Group items tagged

Literature for adults, YA, and kids--videos on interviews with authors, sections on For Writers and Audio & Video, and more for booklovers of all ages.

Bottomless free literature, courses, etc.

Free as in air, only classics and public domain titles though.

Proyecto Gutenberg

A site with 82 classic novels at last count as downloadable ebooks. Easy to download and comes in many formats for e-readers and PCs. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/English

Keep in mind that this experiment was focused on "classroom use" of Kindles, not necessarily "library use." Libraries have never supplied the resources used directly in the classroom for literature study (students don't markup library books!). At Cushing Academy, we are using Kindles to support recreational and personal interest reading rather than directly supporting the curriculum. In that role, they have worked very well.

Well, maybe not just like plain old books. Ebooks have many nice advantages for libraries, such as 24/7 access, always pristine and readable copies for the user, built-in dictionary (which our students tell us they really like) and, for the library itself, very efficient use of space and staff time.

"Last fall, Princeton launched a small experiment, replacing traditional textbooks with the Kindle DX, Amazon's large e-book reader. Almost from the beginning, the 50 students participating in the pilot program expressed dissatisfaction with the devices. Yesterday, a university report offered some more definitive findings. On the upside, students using the Kindle DX ended up using far less paper. (Paper consumption was generally reduced by 54%.) On the downside, students complained that the Kindle was fundamentally "ill-suited for class readings.""

Distributed Proofreaders (DP) provides a web-based method to ease the conversion of Public Domain books into e-books. By dividing the workload into individual pages, many volunteers can work on a book at the same time, which significantly speeds up the creation process.