A study of how University of Washington graduate students integrated an Amazon Kindle DX into their course reading provides the first long-term investigation of e-readers in higher education. Details on the study: The researchers interviewed 39 first-year graduate students in the UW’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering, 7 women and 32 men, ranging from [...]

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Flashback to fall 2009 and the pilot textbook study with the Kindle DX on 4 college campuses.  Result…failure due to law suit from the National Federation of the Blind.  The device, not accessible.  Luckily Amazon learned from this mistake and went back to development, producing their new Kindle with a voice guide that reads all [...]

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Some good reads out there in the blogosphere these last few weeks. Many of these are focused on the electronic textbook and/or implications of such.  Additional articles include analysis on the library and bookstore of the future and a comical video about digital publishing and DRM. Bookstore of the future: Books Plus? NYPL Joins HathiTrust, [...]

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eBook and Audiobook Download Websites for Libraries See Record Growth in 2009 — OverDrive “Blindness Organizations And ASU Settle Amazon Kindle DX Discrimination Suit” By Robin Wauters TBI Research claims Amazon currently sells 90% of all e-books The Kindle vs. the Nook Mortgaging the future of universities the e-book package way think | The Digital [...]

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Here’s one in the NYT – Cell Phone Apps Challenge the Rise of eReaders Publishing Point meeting with Michael Healy, Executive Director, Book Rights Registry Trial of e-textbook business models to start in UK Samuelson Says She Has Same Pricing, Privacy Concerns About Google Settlement – 11/18/2009 – Library Journal E-books go to college, but [...]

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David Rothman: How e-Books Could Smarten Up Kids and Stretch Library Dollars: A National Plan Two-faced gadget is e-reader plus netbook BookServer: A Plan to Build an Open Web of Books Google Editions Embraces Universal E-book Format Report on Nook news conference: B&N switching to ePub—plus other news conf tidbits College students resisting Kindle DX, [...]

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I attended the Adobe eBook Platform webinar today.  Some notes and thoughts are below: Dave Dickson, Product Manager, was the primary speaker Publishers want to produce eBooks in a single file format, but consumers want to purchase the eBook in the format of their choice Adobe’s role – to be an enabler.  Publishers author in [...]

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Listened in on a Kindle Loan program at the Handheld Librarian conference today.  Panelists from university and public libraries discussed their current Kindle loan programs.  Some highlights included: Each school had between 4 and 8 Kindles for loan, mostly Kindle 1 and 2 Circulation staff handled the loan/fines and the downloading of titles Program started [...]

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From Teleread   By David Rothman 6 Lessons One Campus Learned about E-Textbooks is the headline over Jeffrey R. Young’s article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. But perhaps it should read instead, “E-textbooks not ready for college students yet, at least in many cases.” Northwestern Missouri State University used the Sony Reader in a pilot [...]

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An abledbody news article last week discusses the new Kindle DX and it’s text-to-speech program that will read a book aloud.  According to the abledbody article, the Kindle does not go far enough to provide an accessible player to persons with disabilities.  The eBook menus and controls are not audio accessible, limiting access to those [...]

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