E-books

As a librarian I am quite excited about books infiltrating the world of technology and gadgets. As a reader I don’t care to read my books on the computer or on a hand-held device. (The thought of straining my eyes like that gives me a headache.) As an information seeker and a naturally curious person I am ecstatic about the number of colleges, universities, institutes, and organizations who are making books, journals, and images available through digital collections.

I first looked at the World Public Library, because I had heard of it but had never taken a look at it. I wasn’t really sure what to search, because I know that these sites are not always comprehensive and I wasn’t sure what it would actually have. This site does give you the option of browsing their (125!) collections. The first collection that caught my eye was the Asian Classics Input Project. This collection contains a number of Buddhist texts that can be viewed in both Roman and Tibetan script. I was really quite impressed by this! I was saddened to see that it cost money to access these texts though. Even though it is only $8.95 a year, I am not willing to spend money to look at these texts. However, this is an affordable price for a graduate student who is doing research in this area. I then went to the Digital South Asia Library to see what type of information they would have. They do have a number of interesting texts that are free to view, but a lot of them are on disparate topics. They aren’t a “collection” as such, which makes this resource a little less appealing to me. I also looked at SARAI (South Asian Resource Access on the Internet). Of all the resources, this was my favorite. I liked that you could browse the information by country, by type of resource, or by topic. Using the topical links, I found The Sanskrit Library, which is another free resource.

Again, I love the fact that people have access to books and manuscripts (for pleasure and for learning) more now than they ever have. I still prefer to read my leisure materials in print, but I love to search online digital collections related to my own personal curiosities. As a librarian, I don’t feel at all threatened by books shifting into the electronic milieu.

Thank you for reading!