Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Thing Sixteen: E-Books

I think the addition of PsycBooks to our e-book collection is really a terrific resource for our psychology students. When I provide orientations to the library I always emphasize that we have access to thousands of e-books through NetLibray, Safari Books, the Gale Reference Center,etc.

I think that e-books are definitely the wave of the future, with libraries increasing the size of their online book collections and adding fewer print titles. However, not all of the students I've worked with are interested in using e-books at this time. When I help students search on the online catalog, many prefer to look at just the print books which they can check out and have no interest in looking at the e-books.

I have to admit that my own preference is still reading a traditional book on paper. As the article on e-books from Educause points out, "For those who enjoy lying on a sofa reading a novel, e-books can seem anathema to reading for pleasure." If I want to read Emma or A Tale of Two Cities, I'm going to get a paper copy. It's nice that these works are available for free on Project Gutenberg, but that's not how I want to read them. I find reading books online to be somewhat cumbersome, having to click on Next or an arrow to go from one page to another.

I am constantly buying books on Amazon.com, and while I currently don't have a Kindle, I will probably purchase one in the near future just because I'm literally running out of room for any more print books! I've talked to a number of people who have purchased Amazon's Kindle, and they all tell me how much they enjoy using it.

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