There’s a certain reverie that comes with hanging out in a library, surrounded by the thoughts and theories of thousands upon thousands of authors. There’s a tale for every human experience, a poem for every love story, and a story to go along with every moment in history. And, ok, I’ll admit it: the old books smell good. Like, really good.

But it seems like books are being put on the back burner in contemporary society, especially with the popularity of online versions of many books and the emergence of digital readers such as the Kindle.

At Cushing Academy, a prep school just outside of Boston, the books are already long gone. The former library of over 20,000 books has been entirely replaced with just 18 Kindles and a newly designed, technologically driven work area - dubbed the ‘Learning Centre’ - complete with coffee shop. Yikes.

The whole ‘renovation’ process is costing the prep school upwards of $500,000. Cushing Headmaster James Tracy defends the school’s decision, citing the ‘outdatedness’ of books, comparing them to Ancient Scrolls. Furthermore, he believes that the Kindles will not inhibit reading but, on the contrary, allow students to freely access millions of written works in a more technologically savvy, user-friendly platform.

So the question remains: are books losing their place in the world as technology refines our ideas of normalcy?

Check out the story here:

http://mashable.com/2009/09/05/school-library-e-readers/

{Efe’s note: Casey is our newest awesomest intern here at CampBFP. She is a UVM senior who majors in English & Sociology. This is her first post.. }

Back when the Amazon Kindle was first introduced, I was genuinely excited about it.  It promised fast downloads, easy readability, and a large library of books, magazines, and other delectable things to read.  Unfortunately, when you buy a kindle, you also get terrible build quality, questionable at best digital rights management, and random deletions of works (1984 anyone?).

None of this is really news, people have been finding this out for themselves for quite some time now.  One of the more recent catastrophes regarding the Kindle was the Kindle Cover, which snapped on to the unit to protect it.  Unfortunately, it also cracked the uber-cheap plastic housing of the kindle itself.  Both of these products were from Amazon, but they classified the Cover as an accessory, so the damage wasn’t covered by the warranty.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, to get it fixed you had to pay Amazon $200!  Well, today Amazon announced that they will fix the damage free of charge, but they didn’t come around on their own.  It took a lawsuit to make Amazon stand behind their product.

If that doesn’t make you want one, I don’t know what will!