Pc Clean often updates its blog of IT related news that has caught our attention. The blogs are not my thoughts, but of thoughts of people who study the finer sectors of the IT Circle
Last year Barnes & Noble rolled out their Nook eReader with some unique features, including the ability to loan books to people for two weeks. Today, Amazon joined Barnes & Noble with this capability as they try to catch up with the functionality of the Nook. You can check out the Amazon help page for all the details on loaning Kindle ebooks.
As you can see on that help page, this is still a process under development as it appears you can only loan and accept loans for Kindle book through your Amazon Kindle webpage with no loan initiation or acceptance from within the Kindle devices or various Kindle applications.
The mechanics of the system work similar to the Nook system where you can offer books up for lending and the recipient has seven days to accept, they can borrow it for up to 14 days and you cannot read it during this time, and if the borrower has the book or is in a country without rights to the book you will get the book back in your library after the seven day period ends.
Websites have launched for the Nook to facilitate loaning books and I imagine we will see the same thing happen with the Kindle as well. I am still more of a Nook fan with support for free public library books.
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Students have not yet ditched heavy textbooks, but the options for getting course materials digitally are growing.
One of the biggest bug bears for students is forking out for all the text books they need for their courses. The books cost a small fortune and once their course is over, will probably never see the light of day again.
However, shopping-savvy students increasingly are avoiding the queues and the effect of their wallet choosing to rent or purchase used textbooks online. But as a generation heads to school armed with multiple mobile devices, publishers are beginning to offer digital alternatives to traditional course materials.
Proponents of digital textbooks (or e-textbooks) tout their lower cost, instant accessibility, ecological sense, and potential to transform how students interact with course materials. Not to mention the fact that e-textbooks mean the end of backpacks heavier than a sack of bricks.
A complicated format
Nevertheless, while ordinary e-books are catching on like wildfire - Amazon reported that in July Kindle e-books outsold hardcover books - e-textbooks are not yet pervasive at traditional universities.
The medium presents a unique set of problems. "Textbooks are the most complex e-book that there is out there, with everything from pagination, notation, searching and indexing, copy/paste, the ability to post to social media, and then multimedia like video, audio, pictures, and slideshows... An e-textbook has to put them all in one package and do them well," says Josh Koppel, whose company, ScrollMotion, is working with publishers to bring texts to the iPad.
In a recently released study, the National Association of College Stores found that digital textbooks account for just two to three percent at member stores.
Part of the difficulty is that "in the higher education market, users' needs are so unique that all the right pieces haven't come into place yet", says Tracey Weber, executive vice president of textbooks and digital education for Barnes and Noble.
"Publishers, teaching staff and students each have a separate set of demands for what an e-textbook should be able to do."
Publishers, for their part, have to contend with the tricky realm of digital rights management (DRM) and strike a delicate balance between protecting copyrights and giving students adequate access for studying effectively. Common restrictions limit the number of devices that the e-textbook can be read on and how much of the text can be printed, shared, and copied/pasted.
Furthermore, though today's students may be tech-centric, they grew up learning from printed materials. Many find it tiring to read on a digital screen for long periods of time, or dislike the limitations of the applications used to read materials.
One well-documented example is Amazon's Kindle DX pilot trial program. Students at seven US universities used the first-generation Kindle DX in place of traditional textbooks and then reported on the classroom effectiveness of the 9.7in e-book reader. The results were underwhelming, as many (though by no means all) students found that the device didn't suit their study habits.
Burgeoning innovation
The benefits of going paperless - and predictions that e-textbooks will comprise 10 to 15 percent of the market in 2012 (and steadily climb upward thereafter) - have prompted a slew of new ventures from giants like Barnes and Noble and from small start-ups. Each such effort attempts to address the rapidly changing needs of students and the array of challenges currently hampering widespread adoption of e-textbooks.
Many publishers offer digital titles directly through their own e-bookstores. But because each uses its own format (and because students are unlikely to obtain all of their textbooks from the same place), students must download and use several software applications to read all of the texts. To make e-textbooks as widely available as possible, publishers also offer their titles in a number of different marketplaces. CourseSmart, a venture founded in 2007 by six higher-education textbook publishers, is one of the market's biggest players, with more than 12,500 titles available by subscription. Book-selling giant Barnes and Noble is making strides in the market with a new software application, Nookstudy, for accessing e-textbooks from its catalogue and for integrating with the popular course management software, Blackboard. Not to be left out, Amazon has made e-textbook titles available on its Kindle e-readers and on PCs, as well as through Kindle applications on mobile devices (iPad, Android, Blackberry, iPhone).
As you can see on that help page, this is still a process under development as it appears you can only loan and accept loans for Kindle book through your Amazon Kindle webpage with no loan initiation or acceptance from within the Kindle devices or various Kindle applications.
