The 'E' Doesn't Stand for 'Easy to Use' (Wired Campus blog)

Even when they haven’t come littered with ads, e-books have been slow to catch on with scholars, students, and the reading public. Why haven’t they made more of an impact? According to David H. Rothman, author of the blog TeleRead, e-books just aren’t very consumer-friendly.

“In the past few decades, at least 20 clashing e-book formats have popped up, including the infamous Microsoft Reader,” Mr. Rothman writes for Publishers Weekly, “and no format has performed strongly enough to crush the others.” As a result, even high-priced e-book-reading devices often cannot display certain formats of digital text. Until the e-book industry develops products that can be more widely used, Mr. Rothman writes, consumers are likely to be frustrated. —Brock Read

Google Allows Downloads of out-of-copyright Books (TechCrunch)

Google is adding a feature to its Google Books service today to allow PDF downloads of out-of-copyright books. For example, to download a pdf version of Dante’s Inferno, see the right sidebar of this page.

Until now, Google only allowed people to read the out-of-copyright books online (and only snippets of copyrighted works). To search the database of available full titles, go to books.google.com and click the “full view books” option when searching. This new move contradicts earlier statements by Google that scans of out-of-copyright books would not be made available for printing.

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mobile phone audio tours

In my investigations of handheld and mobile technology applications in libraries, I have came across a number of companies that have worked with museums and cultural landmarks to create tours, guides, and more that are accessible via a cell phone. You're probably familiar with how many museums will have a two or three digit number next to a piece of artwork, and you rent a player at a museum and type in the number of the item in front of you to hear a short audio clip with more information. You can follow the numerical sequnce for a specific tour, or do a self-guided tour in any order you choose. Well, instead of requiring people to rent the special machines, and requiring museums to manage the rentals and equipment, the latest trend is to make this audio content available through a mobile phone. Users dial a special phone number on their own mobile phone, and use the phone keypad to select the number of what they want to learn more about.

One such company, Guide By Cell, is very interested in pursing further possibilities for the adoption of this technology in libraries. They are willing to provide three months of the service completely free to allow libraries to do pilot tests and see how this technology could be useful in their library. For example, here at the Simmons College Library, we are creating a first year orientation of our new library building that is accessible via mobile phones. The librarians managing the audio content simply call in and update their content similar to changing a voicemail message. This is easier for us right now because of the politics and equipment involved in recording and posting a podcast to the web - institutional politics and procedures for widespread podcasts are still in flux. Also, we know more users have mobile phones than mp3 players, and they can use the cell tour without having to connect to a computer or download the content. For potential users that have limited cell minutes or no mobile phone, we will also put the audio files onto an iPod they can check out from the Circulation desk.

If you can think of an application for this technology in your library and want to take advantage of the offer for three months of free service, please contact Dave at Guide By Cell dave@guidebycell.com

And I will keep you posted on how our Orientation cell phone tour trial goes this Fall.

Tracking the eBook Players Today

Walt Crawford has an article in this months EContent tracking the ebook market since 2000, and it's not a pretty picture.