Knowledge Leadership Associates » e-Resources

The future: how will e-books affect libraries and the culture of reading?

Peter G. Underwood — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 16:14:12 +0000

Val Skelton has an interesting set of comments on the future of e-books in the 8 December 2011 issue of Information today Europe, where she reviews the proceedings of Online Information 2011 . Several speakers noted that the book industry is becoming somewhat like the music industry, with more consumers downloading material than entering a music store or bookshop. Inevitably, this will change the way in which media are marketed and will also have a profound effect on the way in which we shop, especially when the new generation of e-books become available. These are likely to offer a different experience of reading and provide better search and index facilities. What does it mean for libraries? Probably that services need to be geared to the “socially-networked” reader; however, what the impact might be in an African context has still to be explored.

The future: how will e-books affect libraries and the culture of reading? is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

How to make your own e-book

Peter G. Underwood — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 07:39:03 +0000

There are many e-books available in a variety of formats — but suppose the text you want is not available in an e-text format? What if you wanted to create your own e-book for personal use or to convert it from a common format such as Portable Document Format (PDF)? Two software applications may be useful. Sigil, is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) open-source, XML-based, ePub editor that is free and available in versions that will run under Windows, the Mac OS and Linux. Sigil allows you to produce an e-book in the ePub format (which is an open standard) by either importing text in HyperText Markup Language (HTML) format or by copying-and-pasting text from a document in a .txt format (other format import options will also soon be available). With the exception of the Kindle, the ePub format is accepted by all of the major e-book reading devices. In the case of the Kindle, processing the Sigil-produced text using Calibre will convert it to the format used by Kindle: .mobi — which is an abbreviation for “Mobipocket” — try http://www.ehow.com/facts_5563134_file-extension-mobi.html for further information. If you wish to read more about these possibilities, an article by Mark Sample, “Create your own e-book with open-source Sigil” (Chronicle of higher education, 12 October 2011), is a good place to start.

How to make your own e-book is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Finding free e-books

Peter G. Underwood — Sat, 07 May 2011 15:56:22 +0000

If you have not encountered the “Pearltrees” application before, here is a good example of how useful this graphic display of information and linkages can be: http://www.pearltrees.com/team/pvvu5/FreeEbooks/. This Pearltree maps out free e-book resources – “mouse hover” over a pearl to see a preview of the site and click on the pearl to be transferred to the site.

Finding free e-books is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates

Published Guide to free e-books

chrisarmstrong — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 14:52:50 +0000

The UK eInformation Group (UKeiG) – a special interest group of CILIP – has just published The 2011 Guide to Free or Nearly-Free e-Books – a 177-page annotated guide by Chris Armstrong (a KLA trainer). The guide lists over 230 sites offering either single titles or collections of titles, search engines and gateways for e-books. Each site has been reviewed so that users can form a clear impression of what it offers, as well as its strengths and weaknesses before visiting the URL. The directory is indexed by subject and title.

A full description of the Guide and a link to purchase can be found at http://www.ukeig.org.uk/content/publications.

Published Guide to free e-books is a post from: Knowledge Leadership Associates