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| Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport - From Wikipedia (Public Domain Image from NASA) |
According to Time Magazine's Techland blog, the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport has opened an “in-transit library”. What this means is that passengers can check out an iPad (or a physical book, both Chinese and English texts are stocked) and read an ebook while they wait for their flight.
Although the dreaded delayed flight has inspired literary business ventures – most airports will sell magazines and “airport novels” - thrillers by authors like Tom Clancy and James Patterson, which are fast paced, and usually very thick - long enough to keep the reader's interest for an entire flight. Many larger airports – such as Chicago's O'Hare – have small, fully-stocked bookstores in their airports.
Yet this is, as Techland pointed out, the first attempt to provide a free library service in an airport. It has different aims than a bookstore – it's simply providing some sanity to those who are delayed, rather than for a full flight – the iPads and books must stay in the airport
Also, this service is severely limited and problematic. As the post pointed out, 30 iPads isn't anywhere near enough for the traffic that the airport sees. According to Wikipedia, the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport had roughly 25 million people pass through it in 2010 – there is just too much demand for the product based on the current stock. Although the 2000 physical books also help decrease demand, I can still see there being a desperate need of more supply.
None of that would be an issue if patrons could download books to their ebook reader/laptop/phone, but this is not possible. Copyright holders are most likely concerned with the users abusing the privileges of the books, and the possibility of international copyright laws causing a problem is most likely what prevents this.
A good solution for this would be for the airport to adopt a similar system used in public libraries – where users can check out an ebook, and then it deletes itself after a short time. This would not only severely decrease the demand for the airport's iPads among travelers with ebook readers, but make the service much more accessiblee to the general populous.
The fact that this library has been put into a public airport is very interesting. Although it has nowhere near the functionality of a full public library, and has some fairly serious issues that need to be fixed, it's still a great idea, an one that I'd like to see implemented in more airports
This is a great idea for airports. I have been one of those people sitting around waiting for hours for a delayed flight and wished that I had something more to do along with me.
ReplyDeleteThe information in this blog post was very good. There was just enough information presented to understand the idea without going overboard. Your sources for articles were very good as well. If we wanted to read the entire article, we could do so. I would have liked to see, however, a few names linked. I did not know who the authors were you were talking about. It may have been helpful to find a link to their website or information about them.
The photograph you used at the beginning was very attention getting. I would have liked to have seen more though to create a great visual effect throughout your post. A video may have also been helpful to further explain your topic.
I thought the idea for the post was interesting and good. I've never heard of anything like this and think it would be a good idea for those people who live in airports for their job or otherwise.
ReplyDeleteWould you know if they are looking at doing something like this in the United Sates? You mentioned O’Hara having a layover library and I was curious if something like what Taiwan has could be done here.
Also, a story I would like to see how technology like the Nook or online journals would ever affect how often people go to the library to check out books.
Good job on the post. Keep it up.