eBooks in libraries

By Michael Wiebrands 

Image via Digital Trends (source).

There has been a major shift in popular reading formats in the last three years from the paperback book to the eBook. Many people now buy from the Amazon Kindle store and the Apple iBook store. What many people may not know is that public and university libraries provide access to eBooks as well. Curtin Library itself has a catalogue of over 70,000 eBooks. As a result you no longer have to come in to the library to borrow books, you can now access books from the library wherever you are.

Academic libraries have been providing eBooks for about a decade, with them being traditionally designed for access from your computer. To truly enjoy the books though it pays to have a modern mobile device that you can read with on the couch or on public transport. There are two main types of mobile devices you can use to read books from libraries, these are tablets such as the Apple iPad and the Google Nexus 7, and dedicated eReaders such as the Kobo and Sony Reader.

Image by uncafelitoalasonce (source).

eReaders are dedicated book reading devices that use e-ink to display text. eReaders are great because they can go for over a month without a battery recharge. Unlike tablets they also work very well in direct sunlight so they’re great for when you want to travel. Unfortunately newer eReaders only work well with modern eBook formats and not so well with all library eBooks. Curtin Library has some specialist collections that you can use with eReaders. Look here for more information.

Tablets let you do much more than read books. With this added power though comes downsides with the need to recharge your device more often and reduced visibility in sunlight. On the other hand you can more easily read both modern book formats as well as more traditional formats. To find out more about how you an access Curtin Library eBooks on your tablet look here for more information.

Image by Jay L. Clendenin (source).

Over the last year I have been reading almost all my eBooks on my iPhone, although most of the books I read are fiction and easily available from eBook stores. It tends to be the device I have all the time and I tend to read lots on public transport. Library materials for phones still have a way to go but progress is being made. All the eBooks usable on eReaders (above) work on mobile phones. Also many of the general library eBooks work adequately on phones with improvements being made every day. If you’re interested in investigating library resources for your phone you might like to check out Curtin Library’s recently redeveloped mobile website at m.library.curtin.edu.au.

About the AuthorMichael Wiebrands is the manager of the Access Team in the Robertson Library. Find out more about him here

Source and Courtesy:  http://blogs.curtin.edu.au/national-year-of-reading/national-year-of-reading/ebooks-in-libraries/

E-books, e-library - for your reading pleasure

E-books, e-library - for your reading pleasure (Thinkstock photos/Getty Images)

An online library that also offers a pick-up and drop facility for books, getting to browse through various language newspapers at one site, or mastering the intricacies of math and science at the click of a mouse - welcome to the exciting world of e-books that beckons at the Delhi Book Fair. 

The Sep 1-9 Delhi Book Fair is focussing this year on e-books and e-publishing, and visitors at the fair can now purchase books online. 

The online library hookedonbook.com offersreaders thousands of titles to choose from and also provides pickup and drop of the books. 

Another site, readwhere.com, allows readers to browse through their choice of newspapers,comics and magazines and one can also purchase digitized books online. 

Both these e-sites are another innovative venture - meritnation.com - that provides online teaching material to students from Classes 1-12. The online tutorial has simply written texts, videos and cartoons to make the chapters easy, as well as weekly tests and a forum for asking questions. 

Vikram Khosla, the owner of hookedonbook.com, said he has 40,000 titles in his collection. 

"Subscribers can browse through the collection and list their 10 preferred titles. We will get their top favourite book delivered at their doorstep," Khosla told us. 

Once the person has finished reading, a call or a mail to the site will get a man to pick up the book. "While coming to pick up the book our man will bring along the next book in the subscribers' list," added Khosla. 

How will they ensure books remain in good condition? 

"Our books will be checked and the subscriber will be asked to sign on a slip of paper before the book is given to him." 

The rates begin from a starter plan of Rs.200 a month, for two books per month, and goes up to Rs.1,000 per month for unlimited number of books to be rented in a month. 

