VisorCentral.com (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/index.php)
- Visor & Deluxe (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/forumdisplay.php?forumid=1)
-- Ebooks from the library... (http://discussion.visorcentral.com/vcforum/showthread.php?threadid=1238)

I was just telling my wife the other night that it would be really cool if I could check out ebooks from the library rather than having to haul around a hard/soft back. PDAGeek.com ran this article which shows that my wishes have come true (at least in Charlotte and Mechlenburg counties, where ever they are ):

"I recently dabbled into the world of eBooks. Well, this week I read an interesting item that got the wheels turning. It seems that The Public Library of Charlotte and Mechlenburg County is offering library patrons the ability to "check out" eBooks. The library is offering both PC-based eBooks and portable eBooks that will work on Palm and Windows CE handheld devices. I think that this is definitely the future. Imagine being able to go to the library with your handheld and instead of searching through stacks of books and deciding which ones you want to "borrow", you can instead just make a note in your PDA, drop it into a syncing device, and have the books automatically download. This would be amazing! Of course, you'd still have the option of taking out a physical book, but for those of us who are trying to wean ourselves away from paper, this option would be incredible. Now I'm sure I've already got you thinking about how the library wouldn't be able to control the loaner period and a number of other logistical issues, but just dream with me for a minute. The only problem that I see with this whole concept is that it would definitely start to affect the sale of paper-based books. However, many people still don't have PDAs so I'm not too concerned about the sales of paper books dropping off too soon."

I would love being able to check out ebooks, and I'm sure that a reader could be developed to "shut-off" the book when it expires. What do you think?


------------------
Mark Beck <><

I think we could borrow from the music industry here. We could have a literature version of the MP3 war. But, there are now formats such as WMA and LiquidAudio which "expire" after a while. I'm sure such technology could easily be adapted to something as simple as text-based e-books.

------------------
-Vinny

You wouldn't even have to go to the library -- you could log in to the library's site and grab the books. And there'd be no reason to have to go through your regional branch.

It would be great to be able to visit a 'clearinghouse' site where you could select from any library's inventory. Like intra-library loan without the wait.

Jay

You probably already know this, but many public domain books are available in DOC file format at http://www.memoware.com/

Almost anything that is missing from the MemoWare site is available via Project Gutenberg (again, if it is in the public domain): http://www.gutenberg.net/

The problem with PG files is that they format poorly on the Visor. You need to remove extraneous line feeds. I've not dealt with this as of yet, but perhaps someone else here on VC has . . .

Having gotten hooked on reading on my Visor, and realizing that there were precious few Dickens books in doc format, I decided to convert everything Dickens ever wrote into doc format. Most of it is available through the Gutenberg project, and so I developed some stuff to help me do the conversions.

I have some notes up at http://www.rcbowen.com/imho/palm/ about the process of doing this conversion. It's rather Unix-centric, and uses Perl. It makes the conversion process very simple.

Craig, the guy that runs Memoware, is very helpful, and very receptive to new contributers. I've almost reached my goal of making the complete works of Dickens available for the Palm OS. See http://www.memoware.com/cgi-bin/mws...Charles+Dickens for the whole list.

And, of course, anything else that is in the public domain (50 years past publication date, in most cases) can be made available in Doc format. Help out Craig and the whole Palm world by converting your favorite author.

--Rich

Here is a big Kudo for rbowen for his work on the Collection of Dickens...

------------------
Rose's are Red
My Visor is Blue....

I'm thrilled that public domain material is being made available to Palm format! However, the reason I would like to see the library begin making material available, is because I would like to see more current material made available to be borrowed. I would like to see Clancy and King type novels available to read for free from the library. As well as reference type material, and texts. This would be an enormous advantage to checking out a physical book, especially reference texts, and carrying it around. Most of the novels in the library are hardbound, and large in size. Wouldn't it be great to get the latest novel compacted into palm-size and not have to pay the $6-$8 a pop that you will have to pay at peanut press or others? That�s why it is important to have a program that will �switch-off� the book when it�s �return-date� expires. I would be very interested to see how the Charlotte and Mechlenburg county libraries are handling this process.

Jay, I agree that books should be made available to be �checked-out� over the internet so that you don�t have to visit your local branch to get your palm book. However, I think that there will need to be some controls in place at the startup, and will force us to check them out from a brick-and-mortar library to begin with. A year or two from now, and we should be able to check out books from our local branch�s web site, and possibly from a national library site. I know one thing for certain, it won�t happen unless we take action to make it happen.


------------------
Mark Beck <><

[This message has been edited by LanMan (edited 04-10-2000).]

I'd imagine the publishers would want to limit the number of concurrent check-outs (downloads) for the works that weren't public domain or find a way to get paid for each check out.

As someone else pointed out, there are tons of public domain e-books available for free on sites like Handango (already converted for readers like TealDoc, just unzip, install). I've got literally dozens, from the complete Wuthering Heights to the Edgar Rice Burroughs "Mars" series, to Sherlock Holmes and Shakespeare.

The future is now

[This message has been edited by Mark Squires (edited 04-10-2000).]

well the whole not wanting to pay to take out a book thing is easily solved. All they need to do is put an add that comes on the screen whenever the ebook is opened for like 10-30 secounds. This would get them funding from advertisers. If they can make dsl free (costs anywhere from $39.99 to $120.00 normaly for a months service) then they can definitly make ebooks free or very very very cheep with a small add or two. In the future cable television and internet access will be almost free if not free, with all the adds on, the cable companies don't need to be getting like 40.00 a month to pay for there expenses. The only thing keeping half of the stuff that we buy from being free is that people have yet to realize how much people are willing to pay to get there company good advertising.
Come on people join the revolution, push for free ebooks!!!

Mark, I know that there are a ton of the classics squeezed down to palm-size. That's wonderful! My point is that I would also like to get first-run material from the library on the Palm/Visor. Just like we can get the physical books.

Libraries have begun carrying audio books on CD instead of just cassette, and now it's time for them to take the next step and carry ebooks. The logistics will have to be worked out. I'm sure publishers will not want to let libraries "lend" countless copies of their best sellers out. There will have to be restrictions in place.

r4bid, I don�t think I really want ad�s to popup when I�m reading a novel or text. I would hope that there will be another way to get the material from the public library, rather that allowing commercials to creep into my reading time (which is limited as it is).


------------------
Mark Beck <><