Group items tagged

As a part of the RIS Incubation process, I've been evaluating a number of popular e-book readers to see how viable they might be for classroom and/or library use. The readers I examined are: Amazon Kindle Amazon Kindle DX Sony Reader 300 Sony Reader 600 (aka Sony Reader Touch) Barnes and Noble Nook Apple iPad running Apple's iBooks software, Amazon's Kindle software, and Barnes and Noble's Reader software.

"Our application provides real-time copyright clearance and an ever-expanding content library along with the ability to add your own materials and articles from the web. And - peer recommendations from colleagues in your discipline can present new possibilities to enrich your courses. "

"Students' use of electronic books has grown little, if at all, over the past three years, according to international surveys of more than 6,500 college students conducted in 2008 and again this year. The finding, from ebrary's Global Student E-book Survey, surprised audience members when the survey report was previewed this week at the Charleston Conference, a gathering of librarians, publishers, and e-book vendors. Even so, presenters said they felt confident that the number of e-book users would grow more rapidly over the next six months, and that libraries and colleges must be ready to handle the demand."

"CourseSmart®, the world's largest provider of eTextbooks and digital course materials, today announced a new relationship with Western Governors University (WGU), in which the university will integrate CourseSmart's digital library into its online student portal, creating a comprehensive, single sign-on, platform where students and instructors can access their eTextbooks anytime, anywhere.WGU, a fully-accredited non-profit university with more than 26,000 students, began integrating CourseSmart's eTextbooks into its online learning environment in April 2011. "

The following are my notes from the presentation - Born accessible: making e-books fully inclusive from day one - held during the NISO- The E-Book Renaissance Part II: Challenges and Opportunities. Best efforts were made to ensure accuracy.

For the 2010 academic year, 50,000 of Ohio's 70,000 Introductory Psychology students have had a low-cost digital option available for the textbook of their instructor's choice. Developed within a University System of Ohio Project framework in collaboration with five leading publishers of psychology textbooks, the Ohio Digital Bookshelf Project emerged from three years of research and within a social network established among faculty, librarians, technologists, and the accessibility community.