Khosla said he hit upon the idea when his daughters, who used to frequent libraries in the US, "started buying books after coming to India and realized there are very few libraries here". 

Those living outside Delhi can also subscribe. Their books will be couriered by Fedex, he added. 

Khosla is also planning to set up leisure reading rooms in south Delhi's Saket area soon, equipped "with bean bags, soft music, and light coffee - where people, including kids, can spend hours enjoying the reading experience". 

The online tutorials site, meritnation.com, is a venture by naukri. 

"We provide all study material online, including through visuals and diagrams," Priti Vajpayee, an official of the site, told us. 

Students can also post their queries online and an expert answers their query. 

"We also host live tests so that students are well prepared," said Vajpayee, adding the site gets "7,000 sign-ins a day". 

The e-tutorials cost Rs.2,200 for a year for two subjects, while a package of all the subjects costs Rs.4,500 a year. Tutorials for attempting the IIT-JEE engineering exams cost Rs.14,000 a year. 

Another interesting site - readwhere.com - offers readers a whole array of vernacular language newspapers, magazines and comics. 

It also allows booksellers to go for e-publishing of their books and has an online bookstore from which readers can order books online. 

"Ours is a free site where readers can access newspapers and magazines," said Arun Nair, an official for the managers of the site. 

"Our focus is getting various language newspapers. We sell e-books too," Nair told us. 

He said the site had developed a software that would prevent copying of paid content. "An e-book can be accessed by the buyer but not downloaded," said Nair. 

The buyer can save the e-book in an app memory, which could be accessed without any internet even while travelling.

Read More News at:  Times of India

LexisNexis Legal eBooks Now Available in the Amazon Kindle Store

“LexisNexis® Legal & Professional (www.lexisnexis.com), a leading provider of content and technology solutions, today announced that a large selection of its legal eBooks are now available in the Amazon® Kindle® Store.  Additionally, LexisNexis® eBooks on Kindle or through Kindle reading apps are also accessible through the recently launched LexisNexis® Digital Library solution. “As legal professionals and law students steadily embrace and use eBooks, our strategy is to provide them a wide diversity of options rather than forcing them into one format, one reader type or one application,” said Bob Romeo, CEO of Research and Litigation Solutions at LexisNexis Legal & Professional. “Offering LexisNexis eBooks via the Kindle store and reading applications is an important new component of that approach, and we are pleased to offer our collection on one of the world’s leading eBook shops.”

Fostering reading habits in youth

WEB LINKS

In an attempt to bring students closer to the world of books, INDIAreads Online Library launched ‘Literathon’, a nationwide initiative to foster greater interaction between students and the literary world.

Its inauguration recently took place at the Conference Hall, Delhi University in association with Delhi School of Economics. The event kick-started with launch of ‘Poor Little Rich Slum’, a book by Rashmi Bansal and international management consultant Dr Deepak Gandhi. 

There was also a book reading session by Member of Planning Commission Dr Syeda Hameed and Gunjan Veda who read from their new non fiction-  ‘Beautiful Country: Stories from Another India’.  

The event was a sincere endeavour to provide students and faculty with an opportunity to get acquainted with books and interact with renowned authors. Literathon comprises a host of activities including book launches, talks, interactive sessions, book readings, book bazaars, creative writing workshops and online and on-the-spot competitions.

Gunjan Veda, CEO of INDIAreads says, “The initiative has been conceptualised to make not just books but even their writers more accessible. Literathon is a celebration of books and we are hopeful that we spread this celebration in every state of India.”

More News at : http://www.deccanherald.com/content/269663/fostering-reading-habits-youth.html

Endpaper: When the book is a book

PRADEEP SEBASTIAN

The HinduOn the fortunes of the book: Jean-Claude Carriere (left) and Umberto Eco. Photos: S.S. Kumar and T. Singaravelou

Dips into a long, rambling conversation on the nature of the book by two artists: Umberto Eco and Jean Claude Carriere .

