Yes I agree that the Sony reader is good for the formats it does support – but the BeBook is better as it supports more formats such as ppt and html thereby providing more flexibility.

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

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.

I can transfer MS Word and PDF documents to my Sony e-Book reader. The Sony Reader software automatically converts the Word document into RTF.

The English funding council for non-university learning (LSC) has recently procured a large eBook collection for all English Further Education Colleges which is managed by JISC Collections and delivered by ebrary. We are supporting the roll-out of this collection to the colleges with which we work (I’m based in the Northwest – there are 8 other colleagues throughout England). I am therefore at present spending quite a bit of time looking at the ebrary system and am identifying issues as more colleges start utilising it – hence the original post.

Generally I’m quite happy with ebrary; it’s easy to use, customisable, has well designed and user friendly tools such as the automatic referencing, and also comes with excellent support direct from ebrary and also the UK reseller.

My concerns so far are: the ebrary reader is slow (although the QuickView is a good alternative) and requires certain ports to be open and software installing on the network as detailed in my blog post. The QuickView is quite limited and therefore the ebrary reader is preferred (particularly the speech option) but whilst it needs these technical changes to be made across networks, it will be held back and therefore the potential for ebrary will not be fully exploited.

There are a lot of people disappointed that the ebrary system does not allow for downloading the materials onto eBook readers – there is now a swell of interest in these readers alongside an expectation that a collection of this kind should allow users to take the books away on a device of their choice. It’s a disappointment, but presumably one brought about because of the agreement ebrary has with the book publishers.

As a solution to this I tried utilising portable technologies (such as the Nintendo DSi and Sony PSP) as a form of eBook reader (alongside “games” such as the Nintendo Classic Book Collection). However I cannot get the QuickView to work on these devices. I’ve tried the Nintendo DSi, Sony PSP and Nokia N96. I would like to be advising libraries to purchase portable technologies for loan within the library, but whilst ebrary does not work on these devices, this idea is dead in the water

Overall I am pleased with ebrary, and I suspect that most eBook aggregators will not provide perfect systems. Most of my concerns – particularly the last one – are not points that will stop ebrary being used but it’s a system with such potential that I really want to be able to help colleges exploit its full potential and also to utilise it in innovative ways. I’m happy to chat further about ebrary if it helps your research.

I am doing research on the various ebooks aggregators’ systems/platforms and their pluses and minuses. Wondering if you work at a company or a college/university?
And also, would you have any further comments about ebrary (positive and/or could use improvement?)

Kind Regards and thanks in advance.

Gerry Caffrey