E-books from a public library - my experience so far

[snedger]

I live in Sussex and work in Hampshire.
West Sussex library service does not lend ebooks, but Hampshire does - so I joined the Hampshire library.
UK libraries use a company called Overdrive to manage their elending.

I've downloaded all my books so far in epub format and have viewed them on my Galaxy SII with ereader software Aldiko and Overdrive Media Console. N.B. Kindle cannot do epub - so Kindle cannot do UK public libraries - but I did notice on US Amazon that they are allowing Kindle owners to borrow one book per month.
*** looks like Kindle and Overdrive have partnered up to allow US library members to borrow on their Kindle - http://www.overdrive.com/News/getart...cleID=20110921 ***
Both reader software packages do the job, but Aldiko wins for me: the display of text is smoother; easier to find where you were if you accidentally forget to bookmark and you lose the auto bookmark, but going into contents, or finger error; Overdrive does not have a dictionary lookup.
You also need to install Adobe DRM - fairly straightforward process.

Borrowing is pretty simple.
You either logon to your library's website via the internet, or via the Overdrive Media Console app. See selection of Overdrive ebooks at http://hampshirelibrary.lib.overdrive.com
View their selection of books. The selection is quite limited though.
Choose a book. Popular books often have a big waiting list e.g. as of writing, Tom Clancy's Against All Enemies has 16 patrons on the list!
Download. Files are not large and so a reasonable 3G connection is sometimes ok - I've downloaded a book on the train in less than 5 minutes.
Initially an .acsm file is downloaded - this then directs the Adobe DRM software to get the real book.
Things went wonky when I trialled Overdrive Media Console. Subsequently Aldiko would not download DRM protected ebooks.
The problem lies within the inadequate Android file manager. Installing and using the Astro file manager app fixed the problem.

Initially reading an ebook on a small screen is a bit odd - but I am used to it now - and you only read one line at a time, so why light up a whole page?
If I want to, I can increase the font size, so that I do not need to wear my reading glasses - but that means more page turns, so I wear my glasses. Frequent page turns are quite tedious, but tolerable compared with the inconvenience of carrying a book, or an electronic device, the size of a book.
Footnotes are not placed where they normally are in a paper book e.g. I read Terry Pratchett Discworld novels and his use of page footnotes adds greatly to the humour - on an ebook the footnotes are grouped together at the back of the book - it is easy enough to bookmark and jump there and back, but it is not the same.
Autobookmarking means that you can just quit to home screen without worrying about placing a bookmark.
I am concerned about nodding off and dropping my phone - I have luckily caught mine twice so far between nods.
Lending time is 2 weeks. I am not a fast reader and usually have 2 X 45 minutes a day to read - this is a constant concern and I fret a bit if get behind the pace. I have reborrowed once and it was a pain - it might have been me, but in the end I had to manually remove files to get it to work. My current book, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell is 854 epages long - no chance for me to finish it in 2 weeks, so I have ordered a paper copy

My experience so far has been enjoyable. It could be improved, if the selection was greater - but having said that - I have read some books that I would not normally look for. I would choose to read a book on my phone, rather than have a paper copy.
And lending time could be longer.

[capt_cornflake]

N.B. Kindle cannot do epub - so Kindle cannot do UK public libraries - but I did notice on US Amazon that they are allowing Kindle owners to borrow one book per month.

Can't remember which program, but there was a piece on Radio 4 about this last week.
They had a bloke from some body representing libraries I think (can't remember the details) who said that they'd got precisely no-where in discussions with Amazon on this point.
I believe they also had some concerns that in the US, it gave Amazon access to data about what lenders with Kindle were borrowing (and obviously buying) so they could work out conversion rates.

[edit]
It was You and Yours on Friday: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01693gv
[/edit]

[dendik]

Thanks for the post, wasn't aware that Library offers ebooks

[pipTheGeek]

My wife tried borrowing an e-book. It was a real faff getting it from laptop onto her phone though (an HTC Desire) becuase there was no official support for the DRM version of epub on Android at the time. Are those apps you mentioned free and what was it like to get books onto the phone?

[snedger]

My wife tried borrowing an e-book. It was a real faff getting it from laptop onto her phone though (an HTC Desire) becuase there was no official support for the DRM version of epub on Android at the time. Are those apps you mentioned free and what was it like to get books onto the phone?

