What I Learned Today…

In the past I’ve given you tips on how to get Project Gutenberg MARC records in to your ILS. Now I can tell you how to download ebooks directly to your Dropbox account so that you can access them on all of your devices. The Gutenberg website has recently added support for Dropbox meaning you can download ebooks directly to your Dropbox account in the cloud. Once you authorize access,  [ Read More ]

I’ve been a Nook user until I switched to my Nexus 7. Now I can read Nook or Kindle books. I’ve updated my Amazon wishlist for Christmas, but was wondering how my friends and/or family would be able to buy me kindle books so I did a little research. For those of you who are new to the giving and receiving of ebook gifts, this guide might be helpful. Basically  [ Read More ]

This from Ars Technica: Two bills were signed in to law in California recently. One to create the textbooks and the other to establish a California Digital Open Source Library to host them. According to a legislative summary, the textbook bill would “require the California Open Education Resources Council to determine a list of 50 lower division courses in the public postsecondary segments for which high-quality, affordable, digital open source  [ Read More ]

StoryBundle is a neat new site that offers you bundles of (usually 5) indie DRM-Free ebooks for whatever price you want to pay. If you pay $7 or more for the bundle they’ll throw in 2 bonus books. This is a neat way for new authors to be discovered and for you to get ebooks on the cheap! Discovered via CNET.

There was an interesting article on NPR about the art of cover images and the new world of eBooks. Chip Kidd, an associate art director at publisher Alfred A. Knopf, gave a talk about the art of cover image design. Still, as Kidd tells NPR’s Linda Wertheimer, all books — electronic, hardcover or paperback — need covers. “They need some kind of visual representation, whether you’re going to be seeing  [ Read More ]

This article on Engadget talks about Microsoft’s patent to put ads in Ebooks: We have ad-supported e-reading today, but the ads always sit on the periphery at most. That makes us more than slightly nervous about a newly-granted Microsoft patent for contextual e-book ads. The development would make the pitch based on not just targeted pages but the nature of the book in question: a sci-fi novel might try to  [ Read More ]

Back in March I attended Computers in Libraries and at one of the social events I learned about a new site to try and get more books released as open access – that project is called Unglue.it: Unglue.it is a a place for individuals and institutions to join together to give their favorite ebooks to the world. We work with rights holders to decide on fair compensation for releasing a  [ Read More ]

A couple years ago I brought a private project that shared Project Gutenberg records to your attention. Well, yesterday I thought I would go out and see if they had any more records to share so I could put them in to my Koha ILS demo site and found something awesome! Project Gutenberg has their own MARC exports (and other formats as well) that you can grab with over 40,000  [ Read More ]

Andy Woodworth was up first in the Ebook Trends talk. Andy’s talk was super fast and super awesome. I do hope that he shares his talk with us all so you can read that instead of my shortened summary. Andy started by summing up his opinion of the current Ebook frontier as “Everything is amazing and no one is happy” He summed up all of the technology changes that have  [ Read More ]

My husband and I chose the Nook color as our ebook reader last year. Let me start by saying that we love them! I do however have two policy issues to complain about (and I’m pretty sure that these are not Nook or Barnes & Noble specific). This weekend my husband and I went on vacation. We took nothing but our Nooks with us and spent the weekend on the  [ Read More ]