a friends idea for creating an ebbok. It looks more like a scrapbooking site. I don't know how legitimate we'd be using something like this or if it even fits our project, Just one of my friends suggestions.. .
See my post about ebook formating concerns
So, how many volumes do you need to read on your e-reader to break even? With respect to fossil fuels, water use, and mineral consumption, the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it's 100 books; with human health consequences, it's somewhere in between.
All in all, the most ecologically virtuous way to read a book starts by walking to your local library. ♣
The digitisation of the reading experience itself is the least radical aspect of this process. Although a minority of titles offer sounds and images, most e-books ape their paper counterparts. Even on an advanced device like the iPad, the best reading applications emphasise clarity and clutter-free text. What’s truly new is the shift in power that the emerging order represents.
Marginalia was more common in the 1800s. Samuel Taylor Coleridge was a prolific margin writer, as were William Blake and Charles Darwin. In the 20th century it mostly came to be regarded like graffiti: something polite and respectful people did not do.
Paul F. Gehl, a curator at the Newberry, blamed generations of librarians and teachers for “inflicting us with the idea” that writing in books makes them “spoiled or damaged.”
Studs Terkel, the oral historian, was known to admonish friends who would read his books but leave them free of markings. He told them that reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation.
marginalia enriched a book, as readers infer other meanings, and lends it historical context. “The digital revolution is a good thing for the physical object,” he said. As more people see historical artifacts in electronic form, “the more they’re going to want to encounter the real object.”
this is interesting but how do they KNOW what the "original copy" is. and I just submitted a random homework assignment as a "book" to IA as a test to see if we could upload a copy of our ebook that we wrote as a class for ENGL 295. Are they just going to store those "books" people randomly upload as well? Who determines what goes in the hardcopy archive?
For anyone who wants to get an extended analysis about the effects of the Digital Age on publishing, this is a great place to start if you have the time.