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March 18, 2010

Shaunna Mireau

Energy Efficient Law Books

My family is building a house, again. A dislike of reality TV has the effect that the P. and S. Mireau family builds things. One of the features of our new building will be a 38 foot long, full wall height library area extending down a wide hall from the door into the garage past bedrooms and bathrooms and taking up one wall of the living room. It will be lovely, clear fir shelves filled with our large collection of reading material. And I do mean filled. We last packed and moved in September 2008 and 39 boxes of books came with us, not including my children's collections which I refused to count (they have their own library in "the room").

We had a decidated library in our straw bale house, an energy efficient building that was our 2001-2003 project. That library was full before we had unpacked all the boxes in 2002. I am a little worried about shelf space since this is the absolutely last time we are building or moving. Until (and if) the Mireau Giggles vacate and their space becomes more library we have to be efficient. Efficiency with resources is important to our family so e-books are a possible option.

Which is more energy efficient a book or an e-book?

I know that many law libraries are considering electronic book options and there are several publishers going down this road as well. Irwin Law's new E-Library comes to mind. We have talked about Kindles and iPads, but never discused the "green" side of these devices. Since yesterday was St. Patrick's Day, I offer up this short collection of links regarding energy efficient publication.

E-Books v. Newspapers from Fat Knowledge, August 2008
Which is more energy efficient buying books and bookcases or using a Kindle? from WikiAnswers (no date)
Office of Energy Efficiency (a Government of Canada website – nothing specific to books)
Comparison of e-book readers from Wikipedia
Canadian Law search results from PDFDatabase.com (free e-book downloads)

Director of Knowledge Management and Libraries at Field Law. I am excited by the daily challenges of managing the firm libraries, legal research and mentoring students, coordinating knowledge management projects, and close collaboration with the firm's technology team and practice groups. Thanks for reading slaw.ca
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2 Comments on “Energy Efficient Law Books”

  1. Connie Crosby says:
    March 18, 2010 at 6:27 pm

    That is a good question–have you come to any conclusion yet? I wonder whether the energy used in printing and shipping books is greater than the impact of technology on the environment when we discard our devices during an upgrade?

    And have you ever thought of becoming a lending library? ;-) What I will often do with books I have purchased and read is try to find someone to lend them to. In this way, 20% of my books are not taking up space in my home. This works especially well if you don't get fussed about people returning them.

    Cheers,
    Connie

  2. Wendy Reynolds says:
    March 19, 2010 at 4:42 pm

    Thanks for raising this issue, Shaunna! I've been wondering myself – the assumption seems to be that e-books are more efficient, but it's useful to have access to scholarship on the question.

    I'm coming to the conclusion that libraries should be thinking about building collections including e-book content, but really needs to think about whether or not to invest in devices.

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