Category: ebooks

Adobe Digital Editions now available for iPad

Every major publisher sells e-books with encryption that basically prevents unlawful sharing and distribution to file sharing sites. Adobe is the leading DRM solution and sometimes users find it hard to read their purchased content on mobile devices. In order to make readers lives easier, Adobe has just released their seminal Digital Editions app that was designed exclusively for the Apple iPad.

The Adobe Digital Editions app for the iPad will allow you to read any PDF or EPUB file that you bought from online retailers. It also has support for content that you borrowed from the library.

Read the full article @ Goodereader.

Some of the Best from Tor.com 2014 is Free to Download Now!

Some of the Best from Tor.com 2014We are thrilled to announce the 2014 edition of Some of the Best from Tor.com, an anthology of twenty-six of our favorite short stories, novelettes, and novellas, selected from the seventy-plus stories we published this year.

Of course, you can always read these—and all other—Tor.com stories for free whenever you’d like, but starting today they will be available world-wide as a single, easy to read, free mini ebook. This offer is immediately available for Kindle, B&N NOOK store, iBooks, and other online retailers.

These stories were acquired and edited for Tor.com by Ellen Datlow, Carl Engle-Laird, Liz Gorinsky, David G. Hartwell, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Peter Joseph, Marco Palmieri, Paul Stevens, and Ann VanderMeer. Each story is accompanied by an original illustration.

Get all the details @ TOR.com.

NCompass Live: Installing and Using the OverDrive App: A Day-Before-Christmas Refresher!

OverDrive logo‘Tis the day before Christmas and all through the land, librarians brace for the upcoming influx of patrons with new tablets wanting to know how to access OverDrive….

Sound familiar or prescient? If so, join us for this December 24 edition of NCompass Live for a refresher/review of how to install the OverDrive app on a tablet and start checking out and downloading eBooks and audiobooks from your library. (We’ll be using an iPad, but the app works similarly on Android devices .) We’ll also show you where to find device-specific “Getting Started” articles and videos within OverDrive’s online Help.

Presenter: Susan Knisely, Online Services Librarian, Nebraska Library Commission.

Register for free @ http://nlc.nebraska.gov/scripts/calendar/eventshow.asp?ProgID=13770

Telling people how to remove DRM isn’t illegal

DRMWe all know that it’s against the law to sell copyrighted material, but is it also illegal to tell people about software that can strip DRM off e-books without the intention to distribute? New York Judge Denise Cote has recently ruled that it’s not. The lawsuit in question, which was never cut and dry to begin with, was filed by Penguin and Simon & Schuster against Abbey House Media, a company that used to sell e-books for them. Abbey House was bound by law to protect those files with DRM, but when it was a month away from shutting down its digital bookstore in 2013, someone in the company felt compelled to help customers gain control of the e-books they already bought.

Read the full article @ Engadget.

Things That Make the Librarian Angry

Once again, Jessamyn West nails it.The Public Librarian

Having a waiting list for library ebooks is really stupid, on the face of it. As a librarian I’m pretty savvy about digital content—enough to know that patrons want it, lots of it. However, we have a short list of ways that we can offer it in a lendable fashion. At work I keep my game face on. At home I just want to tell people the truth, the frustrating truth: offering digital content in this way has short term benefits but long term negative consequences.

Read the full article @ Medium.com.

Univeristy of Iowa Libraries to digitize 10,000 Science Fiction fanzines

Havelin CollectionThe University of Iowa Libraries has announced a major digitization initiative, in partnership with the UI Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. 10,000 science fiction fanzines will be digitized from the James L. “Rusty” Hevelin Collection, representing the entire history of science fiction as a popular genre and providing the content for a database that documents the development of science fiction fandom…

The fanzine portion of the Hevelin Collection, numbering approximately 10,000 fanzines, will be digitized in its entirety.

“Nothing on this scale has been attempted with fanzines before, and we are thrilled to be able to finally address the concern we have been hearing for years from fans and scholars, to find a way to enable them to discover exactly what these pieces contain,” says Greg Prickman, head of special collections.

Once digitized, the fanzines will be incorporated into the UI Libraries’ DIY History interface, where a select number of interested fans (up to 30) will be provided with secure access to transcribe, annotate, and index the contents of the fanzines. This group will be modeled on an Amateur Press Association (APA) structure, a fanzine distribution system developed in the early days of the medium that required contributions of content from members in order to qualify for, and maintain, membership in the organization. The transcription will enable the UI Libraries to construct a full-text searchable fanzine resource, with links to authors, editors, and topics, while protecting privacy and copyright by limiting access to the full set of page images.

To learn more about the project and to follow its progress, visit here.

Read the full article @ now.uiowa.edu.

Update now: Adobe Digital Editions secured data transfers

Adobe Digital Editions logoAdobe came under fire a few weeks ago when news was brought to light that critical user data was being sent to their servers from anyone using Adobe Digital Editions 4. The most important aspect of this story was that it was being done in clear text, with no encryption. Adobe has just patched ADE 4, to solve this issue.

Read the full article @ Goodereader.com and download ADE4.01 (there’s no in-program update) from Adobe.

Complete archive of Partisan Review now online

Partisan ReviewFounded in 1934 , Partisan Review magazine was one of the most significant cultural literary journals in the U.S. Throughout its 69-year history (with a brief interregnum in November 1936 to Nov. 1937), Partisan Review editors and contributors have viewed critically both liberal and conservative agendas. Apart from an early connection to the Communist Party, it has eschewed party affiliation.

In addition to art and book reviews, Partisan Review contributors wrote on the cultural and political subjects of the day, ranging from psychology and political theories to feature columns from intellectuals who reported on World War II and the Holocaust, the reintegration of Europe, September 11 and the global rise of terrorism, among other topics. For almost seven decades, the magazine published firsthand accounts of American and European arts and culture, and the political scene of various countries.

Partisan Review is valued for its legendary editors, William Phillips, Philip Rahv (two of its founding editors), and Edith Kurzweil. They provided a forum to publish creative essays, commentary, book reviews, and book excerpts by such writers as Hannah Arendt, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Allen Ginsberg, Franz Kafka, Doris Lessing, George Orwell, Marge Piercy, Jean-Paul Sartre, Roger Shattuck, Susan Sontag, William Styron, Lionel Trilling, and Robert Penn Warren. The entire list of editors and writers is a virtual who’s-who of the cultural and literary world.

Find it @ the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center.