Yes, they are all free Android Apps.

If it is Overdrive providing your e-book then it is probably just as easy to download the book again to your phone whilst wifi'd up. Whilst experimenting with the different ereaders, I was able to download the same book multiple times from the public library with no problem.

If you connect to the public library and download with your phone, then you should be prompted to get the Adobe DRM software - just copying the file will not work, as you will need to be logged in to prove that that you were the person that downloaded the DRM protected book.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Regarding ebook readers and page footnotes - after being forced to buy a paper version of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, it turns out that I had missed very important plotlines from not reading the footnotes - some footnotes go over 5 pages! It took me a about an hour and a half to go through paper volume 1 to read all the footnotes that I had missed in the ebook.
So, has anyone used an epub compatible ereader that processes footnotes properly in their proper place?

[Memoigxe]

I like to read e-book on my phone
but i can't download it any more since i changed a new phone....

[Petra Ceason]

Dear snedger,

Quality of experience:-
Up front, I have no experience of ebooks on Androids or 'phones, but a wealth of experience of them on Kindle and iPad.

I do not understand Amazon's problem of being unable to format correctly the electronic version of an already published book for the Kindle. I have all my own books on my Kindle, and I put them there. All I did was reformat the page size and margins through Page Setup {my books were written in Word for my sins}, amend the font size, and convert to a .pdf file. So on my Kindle Version I can see Headers, Footers, Footnotes in the correct places, and page numbers, although there are fewer words and lines to the page than in the original book.
Yes it took a fair bit of Trial and Error at first, but now I know the numbers, it is a doddle.
The iPad was even easier, as the page size is not that different from lulu.com's default 6 inches by 9 inches format. {And it's in colour, so, on the iPad, my books are too.}

Is it the DRM protection I wonder, that causes the hassle?
I presume my copies of my books on my Kindle that I put there as .pdf files are unprotected. If it is the DRM protection that is destroying a, quite frankly, easy conversion, I recon this is what should be looked at, and changed to a more effective and more legal-user-friendly protection.

Regards,

Petra.

[Petra Ceason]

Back again,

This may be teaching Grandma to suck eggs, if so, sorry in advance.

Apparently there is a limit to the number of pages you can have in a book, due to escalating cost issues, and this limit is about 750 pages. Which I never thought I'd get near, never mind exceed. {Shakes head sadly.}

However:

This limit does not apply to ebooks of course. My longest book, {unpublished because it is too naughty}, in 12 point font would exceed the 750 page limit comfortably, but it is only 3.8 Megabytes as a .pdf file. What's that, less that three photographs worth?
While I do love real paper books, the convenience of e-readers, and for myself, the removal of the 750 page limit, are big steps forward.

AND

lulu.com recon that after selling an ebook, there is frequently a follow-up purchases of the same Paper Book, by the same customer. Not that different from snedger's comment.
'Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell is 854 epages long - no chance for me to finish it in 2 weeks, so I have ordered a paper copy'

Petra

[nicktids]

Hi all thanks for reminding me to check if my local library does ebooks.

On one note someone said that the kindle can't do epub well there is a piece of software called callibre (google it I can't post links yet) which is a great piece of for ebook library management, and can convert many formats in to other formats and copy them to your device.

[snedger]

Petra,
Good to hear that you are making your ebooks so that they are the "same" as paper.
Why any publisher would not think that that was the only way is completely beyond my comprehension.

Lately I have regressed. Disappointed that ebooks did not hold the answer to convenience and portability and fed up carrying around Iain M. Banks' bulky tome, Surface Detail, I've started watching videos on my phone on the train.
Brain go mushy now.
I saw Iain Banks last week in Shoreham, he was doing a gig talking about his book Stonemouth. What a lovely man! So much more than just Billy Connolly lite.

[vishal7]

Well talking about e-books, I was wondering what has happened to Google Books (http://books.google.com/) It started off and the url is still there but has it moved beyond book previews or what? I am lost on this.

[mycarsavw]

Google Books searches the text of books - 20million so far. It's not an e-book service.

[jim]

Google Books searches the text of books - 20million so far. It's not an e-book service.

Well, it does link directly to google play in certain cases to offer free ebooks. But in general, yes.

[Lucas Shrek]

Thanks For the post. I love to read e-books because reading is my hobby. There are many tools for ebook reading you can use anyone of it.