Umberto Eco and Jean Claude Carriere carried on a long, rambling conversation on the nature of the book over several sessions at their two homes. The conversation was ‘curated’ by editor Jean Philippe Tonnac and became a book. They called it This Is Not The End Of The Book; (and the semi colon is very much part of the title).

Disappointingly, there’s very little here, bibliographically speaking, about the printed book. And even less about the digital book, though the jacket blurb opens with how difficult it is these days to get away from discussions on whether the printed book will survive the digital revolution.

Unfamiliar with e-readers

The scriptwriter and the author surprisingly seem unfamiliar with newer e-readers; references to e-readers feel antiquated for a fairly recent conversation on the nature of the book: Eco speaks of how impractical it is to take the computer to read in bed. No one brings up the Kindle or the iPad.

We are living for the first time in an era, Eco says, where there are “so many beautiful, light-filled bookshops to wander in...” Their conversation turns interesting when they speak of book hunting in forgotten antiquarian bookshops, the times spent in old libraries, and the architectural beauty of the printed book. When they speak of the book in various cultures, the book as an idea, it is less interesting — and that’s most of the book. Though Carriere rambles more and Eco is more precise, Carriere is the more interesting for his wide ranging, multicultural references. Eco dully stays Euro-centric, referencing Greek-Latin and Spanish book history, while Carriere talks of Persian manuscripts, Sufi poets, the Mahabharata, the dance of Shiva and ancient African libraries (like the great ancient library in Timbuktu).

The argument of both these wonderful book artists is that “the book represents a sort of unsurpassable perfection in the realm of the imagination.” In a leisurely style, using personal stories, the two men meditate on the “good and bad fortunes of the book”. A perspective of the book that emerges is that it isn’t valuable in itself as an object because not all books are good or great or masterpieces. So why save what is mediocre or trashy? So, the book as an object isn’t meant to be sacred, and is not to be made a fetish. For Eco the book becomes a way of storing cultural information that one does not need to be burdened with; the book is ‘a fridge’.

Eco scores when he predicts that whatever forms the future book will take, it will have to look and feel like the traditional printed book. “The book is like the spoon. Once invented, it cannot be improved.” Electronic media formats are notoriously ephemeral, observe both writers. Eco recalls once hunting for an early version of Foucault’s Pendulum, which he had on floppy discs, but he couldn’t find them probably because they were thrown out. If it had been a typed manuscript, he points out, he would have found it somewhere in the house. After years of resisting having a film library of his own, Carriere gave in when the DVD came and began making his film collection and now the DVD is on its way out. But the tenacious incunabula, early printed books from the 15th century that both men collect, remain the same.

Passion for books

Eco admits that, though he speaks passionately of the printed book, if there was a fire in his house the first thing he would take with him is his 250 gigabyte hard drive. Both men are collectors of rare and expensive books; they reminisce about tracking down certain editions they were obsessed with and divulge their collecting criteria: Carriere’s is eclectic; one special focus is a collection of Persian books. Eco’s primary focus is collecting ancient, rare and antiquarian books on fakes.

Eco has 50,000 books, out of which 1,200 are very rare. Carriere has around 40,000 not counting his large collection of legends and fairly tales. The book he values most in his collection — the one he would grab if his library was on fire — is a 1490 volume with wonderful illustrations, plates and folded pages. Carriere would grab an “Alfred Jarry manuscript, as well as one by Andre Breton, and a book by Lewis Carroll that contains a letter he wrote.” Carriere shares an anecdote about a book scout he knew who rode in a moped carrying antiquarian treasures in a plastic bag on its handlebars!

The Gutenberg galaxy isn’t the only thing discussed; Eco and Carriere go further back and invoke parchments, scrolls, manuscripts. In ancient Rome, Eco tells us for instance, little shops sold scrolls. You dropped into one of them before heading into the library (or soon after) and asked for the latest bestseller. A week later something, say, by Virgil was copied just for you and kept ready to be picked up.

