[WEB4LIB] RE: why ebooks and when?

[rich at richardwiggins.com]

A handful of dental schools, including NYU, announced last year that they would provide all 4 years of required reading on a single DVD.  They went with a proprietary technology that requires a Powerbook, but you could imagine e-book or XML versions of the product.  The four year cost of the DVD is *higher* than for print books, but NYU claims you win because it's updated every semester:

http://www.nyu.edu/dental/vitalbook/faq.html

and

http://www.notesys.com/Copies/NYT2Mar90Dental.htm

Fits with the idea that e-books become compelling for specialized uses that require massive amounts of content, searchability, and small consumption of space. 

Let's hope these dental schools don't also use distance education for clinical courses. :-)

/rich

On Fri, 31 August 2001, Fazia Begum Rizvi wrote:

 BUT I would *love* to get 
> that two-ton "Learn Javascript in 14 Days" tome as an e-book. It 
> would have been so much easier on my aching back when I was in 
> college if all my textbooks had been available as e-books! It's 
> frustrating to have all that space in my home office's bookshelves 
> taken up by huge manuals and guides that'll be defunct in two or 
> three years - rather than freeing up that space for my crafts. And 
> the cost of those ... if I could get them cheaper as an e-book, that 
> would be even better.

_____________________________________________________

Richard Wiggins
Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on the Internet
rich at richardwiggins.com  http://richardwiggins.com