Kindle Owners Lending Library

Kindle Owners Lending Library: If you have Amazon Prime (which includes free shipping of products that Amazon ships - and access to thousands of streaming videos (movies/TV shows), choose from over 5,000 titles (including more than 100 current and former New York Times bestsellers) to read on your Kindle. This is works on all Kindles even those of us with last year's models. There's a 1 month free trial even for people who don't have Prime. It sounds like you can borrow 1 book a month with this program - or... it's 1 book at a time? Not quite sure! The newspapers are saying "1 book a month" from this lending service, but from the Kindle Lending library info on the Amazon page, it sounds like "1 book at a time" (?) How do we access those books from our Kindles? Use the Menu. Turn on Wireless. Then from the Menu, go to Shop in Kindle Store and click the button and then... look for "See all..." and click on that - and then you'll see Kindle Owners Lending Library. I just borrowed the second book of Hunger Games which I've yet to read (Save your battery life - Remember to turn off Wi Fi.) This does NOT work on Kindle apps - It's Kindle devices only. Here's one of the press releases "Amazon has launched a new feature called the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library. The library gives Amazon Prime members that own Kindles the ability to borrow books for free. Participants can borrow a book a month for as long as they want. Books included in this lending library include: Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, The Big Short and Liars’ Poker by Michael Lewis; The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins; Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen; Guns, Germs, and Steel; Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential; and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.This offering expands the free content that is available to Amazon Prime members. These members also have access to streaming a library of about 13,000 movies and TV shows." Reminder: Watch for Kindle Daily Deal Link which changes every night at midnight. As I'm writing this, Neve Maslakovic's Regarding Ducks and Universes is the daily deal for $1.99. A note "For Kindle Device Owners" indicates that this is one of the books that I could get for free through the new Lending Library. Keep an eye on http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/ which looks like a good place for more tips and info on free Kindle books, discounted books, and promo lists. Example: Kindleworld links to Monthy book deals What are the librarians going to say now? This will skim off some library Kindle-owning customers who would have come to library web sites to check on free offerings. What will Amazon offer via libraries? Non-best sellers? Or... will they seed the library holdings with some best sellers in order to entice readers to join Prime membership? Do libraries need customers?

OER - Finding free ebooks

Stephen Downes is participating in an Oxford-style debate "Should OER favour commercial use?" He mentions "Flooding – this is the enclosure practice employed in the Google search results. It becomes impossible to find the original free resource when the market is flooded with commercial alternatives." Yes! Even at OpenLibrary), it feels like you have to knock yourself out to find an item that's available to anyone from any place. However I think I have a partial solution to the example that Downes uses - a quotation from Locke. I tried the search in Google Books - and clicked "free Google eBooks" from the search tools on the left side of the screen. That helps.

Google ebooks

Google ebook store is here and the "about info" says "You can read all of your favorite books using just about any device with an Internet connection. Google eBooks is compatible with Android phones, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, web browsers and many supported eReaders." No offline reading???? Ah! I found this "If you're offline and the book hasn't completed downloading, a warning message will pop up to let you know. You will have to go online to complete downloading your book." Can you take notes? Can you copy and print any pages? The file format is Adobe Digital Editions... I'm afraid the answer is going to be "no." The prices I checked against prices of a book or two I've recently bought through Amazon - no big Google bargains are evident. Why would I choose a Google eBook over a Kindle ebook? Off to do some more exploring.

Update: According to the New York Times article, copy and pasting is available if allowed by the publisher. If so, why isn't that option available on the free book that I downloaded? Public domain = no publisher needs to give permission... Shouldn't that be the default in Google Ebooks? (New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/07/business/media/07ebookstore.html )

EBook reader software comparison from Blio eReader

Blio eReader has an interesting ebook reader feature comparison chart at http://www.blioreader.com/about.html at least as of February 2010.

Metasearch EBooks: AddAll

A metasearch tool for ebooks reported on ResearchBuzz:
Metasearch Ebooks with AddAll
http://www.researchbuzz.org/wp/metasearch-ebooks-with-addall/
One of these days I'd like to have every Dorothy Sayers "Lord Peter Whimsey" detective novels on an ereader. Well, assuming I could afford all of them, it looks like this search engine helps identify what's available.

A few freebies for the Kindle - and Kindle for PC software

I found a few things for free at the Kindle Store related to new media:

New Digital Media and Learning as an Emerging Area and "Worked Examples" as One Way Forward by James Paul Gee (Kindle Edition - Jan 12, 2010) - not out yet, but it will be soon and the electronic version is going to be free apparently)

The Civic Potential of Video Games by Joseph Kahne, Ellen Middaugh, and Chris Evans (Kindle Edition - Jun 30, 2009)

Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis from the Good Play Project by Carrie James (Kindle Edition - Oct 30, 2009)

Living and Learning with New Media: Summary of Findings from the Digital Youth Project by Mizuko Ito, Heather A. Horst, Matteo Bittanti, and danah boyd (Kindle Edition - Jun 26, 2009)

The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age by Cathy N. Davidson and David Theo Goldberg (Kindle Edition - Jun 30, 2009)

These might be available in PDF out there for free somewhere. I didn't check. But these are available for zero dollars at the Kindle Store. (I also spotted some murder mysteries for free that might be great for a plane trip.)

Free books for the Kindle - including Kindle for the PC

Alan Levine from the New Media Consortium reports that Henry Jenkins "Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century" - the Kindle edition - is available for free. In my efforts to be frugal I find myself way behind on technology toys- no Kindle! - but the Kindle for the PC software is also free - so I downloaded the software and the book onto my tablet pc - and I'm ready to go! (Well, I did get a little over-anxious about the download for the book. It was quick enough, but not instantaneous.)

Thanks for the Lifelong Information Literacy blog crew for posting Alan's note.

Orange Gove Texts Plus - Florida's K-20 open access initiative

I attended a presentation on the USF campus given by Susie Henderson and Meredith Morris-Babb on the Orange Grove and Orange Grove Texts Plus - see more at http://www.theorangegrove.org/OGTtest.htm. This open textbook initiative is a partnership between Orange Grove Digital Repository and the University Press of Florida (UPF). Textbooks included in the repository can be downloaded or ordered in hard copy (print-on-demand) at around half the cost of a traditional textbook. What's the incentive for faculty to contribute textbooks?? UPF can ensure that the books are peer-reviewed and that faculty are allowed to collect royalities. There's a possibility that the work may count toward tenure and promotion and there's a potential for some royalties. That seems to take care of some of the issues many faculty have with producing open textbooks! (Interestingly I'm not finding any mention of that a the Orange Grove site.) Some campuses are busy providing faculty with various kinds of incentives to contribute to the open textbook initiative. Some campuses are providing funds to buy-out a course so a faculty member can author a textbook. Some campuses providing a pool of money for a department so that a group of faculty can work together on authoring an open source textbook. The books are indexed according to Florida's common course numbering system as well as other keywords, etc. There are around 100 textbooks at this point...

Kindle for the PC

Uh oh! As a newly-retired librarian trying to adjust to a seriously reduced annual income, I have been resisting toys - including e-book readers - but not there's a beta version of the Kindle reader that could run on a PC - perhaps even on my old, creaky HP tablet PC? This could be trouble(!) I'll do my best to resist and slog it out with print books from bricks n mortar libraries. See Kindle for PC