Eco also tells us that only now we know that old libraries — like those fabled monastic medieval libraries — did not hold thousands of volumes; perhaps around 400 to each library. The printed book, masterfully typeset, illustrated, bound and printed in its infancy, was expensive; 400 was a lot of copies to have in one collection.

Umberto is at his best when he speaks of books and his childhood. When he was five or six, his grandfather who had been a typographer and a bookbinder died and Eco discovered his bookshelves which held stacks of books waiting to be bound. They were all kinds of books from splendidly illustrated adventure books to science books to erotic books. They were in boxes in the cellar and Umberto would be sent down to collect coal to heat the house, and he would linger with these boxes.

Once, more recently, Eco was looking for a book in his library and his secretary suggested ordering the shelves but Eco protested; he wanted to roam and look and find it somewhere rather than go straight to it. Carriere speaks of sometimes just looking at his books. Not touching them or taking them out. Just standing and looking. And remembers coming upon Jean Luc Goddard more than once just staring at cans and cans of his film reels arranged on shelves!

Eco says keeping an old clock in your library wards off worms; the minute vibrations of the tick-tock of the clock through the night keeps the worms tucked into the woodwork. What would happen, asks Tonnac, to their books after their death? Eco hopes to leave it to libraries and not break it up; Carriere will let his wife and children and friends decide.

More News at : http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article3721965.ece

‘We provide e-books to about 200 universities’- Jagdish Arora

IN THIS AGE when knowledge and information is passing through technological changes, Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET), which is an autonomous Inter-University Centre (IUC) under the University Grant Commission (UGC), aims in providing all the Universities with academic resources. Jagdish Arora, Director of INFLIBNET tells Goter Gangkak about the organisation, the initiative that would help avoid plagiarism and the importance of e-books.

EDITED EXCERPTS

What is INFLIBNET? How did it all start?INFLIBNET was started out as a major programme by UGC under Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in 1991. It became an autonomous body in 1996. Since then INFLIBNET has been providing resources to universities all over India in the form of e-books and database.

How many universities or Institution comes under it? Is Delhi University also a part of it?
INFLIBNET provides educational resources to about 200 universities apart from more than 100 other institutions. Delhi University also comes under INFLIBNET but it lacks the basic infrastructure and sometimes faces the problem of excessive downloading.

What about the universities and colleges in rural areas? What are the major challenges you face in such universities
Mostly private universities sign up for access but we do provide resources to colleges and institutions in rural areas. Rural universities usually lack proper infrastructure. We provide basic infrastructure like setting up computer systems and educating the students how to use them in such universities.

Book sources say that e-books kill authenticity of print. Why do you support
e-books?
I believe an e-book is equivalent to print. If you compare the procedure that is required in creating an e-book, it is the same as print in terms of editing, proof reading and spell-check. Also, an e-book can help people with disability to read better in terms of visual elements.

What has INFLIBNET got in store for academicians?
We are working on a programme which will help academicians keep a check on plagiarism in their thesis and research works.

More News at: http://www.tehelka.com/

With eBooks, Indian publishers turn new page-- Archana Khare Ghose

On September 14, 2011, well-known bookshop Borders closed its last New York store. By the end of the month, this chain of bookstores with 226 outlets in the US had shut shop. That itself was indicative of the churning in the publishing industry of the world's largest books market, the US. Sale of printed books was declining and those of eBooks rising. It's the same story elsewhere in the West, where this industry is seeing a growth in eBooks. However, India is yet to see a similar impact.

But change may be imminent. According to a FICCI report, India has an estimated 600 million book readers and, with Penguin, the country's largest English publisher, releasing 250 new titles from the last week of June, eBooks seem to have finally found a foothold. The books include 'The Book of Buddha', 'Dreams in Prussian Blue', 'Farewell Song' and 'Ideas of a Nation: Subhash Chandra Bose'.

HarperCollins too should be ready to announce its e-titles in a month's time, while ACK Media, publishers of 'Amar Chitra Katha' among other popular titles, have gone on record saying they would launch eBooks this year. They, however, declined to be a part of this story.

