It might not be a great idea to bring your laptop to the swimming pool, but organizers of the World eBook Fair hope to encourage people to curl up with a good book on-screen this summer.
The event, which will run from July 4 to August 4, is being organized by Project Gutenberg, a volunteer group that has been digitizing public-domain books since the 1980s. During the fair, a nonprofit group called the World eBook Library Consortia has agreed to allow free downloads from its collection of some 250,000 e-books and online documents, access to which usually costs $8.95 a year.
Those who want to take e-books to the pool might want to try reading them on cellphones or iPods. “We get a lot of people reading Project Gutenberg eBooks on PDA’s, iPods, pocket PC’s, cellphones, etc.,” said Michael S. Hart, the founder of Project Gutenberg. “These people grew up with Game Boys, so to them it is just the right size, while the older generations think it’s an awfully small window to read through.” (The Chronicle)
Does it make sense to read entire novels in e-book form, or should e-books be used mainly as searching tools for research purposes?
