http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/20/technology/20basics.html
The above NYT article discusses the growing print-on-demand market, and points out that it is now being used by anyone who would like documents bound. Companies like Blurb.com and Picaboo focus on the individual user, but as this service grows, I wonder if it could be used as an economic way for libraries to bind serials or other documents.
I really like the questions this article raises. Web services like LibraryThing help us tag our own books and become our own catalogers. And now, web print-on-demand is helping us become our own published authors. Is this a sign of a truly selfish society, or self-reliant society? Is print-on-demand just an extension of blogging? Can it have real use for small libraries, or is it just like a Kinko’s?
Posted by cgalvi 
