This week, March 3rd-March 9th, is considered E-book week officially. (There is a bit of controversy whether it is this week or next, read more here.) I find that it is a good opportunity to talk about e-books, e-readers, and the library’s role in this second wave of electronic reading.

The failure of the first wave of e-books came from people who were unwilling to read a book on a computer screen. The infamous rocketbook went down in flames for this reason, and many others.

The second wave of e-readers have attempted to make changes so that they are more consistent with how people read print books. They are not back-lit (thanks to e-ink technology), they are very light and small (size of paperback), and they can hold more than one book (the Sony Reader can store 100 books on its internal memory alone.) So the industry is learning how to make changes to e-readers so that this new technology will be easily adaptable. You can read a recent debate between the two major competitors Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader here. As far as readers go, you cannot move their cheese and expect them to utilize your products. There are an overwhelming amount of readers that will never part with a printed book.

There are, of course, many problems with the e-readers. They are very expensive ($400 for a reader versus $20 for a book), the technology can break, the screen reader is not perfect, and (most importantly) you cannot freely pick and choose what content to put on it. For instance, Amazon Kindle only works with Kindle adapted files, the same with the Sony Reader. Amazon is much better because, well, they are Amazon. The Sony Reader books must be purchased from the Sony Reader store.

In my opinion, providing content on these devices, or future e-reader devices is the biggest problem when it comes to devices. This problem is not immune to e-readers. If you have an Ipod you know that you can only play ipod compatible music or movies. The format wars for e-readers, commonly referred to as the tower of e-babel. Format wars are not uncommon, but they limit the ability to use these devices.

In the past year, libraries have accelerated their roles in adapting to the e-book market. Overdrive is one of the top providers of downloadable e-books, audiobooks, music, and movies for their patrons. A big consortium is the Greater Phoenix Digital Library. How do libraries fare in providing digital content to its users via Overdrive? Generally, the content is excellent, but the formats are limited as is the convenience.

E-books and audiobooks provide the highest level of selection. The latest popular fiction and non-fiction can be found very quickly. The audiobook selection is also excellent. Upon viewing the catalog, I could tell that the audiobooks were very popular as there were very few that were not on hold. The e-books were much more plentiful. After some research, I noticed that many libraries that are going to overdrive or going with audiobook only selections. I would bet the reasoning was that the format is easier to download and the devices are more plentiful. I can get a cheapie mp3 player and play anything I download on overdrive. However, the e-books are quite complicated.

To download an e-book and read it on a e-reader, I have to downgrade my adobe reader to 7.0. I would have to look at the compatible devices. Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle are not part of the compatible devices. Therefore, I wanted to read something from overdrive, I would have to use a device like a pda or smartphone to do it. Not exactly the library market. We need to find a way to make this service work with popular e-reader devices. This is a good connection because I believe e-readers will be more popular if the content connected with services like overdrive. The reason why they don’t work now is that neither will read a Digital Rights Management protected pdf. In order for libraries to make the e-book/overdrive program a success, the e-readers must be opened, or Overdrive must provide content that can be used on any device. A good example of this is Manybooks.net They take the books from Project Guttenburg and make it easy to download the e-book you want into the format you need. It works with Sony Reader, Amazon Kindle, and you can even put a book on your Iphone. If overdrive worked in this way, you would have an explosive new model of electronic content that would boost a major segment of the population.

Many of these programs and devices are still in its infancy, but there is a golden opportunity for libraries to provide greater content to an increasingly digital world. Can we make the changes?

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