There is a lot of stuff not available in electronic book format and not available online (or only available in versions where OCR has rendered the text completely illegible). Some of this stuff should be available to children in school. Some of the books which are available in electronic book format have very grave defects in that format: illustrations and/or tables and/or figures/graphs are badly rendered so as to be unusable (even on a PC with a large screen, let alone on a book reader or a tablet), and since copy protection is applied getting at the source is illegal in the UK and indeed in most of the world, so we aren't allowed to delve into them and make the material usable - thes too need to be available in hard copy format; double page illustrations and multi-page foldouts are one source of this problem, but even books which don't have any of these can be pretty badly affected by the don't-care attitude of publishers. Some of these books too should be available in schools. There are very many books still in copyright for which no electronic version exists - should all these be unavailable in our schools? I think that a school teaching A level Scottish Gaelic (as foreign language or for native speakers or both - there are quite lot of schools doing this) needs a copy of An Toinneamh Diomhar in hardback in the school library, since very little of the content is available online and MacPharlain is one of the most important Gaelic poets of the 20th century.
When (if ever) everything is available electronically that is available in paper books it may be possible to switch to using only electronic media in school provided that schools have the equipment needed to allow the pupils to see these books. Currently neither is everything (or anywhere close to everything0 available in electronic form nor do most schools have the equipment needed to use what is available.
Brilliant observations, Tom. Many Thanks. Paul
There is a lot of stuff not available in electronic book format and not available online (or only available in versions where OCR has rendered the text completely illegible). Some of this stuff should be available to children in school. Some of the books which are available in electronic book format have very grave defects in that format: illustrations and/or tables and/or figures/graphs are badly rendered so as to be unusable (even on a PC with a large screen, let alone on a book reader or a tablet), and since copy protection is applied getting at the source is illegal in the UK and indeed in most of the world, so we aren't allowed to delve into them and make the material usable - thes too need to be available in hard copy format; double page illustrations and multi-page foldouts are one source of this problem, but even books which don't have any of these can be pretty badly affected by the don't-care attitude of publishers. Some of these books too should be available in schools. There are very many books still in copyright for which no electronic version exists - should all these be unavailable in our schools? I think that a school teaching A level Scottish Gaelic (as foreign language or for native speakers or both - there are quite lot of schools doing this) needs a copy of An Toinneamh Diomhar in hardback in the school library, since very little of the content is available online and MacPharlain is one of the most important Gaelic poets of the 20th century.
When (if ever) everything is available electronically that is available in paper books it may be possible to switch to using only electronic media in school provided that schools have the equipment needed to allow the pupils to see these books. Currently neither is everything (or anywhere close to everything0 available in electronic form nor do most schools have the equipment needed to use what is available.