Saturday, July 21, 2007

New Technology II – e-books

Last post I talked about CD books, I have now moved on to the next technological advances in the book world. E-books. Lately there seems to have been an increase of interest in e-books. An example is the libraries in Sweden, where you can borrow e-books. Also, there are publishers who only give out their books as e-books, meaning there is no official printed version of the book.

Despite the advantages of technology, I am a bit old school when it comes to books. I like to hold the book in my hand while I read.
There is however, one place where I think e-books can be very useful, at universities. As it is now textbooks are unnecessarily expensive and the book will be used for one semester only. Yes, you can resell it and someone else can use it, but I do think that e-books have better features than your printed textbook. Not only would it cost less, but you can also more easily search within the text to find the passage you need. At the end of the semester, you simply save the chapters you need and delete the rest (of course there are restrictions concerning copyright but as e-books become more common, this will be more clear)

Now to a somewhat different subject.
One of the most printed books in the world has gone online – The Bible. You can find it on voxbiblia.com. Here you can listen to the whole thing or for a fee download verses to your i-pod. It is not really an e-book, in the traditional version but I still think it is worth mention for those who like technology. I wonder if there is anything like that in other religions? Can you get the Koran or the Veda books online?
Josefine

My recommendations: Go to your library and see if they offer e-books, if not persuade them to do so!

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