"The driver for the eBooks market is the usage of computers, internet and mobile phones. And India is not just a rapidly growing market for new technology, but technology itself has evolved enough for comfortable reading on various devices," says Ananth Padmanabhan, VP (sales), Penguin India.

According to the latest World Bank report, India has 70 mobile subscriptions per 100 people with one of the highest average mobile data speeds. Padmanabhan says the bigger challenge, however, is to see how many e-readers the country can have.

India doesn't have a mass-scale reading tradition. According to FICCI's report, India has a low per capita expenditure on books per annum — Rs 80 as compared to Rs 4,000 in the UK.

However, Lipika Bhushan, head (marketing), HarperCollins, says that the figure for users of various e-devices is constantly growing. "Most of these are young Indians who are very active online. Though no publisher can say with surety what impact these figures will have on the eBooks market, a change will positively come."

Rahul Srivastava, director (sales & marketing), Simon & Schuster India, says, "According to a survey conducted this year among 10 countries, nowhere have more people bought and downloaded eBooks than in India, where 24% have tried at least one."

This is also that chunk of readership which has made genres like metro reads and college romances popular, adds Bhushan. "About 5-7 years ago, a bestseller would be sold in the range of 3,000-5,000, but now 50,000 is nothing." Padmanabhan concurs, "About a decade back, Penguin bestsellers sold 10,000-15,000 copies; today, that figure stands at half-a-million."

The biggest push for eBooks comes from the growth of online shopping.

Flipkart, the largest online bookstore in India, was established in 2007 and broke even in March 2008. According to FICCI, Flipkart claims to have at least 100% growth every quarter since its founding. Flipkart CEO Sachin Bansal in a report on book piracy mentioned that the estimated size of the online book market here stood at Rs 1 billion in 2011.

The figures for book publishing in India are no less impressive — it's estimated to have an annual turnover of $1 billion, making it the the seventh largest book publisher in the world and the third largest market for English books. No wonder Bhushan says that the eBooks market in India is an addition to the physical books market and not an alternative — precisely why publishers are cautious about pricing.

While in the West an eBook may come for one-tenth of the price of an actual book, in India that would mean the industry hurting its own hand as it has one of the cheapest prices for books.

But that is an issue that is likely to be sorted out soon. And publishers' optimism about a healthy eBooks market in India in the next five years may not be misplaced.

Source-http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-22/india/32788012_1_ebooks-lipika-bhushan-harpercollins

Library of Congress Releases “Aesop For Children”, A Free Interactive eBook App For iOS

Although LC has releases two other iOS apps (see below) this is their first ebook app release.

Version 1.0 of the app is accessible here. It’s a free download.

From the iTunes App Store:

The Aesop for Children interactive book is designed to be enjoyed by readers of any age. The book contains over 140 classic fables, accompanied by beautiful illustrations and interactive animations.

“Aesop’s Fables”—also called “the Aesopica”—are a collection of stories designed to teach moral lessons credited to Aesop, a Greek slave and story-teller thought to have lived between 620 and 560 BCE.

Aesop’s fables are some of the most well known in the world and have been translated in multiple languages and become popular in dozens of cultures through the course of five centuries. They have been told and retold in a variety of media, from oral tradition to written storybooks to stage, film and animated cartoon versions—even in architecture.

The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today. Younger scholars will be able to trace the origin of aphorisms such as “sour grapes” and “a bird in the hand.”

This interactive ebook is presented by the Library of Congress, adapted from the book “The Aesop for Children: with Pictures by Milo Winter,” published by Rand, McNally & Co in 1919. This work is considered to be in the public domain in the United States.

Download the App (via iTunes App Store)

Other iOS Apps From LC include the Congressional Record and the Library of Congress Virtual Tour

Source: http://www.infodocket.com/2012/07/20/list-top-10-hot-articles-in-library-and-information-science-july-2012/

Online lending library gives reading a new lease of life

• By Gautam Sunder
Coimbatore

School students enjoy a story-telling session.

