The critical question for me right now is whether, given a choice, without a nurtured bias for paper books, children would select a traditional, printed volume or a digitally enriched electronic version. Not what we would select, but what our students would choose. We know children aren’t born with the love and respect we have for print books; consider volumes from your own collection, which young ones have drawn in, gnawed upon, or otherwise destroyed. So why are we often so intent on imposing our preferences on our students?

I ponder this, not only as a steward of information in all its myriad forms, but also as a new father. Now, more than ever, I feel a duty to both respect the nurtured love of bound books currently pervasive in our culture and encourage a natural exploration of other possible forms of books. I assume that my daughter and her generation will be naturally bilingual when it comes to print and digital reading; what’s exciting is that digital is almost guaranteed to be her primary language, thanks to devices like the new Apple iPad (pictured).

With the introduction of its nicely sized tablet with a beautiful color display, fully functional onscreen and external keyboards, and an impressive 10-hour battery life, Apple answered two of the three major arguments against ebooks. The color, two-page display and easy page-turning mechanics make it hard to challenge the iPad on aesthetics. The iPad’s a picture book with zoom, pan, and output to a projector. What more could a librarian ask for? The ability to annotate (or even copy and paste into a word processor) using an internal or external keyboard eliminates many of the usability issues that were identified in Kindle trials at some universities.

Despite these advances, the issue of access remains the third and most critical challenge to ebooks. Apple is notorious for imposing strict DRM within its proprietary systems and there are still questions about how libraries will be able to loan iBooks. Furthermore, even though $499 is a reasonable price for the iPad’s hardware advances, the device costs twice as much as the ereaders that many libraries were already struggling to afford.

But don’t despair, we can resolve these issues. Libraries have been building bridges over the digital divide for many years; the functionality of the iPad beyond use as an ebook reader might make it one of our most successful tools in continuing to build bridges by providing a low-cost computing platform subsidized by ebooks and etextbooks. Though librarians might not have ultimate control over access issues like DRM, just showing up at the table as well-informed participants who can speak to both the benefits and challenges of ebooks will go quite a way in helping shape the conversation. Given the ongoing fights over digital rights and editions between publishers and booksellers, I certainly plan on being at that table; not just for myself, but to ensure that my daughter and my students will have the chance to grow and learn as both a natural and nurtured digital child.