Wednesday, August 27, 2008

E-Books

Project Gutenberg is an incredible project that makes it possible to download or read books online. Obviously only books that are no longer subject to copyright can be made available and the site warns users outside the USA to check for copyright in their own country. The Project Gutenberg Philosophy is to make information, books and other materials available to the general public in forms a vast majority of the computers, programs and people can easily read, use, quote, and search. The books are text only because of problems of space, but they are planning to incorporate pictures as soon as technological advances make it possible.
I browsed the catalogue by author - letter O and found Scottish Ghost Stories by Elliott O'Donnell (1872-1965). There are various different ways of downloading - in HTML or plain text or Adobe (all zipped or not) or Plucker [free software]- which lets you read plucker files on your Palm organizer or smartphone. Or, of course, you can just read online. You can bookmark your e-book, just as you can a 'real' book. There is also a GoTo Page function, so you can browse the book. As my chosen book has many stories, I can choose which page to go to from the index A site like this is ideal for the classics, which are out of copyright, and I read a little of Emma by Jane Austen, one of my favourites. Project Gutenberg are looking for volunteer proofreaders for this huge endeavour, and this is certainly a place where library employees could help.
Of course you can't curl up with a computer in the same way you can with a book. Which is where Kindle comes in - a wireless electronic book reader, priced at around US$400. You can download up t
o 200 books to Kindle, in the same way that you can download songs to an IPod. Kindle does not need a PC to be loaded with books, blogs or papers - instead the content arrives via wireless. According to Amazon, around 90,000 titles are available for downloading. Bestsellers are available for download for as little as US10.00 - quite a bit less than the book price. You can also subscribe to magazines, newspapers and blogs on Kindle - but at a price. There would be little point in subscribing to the Herald online when you can view it for free on the internet. This looks very interesting and I look forward to seeing one. At the moment the technology used by Kindle is not much used outside North America, so it might be a while before it gets here. Reading on computer is unlikely to replace reading books, but this book reader might well. What role will we have then - renting out readers and facilitating book downloads?

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