All of us are familiar with the eBook market and have had numerous (or should I say countless) offers for these items thrown at us! Well – here’s another discussion of eBooks – the eTextbook. This recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Wednesday, September 2, 2009) by Jeffrey R. Young (“This Could be the Year of e-Textbooks, If Students Accept them.” http://chronicle.com/article/The-Year-of-e-Textbooks-/48305/ includes comments from several faculty and end users at Arizona State University who began an experiment last month to teach class using the Amazon Kindle eBook reader. The Amazon experiment includes seven other institutions but I have been unable to locate the names of the other institutions. If you know, please let us know!

Another article on eBooks and the Kindle was recently in The New Yorker (August 3, 2009) by Nicholson Baker. “A New Page: Can Kindle really improve on the book?” Baker is not overly complimentary of the Kindle interestingly enough. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/8/03/0908003fa_fact_bak...

More about eBooks and eReaders, Saw that the Sony eBook reader was featured at a recent event at the New York Public Library. Sony is reportedly committing to an open eBook standard enabling readers to download from a variety of locations on a variety of devices. See “Sony E-book Reader to Challenge Amazon Kindle.”
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/aug/26/sony-e-book-reader-to-cha...

And – guess what I just got in the mail? A PRINT BOOK!!!! It’s by Robert Darnton (Director, Harvard University Library) and the man who helped invent the discipline of the History of the Book.Darnton's book will be published October 2009 by PublicAffairs and is called The Case for Books, Past, Present, and Future. ISBN 978-1-58648-826-0. The book assembles the writings Darnton has done on this subject from a range of publications including the New York Review of Books where he is a regular contributor. I can’t wait to dig into this book!