Nintendo DSi and the JISC eBooks for FE
Posted by: Chrissie Turkington on: September 9, 2009
Well, I’m disappointed. I’ve tried the JISC eBook for FE collection on the Nintendo DSi, and confirmed what my colleague Angela from Bury College mentioned to me that they are not viewable.
Out of the box the DSi doesn’t come with the browser. To get the browser you firstly need to use the built in wireless facility to connect to a wireless network. This can be a bit fiddly if you use security on the network which uses anything other than a WEP key. However, I was impressed that it did have space to put in proxy details as well as a WPA key on the advanced setup, so there’s a possibility it should connect to the interest through whatever wireless connection you have. Once connected, the browser is then a free download from the DSi shop.
My suspicions that not being able to view the books in the JISC collection could be a problem with Opera (as the DSi browser is based on Opera) are unfounded as the site works with no problems in the Opera browser on my laptop – so it is very possibly something else. What happens is that when you want to view a book using the DSi browser through the ebrary Quickview, you are presented with a blank screen accompanied by all the menus. It could get very confusing to users because it doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong and what you see could be misinterpreted as the interface making it impossible to view any of the listed books. Everything else seems to be working as it should – even the Shibboleth authentication! Very disappointing. It would have been a lovely little eBook reader for all libraries if this would have worked. I’m going to contact Anna at JISC Collections to see what she says.
In the meantime I did manage to have a look at the Classic eBook Collection which is available to buy from Amazon and all good video game stockists (I sound like an advert!) and could be distributed in all libraries. I really liked it. Take a look at the picture on the left of our DSi showing Jane Eyre. You can read the full book, or find out about the book and/or the author. The Classic eBook Collection has 100 complete fictional books classic books (with a possible 10 more that can be downloaded) from authors such as Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare it’s possible that there are quite a few titles from the English Literature curricula on here. It’s definitely worth a look. Anyone wanting to have a look at the DSi and the collection, just drop me a line and I’ll bring it along next time I see you.
The only downside with the Classic eBook Collection I could spot was with the capability of downloading additional books. This game only has support for WEP secured wireless connections as this was the only capability that the DSi’s predecessor had (for which this “game” is designed). Therefore if you have a WPA connection, or a connection that requires proxy settings, you will probably not be able to access the additional books – that is until you find someone with a WEP secured wireless connection 
I’ll keep you all updated on what Anna says and whether viewing the JISC eBook collection on a DSi will ever be possible.
5 Responses to "Nintendo DSi and the JISC eBooks for FE"
November 5, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Hi Chrissie, very interested in your remarks. I bought the HarperCollins 100 books collection last year and read from it on my kids’ DS. I was extremely impressed with the readability which, I felt, exploded the argument that ‘Ebooks are all very well, but you’d never want to read a novel on one’.
I’ve just acquired a DSi and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to get it to connect to the interweb through my wireless router at home I think I did this with a WEP key…)
However, perhaps like you, what intrigued me most was the game’s claim that ‘additional material could be downloaded’. My first thought was to go to Project Gutenberg and try to download a book onto the console but, although I can view the texts online, they’re not nicely formatted into pretend ‘turnable pages’ like the books which are pre-loaded on the chip, so I suspect I wouldn’t want to read more than the shortest document in this way.
I’m intrigued by what you say about the JISC ebook, although I don’t believe I have access to this (I work at National Library of Scotland). I’ll investigate.
Interested to hear your comments…
Best,
Paul.
November 10, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Hi Paul,
Firstly the JISC eBook agreement is, as you suspect, not available to organisations outside of Further Education but is available across the UK so the Scottish FE colleges should have access. However, I believe the ebrary platform on which the collection is hosted is no different from what any organisation would get if they purchase a collection direct from ebrary and I have confirmed today that the ebrary QuickView is usable on the Apple iPhone so the JISC eBook collection can be read on an alternative eBook reader. Hurray!
Anyhow, getting round to the Nintendo. I still haven’t been able to get the DSi onto a WEP authenticated wireless so haven’t been able to get the additional 10 books for the HarperCollins collection – admittedly I’ve not been trying very hard recently but will do so shortly. From what I understood, these books were downloadable in the same format as the ones in the original collection so should be just as readible – just as you mention.
I think there’s still quite a bit of work to do on the browser that comes with it to make it usable with other content. I’ve been told today about some software that resizes eBooks such as the Project Gutenburg books into any screen resolution – so this may help with reading other content on the DSi but obviously it depends on the resulting format and whether it is readable on the DSi. Unfortunately I didn’t take a note of the name of it, but I’m on the case!
Chrissie
February 4, 2010 at 10:26 pm
Hi,
We (ebrary) did make a change recently that *might* have helped with this. Could you try it again?
Thanks, Bruce
February 8, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Bruce,
Unfortunately it still doesn’t work. When I try opening a book in QuickView the index shows on the right hand side, the InfoTools menu automatically opens but no content is shown. Thanks for trying to get it working.
Chrissie
1 | RSC Wales Learning Resources Blog
October 27, 2009 at 3:29 pm
[...] I’ve been out of the office a lot recently, crossing the length and breadth of Wales, hence the lack of new posts here. To justify my silence I’ll give an update on where I’ve been. I should also say that when there are no new learning resources posts here, it is worth looking at the Chrissie’s Muses blog – Chrissie Turkington is a Learning Resources E-learning Adviser for RSC North West, so writes great posts on a lot of relevant topics, e.g. her recent post on using the Nintendo DSi to read e-books. [...]