The social life of books

An interview with Ben Vershbow at the Library journal blog

You write about the "social life" of books, and I know you don't mean where books go to hang out and cross-reference. What do you mean?

Well, to a certain extent, I do mean that books will be able to go hang out and cross-reference. I think digital libraries will be in constant communication with each other, sharing patterns of use, exchanging user-created metadata, building maps of meaning out of the recorded behaviors and interests of readers. Parts of books will reference parts of other books. Books will be woven together out of components in remote databases and servers.

So, in some ways books will have a life of their own. But you're right, what I'm getting at primarily is the social life of readers and authors that will exist around and inside of books.

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books, library