Library books

[asjogren]

I believe eBooks are a natural for Public Libraries.

- eBooks are never lost
- eBooks are never late
- there are no transportation costs between branches
- eBooks are never damaged or defaced or wear out
- eBooks don't get misfiled
- eBooks don't take up room in space limited branches
- less popular books can remain in the library as eBooks at little cost
- eBooks don't need to be inventoried
- with constrained branch hours - the eBook library remains open

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by asjogren

I believe eBooks are a natural for Public Libraries.

- eBooks are never lost
- eBooks are never late
- there are no transportation costs between branches
- eBooks are never damaged or defaced or wear out
- eBooks don't get misfiled
- eBooks don't take up room in space limited branches
- less popular books can remain in the library as eBooks at little cost
- eBooks don't need to be inventoried
- with constrained branch hours - the eBook library remains open

ebooks are always returned on time.

On the flip side, you can't get late fees for them...

[Rich_D]

Originally Posted by asjogren

I believe eBooks are a natural for Public Libraries.

- eBooks are never lost
- eBooks are never late
- there are no transportation costs between branches
- eBooks are never damaged or defaced or wear out
- eBooks don't get misfiled
- eBooks don't take up room in space limited branches
- less popular books can remain in the library as eBooks at little cost
- eBooks don't need to be inventoried
- with constrained branch hours - the eBook library remains open

While I agree with this, eBooks won't really become mainstream until you can get a $20 eReader.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by Rich_D

While I agree with this, eBooks won't really become mainstream until you can get a $20 eReader.

Well... Smart phones are mainstream and most of them are quite a bit more than $20.

I don't even think books are currently main stream... are they? Isn't there only a small percentage of people that read books on a regular basis?

BOb

[Rich_D]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Well... Smart phones are mainstream and most of them are quite a bit more than $20.

I don't even think books are currently main stream... are they? Isn't there only a small percentage of people that read books on a regular basis?

BOb

Smart phones are multi-taskers and are about status; most e-readers aren't. Harry Potter and Twilight started a whole generation of readers. Given the choice, I'd bet most of them would choose an i-Phone over a Kindle.

Flood the market with inexpensive e-readers and e-books would take off. You'd have schools utilizing them, libraries offering greater selections and lower prices on books.

Personally, I'll never buy a smart phone. I wouldn't even have a cell phone if my wife didn't insist on it for emergencies. I love my pda though! But Palm has abandoned me, so my next step is a Nook.

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by Rich_D

Smart phones are multi-taskers and are about status; most e-readers aren't. Harry Potter and Twilight started a whole generation of readers. Given the choice, I'd bet most of them would choose an i-Phone over a Kindle.

Flood the market with inexpensive e-readers and e-books would take off. You'd have schools utilizing them, libraries offering greater selections and lower prices on books.

Personally, I'll never buy a smart phone. I wouldn't even have a cell phone if my wife didn't insist on it for emergencies. I love my pda though! But Palm has abandoned me, so my next step is a Nook.

My Assistant Principal asked me if I would like to use an eReader for my students. He is still trying to get the funding, but if all goes well, next year, we will be trying it out with a group of our students.

Biggest problems is that most of the textbooks are available in pdf or proprietary formats, and are difficult to translate to small readers.

[Rich_D]

Originally Posted by DJHARKAVY

My Assistant Principal asked me if I would like to use an eReader for my students. He is still trying to get the funding, but if all goes well, next year, we will be trying it out with a group of our students.

Biggest problems is that most of the textbooks are available in pdf or proprietary formats, and are difficult to translate to small readers.

I applaud your school for trying them out.

[Kris777]

Originally Posted by DJHARKAVY

My Assistant Principal asked me if I would like to use an eReader for my students. He is still trying to get the funding, but if all goes well, next year, we will be trying it out with a group of our students.

Biggest problems is that most of the textbooks are available in pdf or proprietary formats, and are difficult to translate to small readers.

I see that Ectaco sell jetBook-Lite preloaded with School's Reading List

"This model comes with a digital copy of the school's reading list.
World's classics are now at your fingertips!"

[DJHARKAVY]

Originally Posted by Rich_D

I applaud your school for trying them out.

IF we end up doing it...

But I can hope...

