While I’ve seen lots of “our library has ebooks” stories, this one give concrete examples of how ebooks can make a library much more accessible to its patrons. The Park Ridge (IL) Public Library has contracted with e-vendor Overdrive to provide e-titles via its catalog. Patron Paul Pacholski, on business in Singapore
logged on, accessed the Park Ridge e-book system and browsed their 500-title collection. He picked a guide to Hong Kong – the city he would travel to next – and “Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut. With his high-speed Internet line, he checked out the books and downloaded each in less than a minute.
The utility of such…
…is quite nice. When I was away pursuing my master’s, e-books were the most convenient things to read. Reading on an older PDA was nice because on-campus it looked like I was actually doing work or something.
For sanity breaks to read some novel or such and put down the latest epic tome by G. Edward Evans, e-books definitely were an enabling tool. I recommend such.
PDA Reading
I also use my PDA to read while on the subway or other times. I recently read a list of classic boy’s stories, and saw that I had read all of them asa kid except for “Moonfleet” by John Meade Falkner. I had never heard of this book, and it is not in print in the US. I was able to download a copy from http://www.blackmask.com, and thoroughly enjoyed the action yarn that starts a search for pirate treasure by the coffins in the underground vault of an English church thumping against the floor ater a flood, and startling the congregation. Its good to be able to read good books while using travel time, standing in line time or other brief snatches of wasted time.
Re:PDA Reading: using travel time
I’ve got one of those odd library jobs that sends me a travelin’ very often, and I’ve become a HUGE fan of the eBook’s time killing powers. I’ve spent many an hour sitting in airports reading old classics on my Palm now.