You may be aware that a settlement was announced between Google and several publishers  and authors.  The agreement will allow Google to sell electronic versions of books that are still under copyright protection, but which are currently out of print. Many books are available for free online viewing and downloading, and many are being formatted for mobile devices, but they are older books that are out of copyright.  The Google service will not be free, they will continue to do what works well for them, ensuring a massive audience for  other companies' copyrighted holdings and sharing revenue with them. The Google deal will substantially increase the number of books available for online viewing, but it is only one of several initiatives that are expanding the universe of online books.  Also coming soon is Europeana, an online archive of not only books, but records, films, letters and other cultural treasures.   It will join collections like the Internet Archive, American Memory and Aluka in preserving the world's cultural heritage and bringing portions of it to a greater audience.

One of the major advances in the preservation and dissemination of information was the Gutenberg mechanical printing press.  However, publishers may have been focusing solely on that technology for too long by not offering digital versions of books.   What first awakened my eyes to the wonder of the Internet was the availability of classic texts for downloading or online viewing.  The Internet Classics Archive was one of the earliest and most celebrated examples.  Other great early academic archives are the Perseus Project from Tufts University, and Labyrinth from Georgetown University.  The most well known non-academic collection  is found in Project Gutenberg. These collections were not the result of publishers offering electronic versions of copyrighted material,  but schools and volunteers making copyright free books available.  Now, however, after witnessing the digital revolution in other arenas, and under pressure from start ups offering digital books, major publishers are more willing to experiment. They are currently investigating different models for making content accessible to the client.  Ideas under consideration include having the users pay for individual books, or having them pay a subscription that allows them to access all books in the collection.  Some are even considering mimicking the Google search model and using advertising as a source of revenue.  This has not usually been done in printed books, but electronic books provide a more viable platform for making the attempt.

Another question that requires consideration by publishers  is what is the best way to have their client download material? There are many ways to read downloaded ebooks.    There are specialized readers like the Amazon Kindle, and the Sony Reader Digital Book.  These and many other e-book readers use the E-Ink technology to render a display that is the closest available to print on paper.  But any computer can be used to download and read e-books, and many mobile devices like smart phones and pdas also fit the bill.  In Japan, the most popular way to read e-books is via smartphone.  For years, I read them on my Palm devices and I have recently begun doing it on an Ipod Touch.   Stanza, a free ebook reader, is a very popular app that you can install on the Iphone and Ipod Touch.  The ease in installing reading software, then downloading and reading books (for free) on the Ipod Touch (and presumably the Iphone) is astonishing! The world of digital publishing may be in flux, but one thing is certain, the multiciplicity of choices is very good for the reader. For links to archives of classic texts  and other cultural treasures, see Dibner Library's web resource page on the Humanities and Social Sciences.