For the next month I plan on researching and discussing the topic of e-Books. Personally, I have no experience with using e-Books. I have heard of them and know what they are but do not use them. I would much rather pick up a book (in print) and hold and read it. I plan to discuss the positives and the negatives and by the end of the month maybe my mind will be changed and you’re out there in cyberspace as well.
“An e-book (also: e-Book, e-book), sometimes called an electronic book, is an electronic (or digital) equivalent of a conventional printed book. The term has occasionally been used ambiguously to refer to either an individual work in a digital format or a hardware device used to read books in digital format - more specifically called an e-book device or e-book reader. E-books are an emerging and rapidly changing technology that can include other formats such as online magazines or digital books designed to be listened to as audio books.
The term e-text is a broader term than e-book and is also used for the particular case of data in ASCII text format, rather than books in proprietary file formats. It also includes the academic e-text, which commonly contains components such as facsimile images, apparatus criticus, and scholarly commentary on the work from one or more editors specially qualified to edit the author or work in question.
An e-book is commonly bundled by a publisher for distribution (as an e-book, an ezine, or an Internet newspaper), whereas e-text is distributed in plain text on the Web, or - in the case of academic works - in the form of discrete media such as compact discs. Metadata relating to the text are sometimes included with e-text (though it appears more frequently with e-book). Metadata commonly include details about author, title, publisher, and copyright date; less common are details regarding language, genre, relevant copyright conventions, etc.” (www.wikipedia.org)
http://www.wikipedia.org
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Hi Janine,
Interesting topic! I first became aware of e-books last year when I went to the Brooklyn Public Library web site: http://brooklynpubliclibrary.org. At this site there is a listing of its services and one is "eAudio, eBooks, Music, Video." This link takes you to the library's Digital Media Catalog and Net Library eContent Collection. To access the Net Library eContent Collection Catalog you have to have a Brooklyn Public Library Card. There are instructions given for downloading these resources to your computer/mobile devices such as an iPod. I have not yet utilized these resources in the classroom since they are for individual accounts and must be downloaded to a personal computer/mobile device.
I did utilize an e-Book in a previous course in which I had to locate information for a student via VRD (Virtual Reference Desk). The student wanted information on the tragedy which took place at Wounded Knee from the perspective of the Lakota Sioux. I happened upon this e-Book and gave her the URL. By the way, it's http://blackelkspeaks.unl.edu. This is an electronic edition of the print copy and it can be viewed without downloading it to your computer.
In a school media center e-Books can serve as valuable sources of information if such resources are unavailable and e-Audio Books can be of much service to those with visual impairments.
Thanks for the article. It was well organized and touched upon many aspects of your topic.
Nice introduction to eBooks, Janine. I look forward to learning along with you about how eBooks can be used to enhance learning!
~Katie~
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