S/O Personal libraries -- Major moves from paper to electronic?

[Kay in Cal]

On the Library thread, Amira talked about having only 100 books on paper, the rest digital. Has anyone else moved so drastically to digital successfully?

 

I'm curious, because we have so many books. Less than we used to, but still 4000 or so. I loved when we finally got all the hundreds of old CDs scanned onto iPods. But books... would each family member need an e-reader? Can kids be trusted with them? My boys have had iPod nanos since they were 4, but those things are pretty hardy.

 

Pretty much we all go to bed reading, and carry around a book to read during the day. I usually just have my Kindle--I have 275 books or so on my Kindle, but I'm still buying books---most recently have gone on a Viking history kick, and bought a bunch which aren't available digitally yet. For example, my son is reading Johnny Tremaine, but I couldn't find it digitally. So now I want my own copy so I can read along with him. What about scanning books you have?

 

Am I just destined to live in a house full of shelves of books, even though we move every few years? Arrrrgh!

[The Girls' Mom]

My husband has/is. He's building up his pastor library, and has gone over to digital for sake of convenience, cost and space. However, he uses the Logos software for his digital library, and the research capabilities of that software are awesome. I wish, wish, wish someone would come out with software like that for educational or non-biblical libraries too. (if there is, can someone link me??? lol)

 

I'm a stickler for paper though. I need to look at the nook or kindle in person sometime, but I do know that I have trouble reading for extended periods on screen.

[Jmac]

I am the same as the previous poster. If it is religious, I buy it in Logos but I hope eventually everything is that way for convenience sake. ( I am now having visions of my entire family sitting around reading on their ipads. How so very futuristic!) I should would miss my beautiful library though. I just don't think we are to the point yet where we can give up our paper libraries but that day is coming. And even in Logos there are many resources not available or only available for a limited time to purchase.

[TheReader]

Well, we have not transferred books we used to own to digital (though we did load CDs into our iTunes library and ditch the hard copies), BUT I buy everything on digital version that I possibly can.

 

We are seriously debating a Kindle for our boys. Probably we'll get one at least in the near future, as I begin using Kindle versions/ebooks for as much school as possible.

 

For us, it's a matter of availability and convenience, though. We live outside the US, so finding books in English at a reasonable price (if at all) is hard. Downloading from Amazon is easy. We pared down our paper book library by huge amounts when we first moved to Brasil, keeping only the best of the best of the best.

 

Still, I don't know if I'd have made the move to digital if it weren't for living outside the US where I can't just grab a $5 paperback at the grocery store check-out, or run to the library to find something, etc. When I started paying $20 US and more for a paperback, and had to budget my book money, that's when I knew it was time to change over.

[Amira]

I'm curious, because we have so many books. Less than we used to, but still 4000 or so. I loved when we finally got all the hundreds of old CDs scanned onto iPods. But books... would each family member need an e-reader? Can kids be trusted with them? My boys have had iPod nanos since they were 4, but those things are pretty hardy... So now I want my own copy so I can read along with him. What about scanning books you have?

 

Am I just destined to live in a house full of shelves of books, even though we move every few years? Arrrrgh!

 

I'll say it again, but I love that we've gone digital. But there are some things to work through. You'll definitely need a lot of ereaders. We are all major readers (2 adults, 11yob, 10yob, and 3yob). Obviously the toddler doesn't read, but he is a book lover too. We currently have three Sony readers, a Kindle dx, and an iPad and we use them all, every single day, for hours a day, and we still could easily use another iPad and another smaller eInk reader. There isn't one ereader that works for all types of books, so we've found we need a variety and more than one of some because often three or four of us are reading at the same time.

 

I have no doubt that ebooks will become more common, but right now, there are a lot of books that aren't available digitally. We had to scan our books because I couldn't get them elsewhere. I didn't scan anything that wasn't available to download as an ebook. It was huge project just to do those 400 books though.

 

Our frequent moves had severely limited the number of paper books we could own before, so for me this will end up being much better for our library- we'll be able to own a lot more books. But since you already have 4000 books, digitizing your library might be overwhelming.

[Amira]

One more thing- my boys are totally fine using ereaders. Even the 3yo has done a good job with the iPad and can follow along in his picture books while he listens to an audiobook. We've had no problems and my boys aren't exactly docile.