Originally Posted by Kris777

I see that Ectaco sell jetBook-Lite preloaded with School's Reading List

"This model comes with a digital copy of the school's reading list.
World's classics are now at your fingertips!"

I can't find a listing of what School's reading list it is or what is contained in it.

[gastan]

Ectaco says, "World's classics are now at your fingertips!" I bet what they mean is the world's classics of literature. So this would be great for a literature class but useless for a chemistry or history class that required specific texts. Textbooks as opposed to literature books.

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by gastan

Ectaco says, "World's classics are now at your fingertips!" I bet what they mean is the world's classics of literature. So this would be great for a literature class but useless for a chemistry or history class that required specific texts. Textbooks as opposed to literature books.

Even other "classics" like Euclid's Elements, or Newton's Principia Mathematica, or the Kama Sutra...

[Kris777]

Originally Posted by DJHARKAVY

IF we end up doing it...

But I can hope...



I can't find a listing of what School's reading list it is or what is contained in it.

I received the e-mail from Pavel (Ectaco support) that jetBook-Lite comes preloaded with these books:

Preloaded eBooks include U.S. Department of Education suggested Reading List:


Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
Edmond Rostand, Cyrano De Bergerac

William Shakespeare, As you Like it
Richard II
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
Hamlet

Moliere, Tartuffe OR The Hypocrite
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
George Eliot, Silas Marner
Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles
Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Henry Thoreau, Walden
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Stephen Crane, Maggie, a girl of the Streets
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage
Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Jack London, The Call of the wild
Herman Melville, Moby Dick, or, the whale
Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
Aesop’s Fables
H. Andersen, Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen
Mary Esther MacGregor, Stories of King Arthur
Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, and Other Poems
Homer, the Iliad
Emily Dickinson, Poems by emily Dickinson
Henry Longfellow, Evangeline
Homer, The Odyssey
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway(1925)
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Originally Posted by Kris777

I received the e-mail from Pavel (Ectaco support) that jetBook-Lite comes preloaded with these books:

Preloaded eBooks include U.S. Department of Education suggested Reading List:


Henrik Ibsen, A Doll's House
Edmond Rostand, Cyrano De Bergerac

William Shakespeare, As you Like it
Richard II
Romeo and Juliet
Macbeth
Hamlet

Moliere, Tartuffe OR The Hypocrite
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
George Eliot, Silas Marner

. . .

Homer, The Odyssey
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway(1925)
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Careful you'll start a discussion of the merits of each book. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens instead of David Copperfield or Nicholas Nickleby?

I agree that e-books are a natural in education for literature, but I will be a long time and a lot better rendering of equations and formulas before e-books will make inroads into other subjects.

[SensualPoet]

Originally Posted by Rich_D

I also think that it wouldn't be money well spent. Let's face it, e-readers are luxury items and currently libraries are most important to the poorer communities. In some cases the only place kids can use a computer or read a book, other than at school, is the library. If the library has to choose between an e-book and a p-book, they need to go with the p-book because that will be the greater benefit to the most people and that is more in line with Carnegie's vision.

A few days ago, I took the bait. Upon reflection, I've changed my mind.

Libraries, even in Andrew Carnegie's vision, aren't here merely to provide services to those who rely on the loan of paper: it was about the content. If some budget is spent on users who engage the library over the Internet, using their own e-reader ... terrific. The object is to expand reading, access to knowledge, using the library as curator to ensure a minimum set of standards ... a robust e-book collection is not an elitist diversion but indeed fulfills the mandate and original Carnegie vision.

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by SensualPoet

Libraries, even in Andrew Carnegie's vision, aren't here merely to provide services to those who rely on the loan of paper: it was about the content. If some budget is spent on users who engage the library over the Internet, using their own e-reader ... terrific. The object is to expand reading, access to knowledge, using the library as curator to ensure a minimum set of standards ... a robust e-book collection is not an elitist diversion but indeed fulfills the mandate and original Carnegie vision.

Exactly. And libraries for digital content can be distributed and still provide service to people all over the world. While your local public library is a great place and serves a purpose. For a fraction of a cost a web server and storage system that could serve many more people. It would simplify research also.

Did you know the Library of Congress is going to archive every tweet ever made and make them available to the public?

BOb