Week 2: E-Readers

Thing #3 The origins of e-reading

Let’s go back in time now, to the magical far-off year of 1998. Y2K was not yet a serious issue, but we were definitely worried about the dwindling popularity of the song “1999” by Prince once the millennium hit. Nineteen European nations agreed to forbid human cloning, the Unabomber was sentenced to life in prison, and a little-known movie called “Titanic” won the Academy Award.

Oh and one other thing: Rocket eBook introduced the first portable electronic book reader.

Okay, now many objections have been raised about the fact that good old-fashioned books are not only cozier, they also smell better than those read electronically. Without getting into all that, I will say that the invention of e-ink (which is an e-reader display that looks like a page in a regular book) revolutionized the game and made people flock to Amazon for their Kindles. Experts have suggested that e-books should never have been saddled with the term “book” at all, because it gives people false comparisons – regular books have limitations that e-reading doesn’t because e-books have the ability to incorporate digital content. For example, an e-book can contain a dictionary so you can look up any word in the book, or it might have links to web pages for further information, or it might contain games. With e-books, the research can be contained within the book itself; or if not, a person can read the book on a tablet with access to the Internet and do the research right there. E-books, in this way, make us smarter because we have to do less work to find information, therefore we cram more research and learning into our lifetimes.

In fact, e-books gained popularity with more technical things, like textbooks, because e-book versions are less bulky and cheaper to produce. It took longer to catch on for popular fiction, but it is now possible to search for, buy, and download a book in 60 or less, all while not even leaving your bathtub! So back in the olden days of 1998, Rocket eBook ambitiously tried to sell their reader and failed epically – but just a few years later, Amazon changed the game with their e-ink display and the rest is ancient history. RIP Rocket eBook L

Here’s the boring history stuff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-book#History

Thing #4 Vow to become an expert on one type of e-reader!

The library isn’t just a house for books – it’s a house for knowledge. The staff are the best resource for literacy and learning, so for this week make a promise to yourself to become an expert on an e-reader. You can choose any device you want, and then read all the how-to instructions you can find until you feel you can rule the world! If you already own an e-reader, try picking a device with which you’re unfamiliar – then you’ll be an expert in at least two devices. Here are some places to start:

• Kindle user guides: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_kindle_nav_ts_guide?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200317150

• Nook user guides: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/nook/379003208 (click on a particular Nook model at the bottom of the page under “Nook Support” to read about that device)

• Kobo: http://www.kobo.com/ereaders

• Sony E-Reader: http://esupport.sony.com/US/p/select-system.pl?PRODTYPE=74

Thing #5 Take a look at different e-book formats

Okay, so you’re an e-reader expert, but what about e-book delivery systems? Not all e-reader makers also produce e-books. There are a couple of e-book formats we use for OverDrive library books: Kindle and Adobe EPUB. There is also an Open EPUB format, which allows readers to share books across different types of devices, and they don’t have any DRM (Digital Rights Management) restrictions, so they can sometimes be lent to multiple people at once. Kindle books are only compatible with devices that use the Kindle App, and EPUBs are compatible with all other devices, but Open EPUBs can be used across all devices and computers. All of these e-book producers are not necessarily publishers, but they make agreements with publishers to convert and manage their e-books. There are also formats for our downloadable audiobooks: MP3 is used with iTunes, and WMA is used on Windows computers and devices; Android operating systems can use either format.

Those are the bigs, but what about the smalls? There are other producers of e-content out there who offer Indie content and free content. Some examples are:

Google Books: http://books.google.com/bkshp?hl=en&tab=wp Much of the content on Google’s book site is free, and they also offer previews of books (you can see Google book previews attached to many of the items in our library catalog).

Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/ Many of these books are classics which are out of copyright, but Project Gutenberg also helps contemporary authors self-publish e-books. And by the way, I did a truly awesome research paper on Johann Gutenberg in the eleventh grade, and he was a super cool guy!

Bartleby: http://www.bartleby.com/index.html This is a great source for free literature, but it is Internet-only so you can’t transfer it to your e-reader.

The Online Books Page: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/ A pretty cool selection of literature, organized by theme and time period. This site also has links to banned books. These are Internet-only books, however, so you can’t transfer them to your e-reader.

In addition to the above options, tablet and e-reader producers also offer many classic and Indie titles for free through their sites. Many colleges and universities also have digital repositories, featuring e-texts written, published, and posted by faculty members. Even the U.S. Government publishes its own e-content through the National Archives: http://www.archives.gov/research/alic/reference/govt-docs.html. And of course, libraries have also become publishers, archiving their own records and even publishing books, mostly supported at the academic level by the Association of Research Libraries. In the digital age, anyone can run a small press!