Browsing Tag

e-books

Time Limits Shortened for E-book “Checkouts”

UST Libraries has thousands of books online that you can read from anywhere! While you can read each of them right from your internet browser, there may be times when you want to download one or more to your phone, computer, or other mobile device.

When you download an online book, this is considered a “checkout,” just like when you check out a print book from your favorite library desk. Just like a print book, it will have a due date, but unlike your print book, it will return itself!

Starting this semester, many of our online books will “return themselves” after one day, though some will stay on your device for up to seven days. The reason is that many of our online books restrict the number of people who can use it simultaneously, and we want to make our high demand, online books as easily accessible to everyone as possible. The great news is, if you want to use the book again after it’s returned itself, you can just check it out again if no one was waiting for it.

Find out more about e-books at UST here, or Ask a Librarian!

February 1, 2016 by Kari Petryszyn

“The Myth of the Bookless Library”

And here’s a rejoinder to yesterday’s post on e-books from Barbara Fister in Inside Higher Education.

library_babel_fish_blog_header

November 17, 2011 by

News & Events, Recently Read

“In the 21st-Century University, Let’s Ban Books”

ebook What do you think? This is the provocative title of an online commentary in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education. It’s an interesting read. The author’s an obvious technophile, and presents some arguments in favor of vastly increasing our access to e-book content, both in the area of required course texts and library collections. Both things have of course been happening for years, gradually. The author, Marc Prensky, thinks it can’t happen fast enough.

The online comments are worth reading as well. They present both philosophical objections, and practical implementation issues that librarians are all too familiar with, including copyright, licensing, and “ownership” problems, a myriad of incompatible e-book desktop and mobile device reader applications, rapid technical obsolescence of the content, and others that make it difficult to see how we’d ever get to an all e-book world very quickly. The UST Libraries are working through these issues on an ongoing basis, and we’ve greatly increased our e-book content over the last few years in tandem with the increase in e-journal content.

It’s worth asking, even if we can eventually go “all e-book” should we?

November 16, 2011 by

Business & Economics, Charles J. Keffer Library, Recently Read

E-Books, Goats, Zhu Zhu Hamsters: What’s The Hot Gift This Holiday Season?

Contrary to a discussion I had with friends at breakfast this morning, e-books seem to be hitting their stride in the US marketplace. And though they probably won’t ever reach the fever pitch of a holiday season must-have toy, such as this year’s Zhu Zhu Hamster, more people want them.

In September the US saw e-book sales grow to $15.9 million, up 170 per cent from a year ago. Gartner, a global leader in technology insights (to which all UST students have access), wrote in its September report “A New Ecosystem Defines E-Book’s Second Chapter” that the technology is getting a “second take,” and that this one will stick. Gartner reports that the global e-book market is forecast to be as much as $2.3 billion by 2013. Mobile device compatibility, as with netbooks and smartphones, is among factors driving demand.

Or it could be that grown-ups want tiny high-def camcorders, which are selling strong. Or goats, as reported by The Times. Goats, along with toilets, are very popular gifts for the less fortunate among buyers in the UK. (The goats are then donated to recipients in less developed countries, via Oxfam, which has facilitated 200,000 such donations in the last five years.)

What are you planning to give this holiday season? What are you hoping to receive?

December 2, 2009 by