Research Infrastructure

Library and Information Center

Rowland Institute at Harvard
Library News & Notes
December 10, 2004

Internet Sites of the Week

Electronic books, or e-books, have been steadily growing in use and the variety of offerings. Some can be read through the browser, while others may be downloaded on to PC, PDA, or tablet reader and read with one or another software program. A New York Times Sunday magazine article, “An Idea Whose Time Has Come Back,”
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/05/books/review/05GLAZERL.html, profiles a number of e-books sources and applications. (Source: Sci-Tech Daily Review). Another NYT article, “Libraries Reach Out, Online,” profiles how libraries make e-books available to patrons.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/09/technology/circuits/09libr.html The Harvard Libraries subscribe to a number of e-book packages, notably eBrary,
http://lib.harvard.edu/e-resources/details/e/ebraryxx.html, which hosts a number of science texts, and Safari, which contains technical and computer books from publishers such as O'Reilly.
http://lib.harvard.edu/e-resources/details/s/safarixx.html. Recently, the Institute of Physics introduced Vector, a collection of their titles in .pdf. (Access restricted to subscribers, but you can browse abstracts and descriptions.)
http://vector.iop.org/index.cfm?action=home. (Source: Englib) Some publishers, such as the National Academy Press, http://www.nap.edu, offer all their new titles for free online, as well as a significant amount of their back catalog. A good resource for finding online books across a variety of topics is the University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Page ( http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/).

NEW BOOKS/VIDEOS

Received December 4 - 10, 2004