But with school students increasingly being hooked to their laptops and iPads, the worry is that many in the current generation might never fully appreciate the joy of books.For years, libraries have been thronged by children searching for their favourite authors or preparing to spend a lazy weekend curled up with a novel in hand.

But the same technology that snatches away the joy of holding a book also seems to find a way to keep the current crop hooked to it. Along with all other goods and services that have gone from brick and mortar to their online avatar, so have libraries.

Online lending libraries have become a popular way of piquing interest among today's children to give book reading a shot, much to the delight of parents and teachers.

One such initiative that has seen success is iloveread.in (skip the dots and pronounce it)

“ILR was founded by Amrutash Mishra and Sahil Gore in Chennai, and launched in Coimbatore early this year.

People have the liberty to browse through a wide collection of books belonging to every genre possible and get them delivered with just a click.

We have tie-ups with several schools in Tamil Nadu where we have begun the Book Lovers Program for Schools (BLPS). A series of activities at BLPS equips teachers to handle storytelling sessions for the children.

The stories complement the curriculum and are for students upto class 8. It's a great platform for them to be exposed to the wonderful world of stories. Add-on libraries are also implemented in schools”, says R. Anitha, who runs ILR in Coimbatore.

“We conducted an interactive event recently in Coimbatore, and it was a great success. Ms. Shilpa Krishnan,a veteran storyteller from Chennai and a part of the BLPS program, enthralled kids in a fun session. She also spoke to parents about the importance of art in a child's life”, she adds.

Anitha signs off by saying, “In order to ensure we keep up with emerging trends in reading, we add atleast 400-odd books to our library each month.

People who aren't net-savvy can register and avail the service by phone as well. We have plans to infuse corporates with the love of reading soon too!”

Maya Gowri, a working young mother from Coimbatore comments, “My youngest son Vishwa is in class 4, and as much as I'd like to take him to the library every week, we parents sometimes do not find the time.

An online library is a great opportunity for us to inculcate the habit of reading in him, and through the convenience of a laptop.

Also, it's very useful for working professionals like me to come home and catch up on some much-needed lost reading from over the years!”

More News at : http://www.deccanchronicle.com/tabloid/education/online-lending-library-gives-reading-new-lease-life-698

Many Kindle, Nook owners are clueless about borrowing library e-books

BY MIKE FLACY

As Amazon and Barnes & Noble continue to promote the use of e-readers among customers, libraries haven't quite been able to get the word out about free e-book borrowing.

According to a new study conducted by Pew’s Internet & American Life Project, nearly six out of ten library patrons weren’t even aware that they could borrow e-books for free from their library. Furthermore, only twelve percent of Americans above the age of 16 have borrowed an e-book from their local library in the past twelve months. Specific to technology, fifty-three percent of tablet owners didn’t know about the availability of library e-books and 48 percent of Kindle and Nook owners were just as uninformed. In addition, approximately half of respondents that have read at least one e-book in the past year weren’t aware about library e-book borrowing .

Of the small portion of people that have checked out an e-book in the last year, half of those people haven’t been able to locate a particular book in an electronic format or found a long waiting list to get access to the book.

Since libraries pay for a limited number of copies to legally lend out, many libraries use an email waiting list to notify a patron about the availability of the book. Once the book is returned by another patron, the next patron on the waiting list receives an email and has a limited amount of time to download the title. An additional eighteen percent of those people were able to locate the correct book, but the book format wasn’t compatible with their e-reader or tablet. 

Americans that do have a library card are much more likely to own and use more technology than people without cards. Pew researchers found that eighty-seven percent of library card holders owned their own desktop or laptop computer compared to sixty-seven percent of people without a library card. However, that difference was much smaller with mobile phone ownership. 

Likely interesting to companies like Amazon that sell e-books, over forty percent of the people that regularly read e-books checked out from the library purchased the last book that they read. In addition, library card holders also read about twice as many books per year as people without a library card. 

