E-book

“ Do not assume that for some occult reason you must classify and catalog your library precisely like some large public library with which you are familiar. Do not assume, if you are a trained cataloger, that there is any virtue, for instance, in subject cards. One subject heading that brings the book in touch with your public outweighs a dozen that do not affect it. To bring together man and book break all rules and strike out in all kinds of new directions. Your particular locality and your particular public may have special requirements that are present nowhere else. ”

“ Years ago the library was merely a storehouse and the librarian the custodian thereof. Today the library is a magazine of dynamic force and the librarian is the man who exerts and directs it—who persuades the community that it needs books and then satisfies that need, instead of waiting for the self-realization which too often will never come. Does not the librarian in some fashion interpret life and nature to his public, through books in general, even as the writer interprets them through one particular book? ”

“ The majority of the small library’s purchases are books as currently issued. For these the Publishers’ weekly is indispensable. Some librarians prefer to look at every book before purchasing, and arrange with publishers or booksellers to send large numbers of books weekly or even daily on approval. ”

“ But in certain cases this contact is of no special advantage. In particular, if a reader wants one{227} definite book and no other, he may get it as surely, or be informed as reliably that he cannot get it, and why, at a delivery station as at a set of open shelves. The only drawback in “long-range” work is that the user must wait longer before he can get his book, provided it is on the shelves. Against this wait must be set the time and cost of a personal visit to the distant library building. ”

“ Ebooks complement paper books. [Ebooks complement paper books] . Having an ebook is good. Having a paper book is good. Having both is even better. One reader wrote to me and said that he read half my first novel from the bound book, and printed the other half on scrap-paper to read at the beach. Students write to me to say that it's easier to do their term papers if they can copy and paste their quotations into their word-processors. ”

“ It's ironic, because one of the frequently cited reasons for preferring paper to ebooks is that paper books confer a sense of ownership of a physical object. Before the dust settles on this ebook thing, owning a paper book is going to feel less like ownership than having an open digital edition of the text. ”

“ At any rate, if we want people to use books or to use them more, or to use them better, or to use a different kind from that which they now use, we must lose sight for a moment of the material part of the book, which is only the box or the lead and acid of the storage battery, and fix our attention on the stored ideas, which are what everybody wants—everybody, that is, except those who collect books as curiosities. ”

“ Michael, and getting copyright clearance.
3. Someone, usually the same volunteer, scans and corrects the
text, or, if skilled in typing, types the book into an e-text.
4. Someone, often a different volunteer, second-proofs the
e-text, removing the smaller errors.
5. The e-text is sent to Michael for posting.
There are three barriers which make it difficult for most people to contribute:
1. Getting a PD book.
2. People without scanners and typing skills have no way of
turning a book into an e-text.
3. Even with a scanner, turning a book into an e-text is not
easy or quick. ”

“ Unfortunately, it cannot insure against dullness—publisher’s readers are but mortal, and the best will occasionally reject a pearl and take in a pebble.
When all is said and done, of course the intelligent man who has read a book carefully knows more about it than he could have found out by reading all the annotations and reviews in the world. The librarian of a small library can read every book under consideration. ”

“ The books were all in their places, but they were not in the delivery hall. The books in a library are quite as important as ever. There could be no library without them. They are the library. But we are laying more and more emphasis on the man behind the book. In nine cases out of ten he is a woman, and increasingly often he{275} is at the end of a telephone wire. We find that information slips over a telephone wire quite easily. It saves the business man an annoying trip and sometimes it saves our assistant from hearing all about the business man’s last attack of sciatica. ”

“ The internet became mandatory to find information, communicate, access documents, and broaden our knowledge. People no longer needed to run after information. Information was there, by the numbers, available on our screen, often at no cost, including for those who studied in a remote place, lived in the countryside, worked at home or were stuck in a bed.
The web became a gigantic encyclopedia, a extensive library, a huge bookstore and a full medium on its own.
Some people even read a book on the screen of a computer, a PDA or a (still very expensive) ebook reader. ”

“ Page 2 - this will be a new page in an e-reader
Testing You can test e-book formatting in 2 ways:
Viewing the online page in a browser's "mobile view". Downloading an EPUB or MOBI format and viewing on an e-reader or e-reader app. Only this method allows to you to check for issues like missed sections. You can also use the W3C EPUB validator tools to check technical correctness of EPUB files.
Online viewing You can use the "Mobile view" gadget under "Development" in your gadgets preferences, which shows the page in both the desktop and mobile mode, as well as simulating a narrow screen. ”

“ Slashdorks and other netizens have social life as rich as reading-circlites, but they don't ever get to see each other face to face; the only kind of book they can pass from hand to hand is an ebook. What's more, the single factor most correlated with a purchase is a recommendation from a friend — getting a book recommended by a pal is more likely to sell you on it than having read and enjoyed the preceding volume in a series! ”

“ It has been said that one may approve a book simply on the author’s name, or even on that of the publisher, and this is still true in isolated cases, but in these days, when both author and publisher are continually trying experiments, continually varying standards and style, each book must be dealt with individually. I do not see how one can decide whether a given novel should or should not be bought for a library without reading it through from cover to cover or hearing a report from someone who has so read it and who understands the wants and limita{148}tions of the American public library. ”

“ I see a huge expansion of digital reading with tablets that are easy to use and with a very large choice of ebooks thanks to electronic commerce and companies like Amazon. (...) I also use online books to learn the art of innovation! ”

