[Web4lib] Amazon's Kindle e-book reader

[Dan Lester]

Hello Grace,

Tuesday, November 20, 2007, 2:43:38 PM, you wrote:

> approach.  University and college textbooks 
> are a niche market that would really benefit from an e-book approach, 
> particularly an approach that let a faculty member annotate a reading,
> associate readings and assignments with each chapter, and enabled 
> students to share notes and discussion within the e-book.  It would also
> allow students to carry all their textbooks on a single device.

Actually, one of our professors has already done it.  She scanned her
copy of her favorite edition of Plato's _Republic_ and put the whole
120MB PDF up on her departmental website.

When I learned of this (because of students trying to print the whole
thing jamming up our print servers), I contacted her and advised her
of the copyright violation, etc.  She said she did it "because the
stupid library reserve people wouldn't put the whole scanned book on
reserve".  Well, duuuhhhhh.  I explained that this edition was in
print and she was breaking the law.  She was not interested in putting
up an out-of-copyright edition or putting the print book on reserve,
as she was "saving the student the cost of buying the book" and they
could just "read it off the screen" (despite the fact that it was
scanned in "newspaper microfilm format" rather than any sort of usable
format.  I think my neck would get kinky from reading it sideways, and
most monitors don't handle rotation.  She didn't get it that "just a
few students" were printing it out, at a cost approximately equal to
the cost of the book.

Anyway, after threatening to notify her Dean of the copyright
violation being put on a university server, it disappeared the next
day.  I imagine she just moved it to some server off campus, but at
least that's not my problem, unless they start trying to print it all
again.....

But, seriously, that niche market is indeed the best place to
introduce an ebook reader...assuming anyone could convince the
publishers to agree on a format, reader, etc.  And convincing them
that it might make them more money for less work than what they're
doing now.

-- 
Best regards,
 Dan                            mailto:dan at riverofdata.com