, and the librarians who loathe them. I went to an event at CEB once (a California publisher) where a vendor employee mentioned that public librarians dislike looseleafs because their patrons come in and take out pages to photocopy and then don't replace them, leading to a rash of missing pages. I hate soft-covers because they fall over on the shelf more, and get that horrible page-cramp that makes me crazy. I'm not happy about having to pay a filer to deal with the loose-leaf book updates, either, but I'm reference so I don't have to worry about that too much (and I love our filer herself. She makes my library look beautiful). At any rate, if I were the god of legal publishing (aka Wexis) I'd issue everything possible as a hardcover. There doesn't seem to be a huge price difference between the different formats, possibly because they're price-gouging so badly already?
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In other news, I've started a column on the firm intranet for the library, and may repost my innocuous column that contains no firm news on this blog. That column's office title is "Fun News from the Library" but I think of it as my "Libraries are Awesome" column. Here's the latest:

Resources from the Internet Archive:
The Internet Archive has been in the news a lot lately. First, it's founder Brewster Kahle was named one of Utne Reader's 50 Visionaries who are Changing our World. The Internet Archive has launched Bookserver, a webserver whose goal is to make not only information on books available to the public, but to make the books themselves available in open-format, so you can read them on any device (unlike the Kindle or other proprietary devices, that only allow you to buy books from one vendor). This article will give you an idea of how impressive Bookserver will be once they shake the bugs out.
If you go to the Internet Archive's home page, you'll see that they're already making a wealth of information available to the public for free, including books, audio, live music recordings, and moving images.
For an example, click this link to the catalog record for "Alice's Adventures Underground: Being a Facsimile of the Original Ms. Book Afterwards Developed into 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'" Once on that page, you can clink on the http or pdf links on the left-hand side of the screen to access the full text of this manuscript from 1886. The Internet Archive has a variety of media available for free download, including many audio files. Check out this episode of Old Time Radio Program, The Danny Kaye Show. They also have a live music collection, including a large collection of live recordings of the Grateful Dead. Their moving image collection is not very extensive, due to very few being in the public domain. It includes mostly content submitted by users. The same is true of their Software collection.