November 27, 2002

[Web4Lib] Online Books A reprint of a post to Web4Lib: Hoover Institution Books Online provides free access to PDFs of a number of books <http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/publications/books/>. This continues a very positive trend among scholarly publishers. National Academy Press <http://www.nap.edu/info/browse.htm> has been providing online editions for several years. When I wrote an Internet Review of the National Academy of Sciences <http://www.bowdoin.edu/~samato/IRA/reviews/issues/nov96/nas.html> 6 years ago, there were already 900+ books available -- today it must be upwards of 2000. The Hoover Institution does not measure up to the standard set by NAP, many of the titles listed on the page are not actually available online. Other noteworthy publishers: University of California Press eScholarship Editions <http://escholarship.cdlib.org/ucpress/> -- over 500 online editions E-Editions - University of Nebraska Press <http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/e_editions.html> and from the commercial sector, Baen Books <http://www.baen.com/library/> George S. Porter Most folks prefer reading print books rather than ebooks. Publishers that provide free online books express faith this fact and in their readership. If a reader finds something online that is worth reading for over 100 pages and if the reader would like that information for some degree of time, then that reader will find it worthwhile to buy a print copy.  11:45:29 AM     Toolbar time at your library The Leddy Library is currently trialing Oxford Reference Online - a database of over 100 Oxford dictionaries and reference titles. I'm going to hold back on my thoughts on the product itself but instead dwell on the Oxford Reference Toolbar: If you add the Search Oxford Reference button to your browser toolbar, you will be able to consult Oxford Reference Online from any web page. You could be looking at a French newspaper's website and be unsure of the translation for a word. All you do is highlight the word, click the Search Oxford Reference button on your browser toolbar and a new browser window will open with the results of a Quick Search having been performed in Oxford Reference Online on the selected text. Everyone knows that libraries provide information but we are often overlooked as a means to find information. Or we are used a means of last resort when the web fails. Libraries should be developing a library toolbar. I mean, if my Google toolbar can not only provide myself with the ability to search individual websites or the entire Google database and compute the folding structure of proteins when I'm not around, then surely it can be done. 11:09:03 AM

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