Week 9: Audiobooks (or "The end is in sight ")

I'm not so sure what I think about e-books. They seem a bit cumbersome. But I havn't really used them before. Partly the problem is that we have so few available at Yarra Plenty and most of our borrowers don't know they exist (and most of our ebooks are about computer software).

Having just written the above paragraph and looked at a few ebooks I've got to admit I'm wrong. As an experienced Internet user I can see that most ebooks are like searching the Internet. There are, however, problems of copyright. Studies have shown that most people searching for a document on the web will print it off to read it rather than reading it from the screen.

I wonder if all the ebooks are available as full text (otherwise why does PLCMC have a full-text category for searching. It implies that some titles must not be available as fulltext). (Further investigation reveals that you get only a portion of chapters not the complete work. This might get around the copyright issue but is of limited use for the borrower).

P.S. another staff member has told me she had trouble creating an account. But go to <http://netlibrary.com/> there is a 'create free account' link on the top right hand side. This site belongs to RMIT and might not work for non-students It worked for me. I don't know if membership is only temporary.