Electronic Books

Electronic books (ebooks) provide their text in digital format so that it can be viewed on a computer display.   Formats that do not require a specialized viewer include plain text (.TXT), hypertext (.HTML) and Adobe Acrobate Reader (.PDF). Audiobooks in some formats can be played on a computer, but audiobooks provide the spoken word.

Project Gutenberg has 18,000 plain text digital books (most older works out of copyright) that it provides at no charge.   The University of Virginia Etext Center freely offers about two thousand public domain books for the Microsoft and Palm readers. NetLibrary thousands of books in a proprietary format - there is free access to some titles, but most require a subscription to view.

As electronic displays have beome clearer and as laptops become more portable, people are starting to shift their reading from the printed word to text on monitors.   When teaching a literature class, some students told me that they preferred to read the texts online (when available) rather than lug the heavy book.   They may also have felt they could read the book on their work computer with less problem than bringing the book to work.

^-DD