Cybook Update

Last night, I finally got some *real (non-public domain) content on the Cybook, thanks to over an hour of phone tutelage by Mr. Teleread. Although I seldom buy books, I bought  a couple downloads from ebooks.com in Mobipocket: Chronicles: v I /Bob Dylan and Plainsong by Kent Haruf.  Anything for science! Honestly, the classics are great, but no way am I going to spend precious recreational reading time on Last of the Mohicans or House of the Seven Gables. Not that I don't appreciate the canon, but it's not the stuff that keeps my lamp burning past bedtime.

First the bad news. The very bad news:

What a bitch!  No wonder ebooks haven't taken off.  Cybook is a multi-format, book-sized reader, which is good, but it takes a tech contortionist to wiggle the content into the hardware.  Hot sync, mobipocket reader, USB cables, blah blah blah. Plus, I am not really an auditory learner, so I felt like a moron trying to follow David's oral instructions, and at one point I was ready to say, "screw this. I'm going to watch Emeril."  But I took a deep breath, and thank's to D's patience, finally got it.   Accessing e-content is probably easier with hardware that's more widely used  and with the prominent DRM technologies, but DRM is an everchanging, non-compatible, here-today-gone-tomorrow handmaid of Satan.    While at Midwinter, I spoke with IT-savvy, totally wired folks about ebooks and was surpised when they shrugged their shoulders and dismissed the possiblilty that ebooks had a shot at becoming an ubiquitous medium. When I asked why, their main answer was "DRM."

Here's the good news. The very good news:  Despite all the stuff you hear about how crummy and unnatural it is to read off a screen (um, like you're doing now),  I didn't even give a second thought to the medium once I launched into one of the best-written, most compelling books I've picked up in a long time (Chronicles).  It only took me a few minutes to orient myself to how to read. For instance,  I automatically made the motion to turn the page as I came to the end of one. After about 10 times, I had trained myself to tap the bottom of the screen, which gives you the next page.  I'm supposed to be really studying the Cybook, but honestly, all I cared about was the content once I got it figured out.  After I've caught my breath over Dylan's rollercoaster giddy prose, I'll take a hard look at the Cybook and offer another good/bad synopsis.

Comments

[CybooksEqualLove]

Have you tried using MobiCreator? That's what I use on non-DRM PDF files... makes them easy to read on my Cybook. In general, the new edition of the Cybook is faster and less complicated to upload to, if that helps.

[Thomas]

Since my library is a small military and academic library (Royal Norwegian Naval Academy) with 500 users that have high tech skills we could probably just let the Cybooks out as is, but I have a very special service in mind that the Cybooks will address. A lot of our material is on PDF. Cytale is currently developing a PDF reader that we´ll use as soon as it gets ready. Usually we have to print things out in the library if people have to bring the stuff with them. This is time cosuming, expensive and repetitive. What I plan to do is pre load the Cybooks with most of the stuff I know is in demand (varies with which part of the term we are in) and just add stuff that the user request specially. We´ll probably use the memory cards that Cytale sent with the e-books to avoid messing around with the active-sync stuff. I have a very nice Fujitsu-Siemens Stylistic tablet-PC with memory card reader that I can download the needed files and just add to the Cybook as needed. So I guess we will have a combination of pre loaded and requested material on all four. I´m debating if I should have the same material on all four or differentiate. More on that when we get closer to launch:-)

[Beth]

One of these days, I'm going to try using a cybook or other dedicated e-reading device. I normally read e-books from my pda, but find I can only bear to read short stories on that teensy screen.

[rochelle]

Hi Thomas--I'm really inerested in hearing about your experiences with your patrons and Cybook. Will they come pre-loaded, or will patrons put the content on them? Also be interested in what prompted you to get Cybook. Do you have ebooks that patrons can use with PDAs? You can respond here, or email me. Thanks! rochelle

[Thomas]

We have just purchased four Cybooks for our library and are in the first stages of setting them up before we start lending them out to our users. I´m really looking forward to your experiences and opinions on the Cybook. Personally I´m quite happy with the reading experience, and our IT-department will do most of the tech stuff anyway so hopefully we´ll avoid the problems you had. Good luck!