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ER&L provides a forum for information professionals to explore ideas, trends, and technologies related to electronic resources and digital services.

"The new report examines the "unbundling of content" from traditional containers (books, journals, CDs) and distribution methods (postal mail, resource sharing). As the boundaries blur between content, technology and the information consumer, the report shows how format now matters less than the information within the container."

Ebooks for business/ technology

"With digital technologies profoundly changing how researchers produce and share scholarship, universities must take a "much more active role" in disseminating that work. That is the central message of a "call to action" issued jointly today by the Association of Research Libraries, the Association of American Universities, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges."

"Overview A survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders reveals fascinating new perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered. The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. In this report, we cover experts' thoughts on the following issues: * Will Google make us stupid? * Will the internet enhance or detract from reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge? "

"A look at how the technology debuts at the recent Consumer Electronics Show will shape patron expectations"

U21 eBooks is a bold step in a new electronic publishing direction. The multi-media books that you will find on this site are written and designed specifically for electronic delivery, and go well beyond the simple digitizing of text. The on-going series is a collaboration between members of the Universitas 21 international network of leading universities and Melbourne University Publishing. Each book is edited by U21 academics working in the Humanities and Social Sciences, and consists of six to eight essays on international themes that lend themselves to innovative use of new technologies.

Princeton is partnering with Amazon.com, Inc. to pilot the use of an e-reader in a small number of classes during the Fall term of 2009. The project is sponsored by the Princeton University Library, the Office of Information Technology at Princeton, and the High Meadows Foundation, whose mission is "to support environmental sustainability; and to support a community of human interest through collaboration, inclusiveness and common values." A major aim of the pilot is to help determine if e-readers can cut down on the use of paper at Princeton, without adversely affecting the classroom experience.

"'E-journals: their use, value and impact' takes an in-depth look at how researchers in the UK use electronic journals, the value they bring to universities and research institutions and the contribution they make to research productivity, quality and outcomes. Journal publishers began to provide online access to full-text scholarly articles in the late 1990s, triggering a revolution in the scholarly communications process. A very high proportion of journal articles are now available online - 96 per cent of journal titles in science, technology and medicine, and 86 per cent of titles in the arts, humanities and social sciences. "

"In recent years, Americans have grown accustomed to living amid the smoking wreckage of various once-proud industries-automakers bankrupt, brand-name Wall Street banks in ruins, newspapers dying by the dozen. It's tempting in such circumstances to take comfort in the seeming permanency of our colleges and universities, in the notion that our world-beating higher education system will reliably produce research and knowledge workers for decades to come. But this is an illusion. Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They're also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows. In combination, these two trends threaten to shake the foundation of the modern university, in much the same way that other seemingly impregnable institutions have been torn apart. In some ways, the upheaval will be a welcome one. Students will benefit enormously from radically lower prices-particularly people like Solvig who lack disposable income and need higher learning to compete in an ever-more treacherous economy. But these huge changes will also seriously threaten the ability of universities to provide all the things beyond teaching on which society depends: science, culture, the transmission of our civilization from one generation to the next."

"Neumont University was founded in 2002 and is an Accredited Member, ACICS. It was established to pioneer a more effective way of learning and a better way to create innovators in the computer sciences. Our mission is to unite business, technology, and creativity to educate the innovators of tomorrow. At our campus in the Salt Lake valley, we offer accelerated Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Master of Science in Computer Science degrees."

A lot of headlines and blogs to the contrary, publishing isn't dying. But it is evolving, and so radically that we may hardly recognize it when it's done. Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological transformations since--well, since the early 18th century. The novel won't stay the same: it has always been exquisitely sensitive to newness, hence the name. It's about to renew itself again, into something cheaper, wilder, trashier, more democratic and more deliriously fertile than ever.

This is a lengthy 2005 article on Google's digital book preservation initiative. Google has undertaken an ambitious project, and the author details how exactly the books digitally preserved, how they are cataloged, and how ancient handwritten books are transformed into searchable text. At the time this article was written, it was still unknown as to what Google planned on doing with all the books it digitized and various options are discussed. Policy issues are touched on very lightly, other than the books added to the digital collection are largely those which are not protected by copyright law.

The article is interesting, but I truly question the claim that Amazon will sell $1 Billion dollars worth of Kindle hardware and software by 2010. What is relevant to our study is the reader comments. It's not a scientific random sample, but they are easily accessible opinions of the Kindle.