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By Dr.
Philip Baczewski, Director of Academic Computing and User Services
I recently acquired a very
handy device. I'm the proud owner of a
BeBook ebook reader. My BeBook can
hold 1000 books in its internal memory and 2000 more on a 1 Gigabyte SD
card. It can play music, and display multiple file formats including
several commercial ebook formats as well as PDF. And it runs Linux.
Recently, ebooks have been gathering steam partly thanks to the Amazon
Kindle and the Kindle 2.0 which was just
announced. The high profile of Amazon.com brought new visibility to
the ebook concept, which had been around for several years. Sony also
offers and e-book
reader and was one of the first to market with the Librié in 2004.
But a range of ebook readers are on market with many more
options
available to the ebook buyer than ever before.
Most of the ebook readers on the market utilize the same display
technology, called E Ink. An E Ink
display is a high resolution grayscale screen which is readable in
direct sunlight as well as low light situations and is viewable from any
angle. This makes reading an E Ink display more like reading a paperback
book than reading a computer, PDA, or Smart Phone screen. The E Ink
technology is what makes it worth adopting such a single-purpose device
as an ebook reader. The E Ink technology is low power as well and
features a persistent display which only requires power to update the
page. This yields over 7000 BeBook page turns on a single battery charge.
The idea of an electronic book is not new.
Project Gutenberg has been in
operation since 1971, or about as long as the Internet has existed in
any form. Project Gutenberg has created digital versions of over 27,000
public domain books, including most of those you were supposed to have
read in high school.
Of course, any ebook reader's usefulness will depend upon the
kind of
books you want to read. Not all newer titles are available as ebooks and
those that are may still be a bit pricy. For example, Amazon's price for
the hardback edition of Barak Obama's
"Dreams from my Father" is about $24, while the Kindle edition
is $9. A different paperback book, however, was offered used by Amazon
for about $3.50, while the Kindle edition is about $7. Most commercial
ebooks sell for between $6 and $9.
Another downside to commercial ebooks is that they are governed by the
U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 (DRCM), which restricts
the use and ownership of digital formats. When you buy a paper book you
have certain rights as the owner, including reselling that book, lending
it to a friend, etc. Under the DRCM, those rights don't necessarily
apply to a digital copy of a book.
In fact, you may not even be able to read a commercial ebook out
loud.
Still, an ebook reader's utility goes beyond just books. Reference
documents, html pages, and other textual works can be included in your
pocket library. If we have enough imagination, some day, perhaps all of
a college student's text books could be held on one ebook reader.*
This would make the ebook one of the staples of educational pursuit,
just as the laptop is today and the fountain pen was 100 years ago.
* We're already starting to see signs that
this is on the way:
Med school converts to e-Books
University of Puerto Rico medical students
will be among the first to have electronic textbooks throughout
matriculation
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