E-Books

The Amazon Kindle's first real competitor saw the light of day for the first time this week, and it looks very, very impressive. The Barnes & Noble Nook launched Oct 20th, and it stands toe-to-toe with the standard that has been set by the Kindle, even exceeding it in many ways.

The important bits: The Nook has the same 6-inch eInk screen as the Kindle, and is $20 cheaper (the Nook preorders for $259, while the Kindle 2 is still $279). The Nook also has a remarkable navigation system: a secondary color touchscreen display, directly under the eInk. It's a great-looking innovation, and one that gives the reader's interface flexibility that the Kindle just doesn't have. In my opinion, as you go through the specs, the comparison seems to favor the Nook over the Kindle. Here's the quick rundown of the things I get asked about the most when I talk about eReaders: Read More »

The release of the Kindle 2 has set of a firestorm of speculation about how e-readers are going to transform (destroy?) the publishing industry. Anything with the potential to transform reading has the potential to transform librarianship. If widely adopted, these e-readers have the potential to allow libraries new ways to house and circulate material. But could there be downsides as well?  Jason, Tom and Cindi weigh in with their predictions on how e-readers are going to change librarianship in coming years. Read More »

On Monday, February 9, 2009 at approximately 2:18 p.m. Central Standard Time I developed a bad case of Kindlekrankheit – a yearning and burning to own a Kindle portable ebook reader from Amazon.  It began the moment I read the technical specifications and watched the promotional videos for the new Kindle 2, which will begin shipping Feb. 24th.  Reading for the past 15 months about Kindle 1 – the older sister – had filled me with some respect and hope for the Kindle family, but no outright love.  I even blogged about the Kindle 1 back in November 2007.  Now I’m smitten. Read More »

In the past year or so, there has been considerable discussion here in libraryland about ebook readers. Still, the actual personal ownership of them is still reasonably low. So we don't have a lot of actual user feedback on how people like the devices, what they find useful, and what users really experience when reading on one. I thought I'd make an attempt to remedy that as much as one person on one blog can. Read More »

One of the pressing questions in the current publishing era concerns the effect of offering free online digital versions of books on the sales of the print versions.  Does a free digital version increase print sales, decrease print sales, or have no effect at all?  Only Rupert Murdoch's hairdresser knows for sure. 

The answer to that question probably depends on many other variables, such as: Read More »

For the past 24 hours I've been chuckling to myself and at myself, ever since I read the article in yesterday's New York Times (no-cost registration required) about the popularity of cell phone novels in Japan/>/>.  Evidently, quite a few young and often first-time authors have taken to writing novels on their cell phones in a style that would make Papa Hemingway proud:  short, pithy sentences, probably influenced more by text messaging than by American expatriates in Paris/>/>.  Read More »

Today Amazon.com officially announced the availability of its new portable electronic reading device and service, Kindle. The MSRP for the device is $399. The content will cost in the neighborhood of $10 per book, with newspapers and magazines priced accordingly. The highest priced Kindle book I was able to find in their catalog was Growth Strategies for Software Companies at $1,079.96--worth every penny if it produces results. Several of the available titles cost only a penny, including Confectionery Packaging Equipment. Sweeeet! Read More »

On Thursday, April 19th the Dominican GSLIS community came together for our annual Lazerow Lecture. I was especially excited because our speaker this year was my colleague Brian Kenney, editor of School Library Journal and a member of the 2nd University of North Texas Information Science IMLS-funded PhD cohort.
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In the days of yore it was not uncommon for universities in Britain and the U.S. to have a policy called "rustication." If a student acted up academically, he would be sent away from the university for a few months to think about his transgressions and, ideally, rededicate himself to the life of the university. As the term "rustication" implies, the concept in its pure form involves being sent down to the farm. I doubt that many rusticated scholars, such as the young Milton, Dryden, and Swinburne, actually slopped any hogs, but the thought of them knee-deep in muck provides some measure of solace and encouragement for us all.
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