[Web4lib] Re: iPod Libraries; Was: Bitten by the Portable Apps bug!

[Eric Hellman]

A more interesting question than whether you can fit a library on an 
iPod/treo/usb stick is

"what parts of a library would be useful to fit on an iPod/treo/usb stick?"

My iPod library (not including the music and pictures already there!):

1. a decent encyclopedia (Wikipedia probably will have this market to 
itself for reasons you have expressed)
2. a great atlas (Google Earth?)
3. all the world's Zagat guides and travel guides
4. dictionary and thesaurus
5. some generic medical references
6. USGS topo maps
7. a netflix-like set of the top 10 novels on my list
8. english-5language dictionary
9. the unicode standard
and of course the Gideons will have placed a bible there, if they've 
not done so already.

All that said, I wouldn't carry a device just for these things- as 
the ebook reader industry learned before it disappeared.

-- 

Eric Hellman, Director                            OCLC Openly 
Informatics Division
eric at openly.com                                    2 Broad St., Suite 208
tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216              Bloomfield, NJ 07003
http://www.openly.com/1cate/      1 Click Access To Everything