This is likely one reason why Amazon promotes the Lending Library feature in order to encourage Kindle owners to use the e-reader more and discover new books. When it comes to finding new books, an e-book borrower is much more likely to get a book recommendation from an online review over a recommendation from a staff member at a bookstore or a librarian. 

When Pew researchers asked librarians about the influence of e-books on the library, many librarians stated that library patrons were visiting the physical library location less and seeking out information about the library’s collection through the Internet. In addition, the purchasing policy is shifting at most libraries to free up funds to purchase more copies of e-books. Money to fund these purchases is being moved from physical, printed copies as well as audio books on compact disc. The role of librarians is also shifting to a larger role in technical support in order to help library patrons download copies of e-books to their devices as well as search the library catalog through an online site instead of a local database.

Read more: http://www.digitaltrends.com/gadgets/many-kindle-nook-owners-are-clueless-about-borrowing-library-e-books/#ixzz1ymNgM4DF

E-book library borrowing takes slow pace: Study

New York: E-book readers have been relatively slow to borrow digital works from the library, frustrated by a limited selection and by not even knowing whether their local branch offers e-releases, according to a new study.

The Pew Research Center published a survey Friday that reports around 12 percent of e-book users 16 years and older downloaded a text from the library over the past year. Earlier in 2012, Pew issued a study showing that around 20 percent of adults had read an e-book recently.

Simon & Schuster, the Hachette Book Group and other major publishers have limited e-book offerings to libraries or refused to make any available, citing concerns that the ease of free downloads would hurt sales. Lack of awareness may be another factor. Around 60 percent of those 16 and older couldn't say whether their libraries had e-books.

Pew's Internet & American Life Project study, conducted with nearly 3,000 respondents between Nov. 16 and Dec. 11, 2011, suggests that library patrons trying to borrow digital texts have been deterred by the selection and by not having the right e-book device. Just over half of respondents said their library did not have the book they were looking for and nearly 20 percent found that the device they owned could not receive a given title.

Nearly half of those who have not borrowed an e-book said they would be "very" or "somewhat" interested if they were lent an e-reading device with a book already downloaded.

Officials from the American Library Association have been meeting with publishers in an effort to work out a system that would satisfy both sides. On Thursday, Penguin Group (USA) announced a pilot program with the New York and Brooklyn library systems that will make e-books available six months after they first go on sale. Penguin had suspended its e-book program with libraries last year.

"I applaud Penguin's decision today to re-start e-book sales to libraries so that we may again meet our mutual goals of connecting authors and readers," library association president Molly Raphael said in a statement.

One statistic reported by Pew should please publishers and librarians: Those who borrow e-books from libraries tend to read more - 29 books a year - than readers who don't use the library (23 books). But library card holders also are more likely to borrow, as opposed to buy, a book compared to those without library cards.

Overall, around half of those surveyed said they had bought their most recent book. Around 15 per cent said they had borrowed a copy from the library.

Fore More Info, Please Click on: http://ibnlive.in.com/news/ebook-library-borrowing-takes-slow-pace-study/267599-11.html

Most U.S. readers unaware of e-books at libraries - poll

By Joseph O'Leary

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Though Kindles and Nooks are becoming almost as common as books, more than half of all U.S. readers don't know they can borrow e-books from their local library, a Pew Center poll showed on Friday.

The poll showed 62 percent of readers didn't know if their library had e-books for lending, and only 12 percent of Americans 16 and older who read e-books had borrowed at least one from a library in the past year.

"The most important thing libraries can do is make sure e-books are accessible through the rest of the library system," said Micah May, the director of strategy at the New York Public Library, about raising e-book lending awareness.

Of those who had borrowed e-books, 66 percent said their library's selection was at least "good," while only 4 percent thought theirs was "poor," the survey said.

There are difficulties, occasionally, with the process, with 56 percent of borrowers saying their libraries didn't have a particular e-book while 52 percent found there was a waiting list to borrow a book they wanted. Some 18 percent had incompatible readers for the e-books they wanted.

