This almost new element in the electronic landscape - in
which we begin to move more and more easy - the electronic book - remains
unknown not only to the public but mainly to those who, by the nature of
their profession, are more close to the book.
So, it is not surprising that the librarians want to learn more on this product,
which, as one says, will be almost exclusively the object of their future
work.
This article aims at clearing up by framing into some coordinates the profile
of this new type of “electronic object” whose substance remains, naturally,
the text – transformed in “e-text” by its bearer, by the reading devices
and by the new possibilities to explore it.
The information metamorphosis involves intermediation and commercialisation
institutions changes such as libraries and bookshops. These ones are “virtualising”
by moving into a common electronic medium and becoming “e-libraries” (or
even “e-braries”).
Further on, the article briefly details the processes of acquisition, cataloguing
and lending, taking data from an American library experience.
Finally, there are presented the general perspectives of the electronic book
and in relation to the library.
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The approach to the topic of appearance and promotion
of e-books is based on the concentric circles pattern, by including it within
the large context of the cyberspace, of the emerging virtual society, by
revealing the opportunities of the digital era, the implications of the globalisation
process of the concept of “the virtual”. This context, in its turn, inevitably
determined the library automation process, and important changes occurred
in all the library science processes, of acquisition, storage, registration,
cataloguing, consulting, and borrowing. The social, cultural and psychological
- both negative and positive - implications of the planetary expansion of
the Internet are sketched, the concept of culture is redefined, the valorisation
criteria are distorted etc., while taking into account the fact that the
Internet is considered to be the main means of imposing e-books. As the electronic
book becomes an inevitable reality of the new forms of information storage
on the book market, it is defined as a necessary element in the library automation
process and the book stock matter, in the perspective of the equally inevitable
reality of electronic libraries, in the sense of e-book collections.
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The information distribution formats have developed
simultaneously with the evolution of the computing technique, the present
paper dealing with the most used ones (from ASCII format to the ebooks formats).
The two main problems of this article are: how did we get to the ebooks and
which are the attributes of these files. Reading ebooks needs more or less
specialized hardware and software. The steps for obtaining ebook are presented
in a concise way. The first ten free software packages for creating ebooks
are also presented and the “qualities” of the performant compilers as well.
Three models are proposed with their advantages and disadvantages for the
libraries that own ebooks.
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The basic definitions related with eBook as answers
to frequently asked questions about this subject are presented: what an electronic
book is, which the most popular formats are, the sources and possibilities
of acquisitions, the reading devices and their most important characteristics,
the software to be used and the advantages and disadvantages of eBook, how
the future of this new products in libraries will be.
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