“ A short history of ebooks - also called digital books - from the first ebook in 1971 until now, with Project Gutenberg, Amazon, Adobe, Mobipocket, Google Books, the Internet Archive, and many others. This book is based on 100 interviews conducted worldwide and thousands of hours of web surfing during ten years. ”

“ A person who comes to the library for the purpose of visiting the music room will find it, no matter where it may be, but the reader who needs to have his attention called to it or in whose case it must compete for use with other books, will never do so. Going back to our analogy with general literature we may note that when a librarian wishes to promote the circulation of some special class of literature or call attention to some particular book or books, the last thing he would think of doing would be to set them apart in a special room. ”

“ My e-texts may prove convenient substitutes for hard-to-get works in a course where both instructor and students accept the possibility of some imperfections in the text, but if you are writing a scholarly article, dissertation, or book, you should use the standard hard-copy editions of any works you cite. ”

“ The indifference of publishers to the important feature of the physical make-up of books appears from the fact that in not a single case is it included among the descriptive items in their catalogue entries. Libraries are in precisely the same class of offenders. A reader or a possible purchaser of books is supposed to be interested in the fact that a book is published in Boston, has four hundred and thirty-two pages, and is illustrated, but not at all in its legibility. ”

“ Following the line of least resistance, the activity of the library as an aid to the ownership as well as the reading of books is perhaps more likely to manifest itself in advice than in actual trade. Some libraries are now making special effort to give their readers information about book-prices, and about places and methods of purchase; and it seems likely that this kind of aid, since it can arouse no opposition, will increase.{85}
The position in which we find ourselves, of opposition to those who make and sell books, is unfortunate. ”

“ The general tendency in all instruction today, including even that in preparatory and high schools, is from what may be called the few-book method to the many-book method—a recognition of the power of the printed page for which librarians have always stood sponsor. The lecture, note-taking, text-book and quiz method of instruction is fast passing away in undergraduate as well as in graduate study. Textbooks are still in use in undergraduate and Master of Arts courses, but they have been relegated to a subordinate position. ”

“ For one thing, the Internet serves other print media. My recently published book, The Kids' How to Do (Almost) Everything Guide, would probably not have been done prior to the invention of e-mail because it would have cost too much in money/time to locate the experts. So the Internet is a powerful research tool for writers of books, articles, etc. ”

“ It turns out that, as near as anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is a great way to sell more of the paper editions, while simultaneously getting the book into the hands of readers who would otherwise not be exposed to my work. ”

“ Meanwhile the librarian, who is interested in advertising ideas, must do what he can with his material. There is still a saving remnant of interesting non-fiction, and there is a goodly body of readers whose antecedent interest in certain subjects is great enough to attract them to almost any book on those subjects. ”

“ In a library that uses the two-book system it is impossible to tell exactly from statistics, how many persons are drawing from the library at one time. Assuming, however, that the number is proportional to the number of books outstanding, we find in the New York Public Library that it has been increasing a little faster of late years than the circulation. In other{92} words, individual reading has not increased, and the great recent increase of circulation in our library and presumably in others also, is due to an increase of readers. ”

“ Furthermore, the book-browser, or desultory reader, is another who scorns aids to systematic study, or the scientific formation of libraries, and the field is thus narrowed down for the adventurous spirit who would aspire to guide other people on the highway of books. ”

“ We have all sorts and conditions of booksellers: one is a fanatic on the subject of libraries. He thinks that every public library should be dynamited. Another thinks that moving pictures will destroy the book trade. What rot! Surely everything that arouses people's minds, that makes them alert and questioning, increases their appetite for books." ”

“ The digital books are stored and read by the consumer in a small, low-cost reading device, called the Millennium EBook. Librius customers can obtain everything that they need to become "digital readers" directly from the Librius Web site, including EBook devices, thousands of book titles, and full customer support.
Digital books will not replace books, at least not in the very near future. They will be a new support for publishers to deliver the books through the Internet and for readers to store many texts in one digital support to be taken with everywhere. ”

“ Even those who would unhesitatingly seek a book for data in history, art, or mathematics would not think of going to books for facts on plumbing, weaving, or shoe-making, for methods of shop-window decoration or of display-advertising, for special forms of bookkeeping suitable for factories or for stock-farms—for a host of facts relating to trades, occupations, and business in general. ”

“ He wants to change the world through freely-available e-books that can be used and copied endlessly. Reading and culture for everyone at minimal cost, on a computer or a secondhand PDA costing just a few dollars, or even on a solar-powered PDA, which are starting to appear. ”

“ From April 2002 to October 2003, in 18 months, the collection of ebooks doubled, going from eBook #5000 to eBook #10000, with an average of 348 new ebooks per month in 2003. The fast growth was the hard work of Distributed Proofreaders, now going at full speed to digitize books and share the proofreading of ebooks between many volunteers. ”

“ In an article published in February 1996 by the Swiss magazine "Informatique-Informations", Pierre Perroud, founder of the digital library Athena, explained that "electronic texts represent an encouragement to reading and a convivial participation to culture dissemination", particularly for textual research and text study. These texts are "a good complement to the print book, which remains irreplaceable when for 'true' reading. (...) The book remains a mysteriously holy companion with profound symbolism for us: we grip it in our hands, we hold it against us, we look at it with admiration ”