May said most e-book lending problems were due to the current library e-book distribution system. On Thursday, book publisher Penguin agreed to digitally lend its books to the NYPL, joining Random House and HarperCollins to become only the third of the "Big Six" publishing companies to lend e-books through libraries.

Simon and Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette don't lend new e-books through libraries, according to Publisher's Weekly.

Print readers expressed interest in e-books, though. Of those who don't borrow e-books, 46 percent said they'd be at least somewhat likely to borrow a device pre-loaded with a book, while 32 percent would be at least somewhat interested in learning how to use an e-reader or download e-books.

Those who borrow e-books are much heavier readers than those who don't, averaging six more books than non-borrowers last year.

The lack of knowledge about libraries and e-books means many readers still buy; 55 percent of e-book readers with library cards prefer to buy their e-books, while 46 percent said they prefer purchasing printed books.

The purchasing numbers lessen with those who borrow e-books; 33 percent of e-book borrowers prefer to buy e-books and 57 percent prefer to borrow them.

Reading is still important to many Americans. Fifty-eight percent of those 16 and older have library cards, while 69 percent said the library was important to them.

The Pew poll surveyed 2,986 Americans aged 16 and older by phone with a margin of error of 2 percentage points. (Reporting By Joseph O'Leary; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Eric Walsh)

Source:http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/wire-news/most-us-readers-unawaree-books-at-libraries-poll_721171.html

Kindle a Love of Reading for Your Kids

Kindles, Nooks and other electronic reading devices are quickly gaining in popularity. A few years ago, only the biggest of bibliophiles had an e-reader. Today, more and more people are purchasing devices or installing apps onto their phones.

Digital sales are steadily increasing and publishers, recognizing the changes in the marketplace, have begun releasing a greater variety of books into e-book format. While the technology is still new and there are a few bumps along the way, such as the Amazon pricing scandal and the debate over DRMs, e-books are here to stay and many people may find that they’re much more versatile than traditional books.

Kindles for Parents and Kids

The Kindle provides a great opportunity for your whole family. No matter the age of your child, everyone can benefit from some aspect of the e-reader’s technology. Kindles allow kids nearly unlimited access to books, making them a convenient form of entertainment while on car rides, at the doctor’s office, waiting in line at the grocery or other occasions where kids may become bored and restless.

Unlike regular books, the Kindle is small, lightweight and surprisingly durable; you don’t have to worry about tearing book covers, dog-earing pages or cracking the spine. Of course, e-readers are more valuable than books, so parents may be concerned about the risks of dropping them, having sticky liquids spilled on them or other kinds of rough handling. Some e-reader companies are creating kid-friendly versions, so that may be a good alternative for some people.

What Are the Benefits of e-Readers for Kids?

• You can store nearly unlimited numbers of books so avid readers always have a selection to choose from
• You can download any public domain book for free, so classics are instantly available
• In addition to reading books, kids can play games, solve puzzles or even surf the web on some e-readers
• Most e-readers have an option to read the book aloud or download audio books for younger readers
• You can adjust the text size to aid reading comprehension
• Books can be divided into reading lists so a family can share a device
• You can load Kindle or Nook apps onto your smart phone
• The reading device comes with a built-in dictionary to look up unfamiliar words

What are the Drawbacks of e-Readers for Kids?

• Expensive technological investment to buy an e-reader
• Technology is fairly fragile
• If something happens to the e-reader, you may lose all the books you own or be unable to install them to another device
• You must keep the e-reader charged
• Not as many children’s books are released to the Kindle as adult books
• Many e-readers don’t support full-color illustrations and picture books
• Parents may be tempted to give a child an e-reader instead of spending time reading with him

Overall, e-books can be a great addition to a child’s life and education, but they’re not the right investment for everyone. Focus on providing the best solution to your family, and don’t forget that reading with your young child is always better than relying on digital babysitters.