How to Get Free Books for the Kindle

2 February 2010

Free Kindle Books and How to Find Them
$1.99

Free Kindle Books Plus a Few Other Tips (Kindle Edition)
$0.99 monthy

The Complete User’s Guide to the Amazing Amazon Kindle
$0.99

Thanks to Beth Campolieto Marhanka
Head, Gelardin New Media Center
Georgetown University Library


Barnes & Noble Says Nook Reader Is Not Ideal for E-Textbooks

24 November 2009

Barnes & Noble says its Nook e-book device was not built with college students in mind. “Nook is not designed to be a textbook reader,” said Jade Roth, the companys vice president of books. “Nook is really designed to be an e-reader for pleasure, for relaxation on the go — not really for the educational space.”

Amazon said the same thing about its first-generation Kindle, but a few months ago it unveiled a larger model that it says works well for e-textbooks. Amazon is running pilot projects at seven universities this semester to see how students and professors respond to the devices.

[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education - Wired Campus]


Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and other free Kindle books

21 October 2009

If you have a Kindle or Kindle e-Book software for your computer or mobile device (e.g.; iPhone), you can get a small library of free books from Amazon like The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and more.


Kindle Support Comes to Blackboard Learn Platform

16 July 2009

Blackboard today announced support for Amazon.com’s Kindle electronic book reader through a new Blackboard Building Block. It’s being released as open source software.

The new Blackboard Building Block for e-Readers let’s users take content from Blackboard Learn and, through the Kindle Personal Document Service, send it to the Kindle to access it from any location. According to Blackboard, the service supports “texts, documents and other material from the Blackboard Learn platform.”

[Source: Campus Technology]


Princeton plan for Kindle e-reader may face legal hurdle

8 July 2009

A Princeton University plan to use Amazon.com’s Kindle electronic reader device to replace textbooks and other printed material could face legal challenges because some advocates for the blind say the device is not accessible to the visually impaired.

[Source: Daily Princetonian]


Hopes of Capturing the Textbook Market: Amazon’s New Kindle

7 May 2009

What’s in it for the universities?

Case Western’s president, Barbara R. Snyder, said concern over the high price of printed textbooks was a primary motivation (electronic versions of textbooks are typically half the price of their printed counterparts). “Our students are definitely interested in learning of ways to reduce the cost of what they have to pay for their course materials,” she said.

For Princeton, the goal is to save paper — and therefore trees. “Over 10 million pages were printed last year by students” in campus computer labs, said Serge J. Goldstein, associate CIO and director of academic services at Princeton. He said that as the university has made more library books available on electronic reserve, paper usage has soared.

[Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education: Wired Campus]


First Impressions of the New Kindle DX

6 May 2009

The first thing I notice about the new Kindle DX — shown Wednesday morning at a news conference in New York — is that it still seems small. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If it is going to replicate a newspaper or textbook, you don’t want some clunky thing to lug around.

[Source: New York Times]