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This article investigates readers' requirements regarding fiction electronic books, as compared to electronic textbooks. The EBONI Project, which defined a set of best practice guidelines for designing electronic textbooks, provided the methodology to support an exploration of the usability of fiction ebooks in a recent study. It was found that the general guidelines for the design of textbooks on the Internet can also be applied to the design of fiction ebooks. Additionally, in terms of the electronic production of fiction ebooks, the same study suggested that concentrating on the appearance of text, rather than the technology itself, can lead to better quality publications to rival the print versions of fiction books. This article discusses these results together with some from similar studies in order to draw a picture of what readers expect from fiction ebooks.

"The digitization of millions of books under programs such as Google Book Search and Microsoft Live Search Books is dramatically expanding our ability to search and find information. The aim of these large-scale projects-to make content accessible-is interwoven with the question of how one keeps that content, whether digital or print, fit for use over time. This report by Oya Y. Rieger examines large-scale digital initiatives (LSDIs) to identify issues that will influence the availability and usability, over time, of the digital books these projects create. Ms. Rieger is interim assistant university librarian for digital library and information technologies at the Cornell University Library." The paper describes four large-scale projects-Google Book Search, Microsoft Live Search Books, Open Content Alliance, and the Million Book Project-and their digitization strategies. It then discusses a range of issues affecting the stewardship of the digital collections they create: selection, quality in content creation, technical infrastructure, and organizational infrastructure. The paper also attempts to foresee the likely impacts of large-scale digitization on book collections.

Libraries already act like Google in many ways. Or I should say instead, Google acts like libraries. It is the mission of both to organize the world's information, to make it openly accessible, to find and present the most authoritative (by many definitions) sources, to instill an ethic of information use in the public, to act as a platform for communities of information, to encourage creation. So how could libraries, in turn, think like Google? Some libraries act as platforms for community content creation (one of my first efforts in hyperlocal community journalism, GoSkokie.net, made with the Medill School of Journalism, is now run by the library). In how many ways could a library act as a platform for the community to inform itself by providing tools and training for content creation? How can libraries collect the wisdom of the crowd that is their communities (e.g., creating collaborative town wikis and maps made by the community)? Librarians and their expert patrons could curate the web and create topic pages that would rise in Google search as valuable resources for the world (if your library is in Florida, it could maintain the best collections of sources for information on manatees or sunburns). What I'd really like to do is brainstorm this question with your readers on my blog: How could they be Googlier?

2006 San Jose State University study discussing the preferences of print vs. electronic resources in the university's library. Different disciplines prefer different formats. Access the full article through ScienceDirect.

Key idea: "The historical narratives that future historians write may not actually look much different from those that are crafted today, but the methodologies they use may need to change radically. If we have, for example, a complete record of everything

This is a great article that looks at the preservation of the cultural and historical record from a historian's perspective. He tackles such questions as how do we establish trust in intangible "documents?" How do we preserve the historical record in such a way that future people can access the materials?

spacer Abstract The University of California's California Digital Library (CDL) formed an Ebook Task Force in August 2000 to evaluate academic libraries' experiences with electronic books (e-books), investigate the e-book market, and develop operating guidelines, principles and potential strategies for further exploration of the use of e-books at the University of California (UC). This article, based on the findings and recommendations of the Task Force Report [1], briefly summarizes task force findings, and outlines issues and recommendations for making e-books viable over the long term in the academic environment, based on the long-term goals of building strong research collections and providing high level services and collections to its users.

The JISC/CNI Meeting: Transforming the User Experience

This summary paragraph is quoted directly from the article: "This Review is structured as follows (see also Figure 1): the section Digital Libraries, DOIs, and URIs starts by looking at the range of information in digital libraries, and how resources are identified using URIs on the Web. In the section Problems with Digital Libraries, we consider a fairly standard workflow that serves to highlight some problems with using these libraries. The following section, Some Tools for Defrosting Libraries, examines what Web-based tools are currently available to defrost the digital library and how they are making libraries more personal, sociable, and integrated places. Finally, the section A Future with Warmer Libraries looks at the obstacles to future progress, recommends some best practices for digital publishing, and draws conclusions."

This is also saved under another bookmark. We will have to find a print version of this article for review. North Texas does not carry this journal.

Stanza, iPhone's free e-book reader application, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and is installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to the app's creator Lexcycle.

The INKE group is comprised of researchers and stakeholders at the forefront of computing in the humanities, text analysis, information studies, usability and interface design. The network is led by Canadian scholars, but includes members from the USA and the UK. It is comprised of those who are best-poised to understand the nature of the human record as it intersects with the computer. Our work is divided into four key research groupings: textual studies, user experience, interface design, and information management.