The coming of the e-book.

I thought this was an interesting piece on how the Kindle and e-books will have a surge and be good for the industry.
Our library has a number of subscriptions to electronic reference books. The students appreciate the fact that these books are easily searched online and that they do not have to check out or photocopy the pages they need for their assignments.
I am not sure if more people will prefer a Kindle over a book but I think it is amazing that you can have so many books with you all on one portable device and that you can download those books via wifi networks.

I included a quote from Steve Jobs because he irritated me with that statement.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Freed From the Page, but a Book Nonetheless PRINTED books provide pleasures no device created by an electrical engineer can match. The sweet smell of a brand-new book. The tactile pleasures of turning a page. The reassuring sight on one’s bookshelves of personal journeys. Yet, when Mr. Jobs was asked two weeks ago at the Macworld Expo what he thought of the Kindle, he heaped scorn on the book industry. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” Music shows the way. The digitization of personal music collections began, however, only after the right combination of software and hardware — iTunes Music Store and the iPod — arrived. And as Apple did for music lovers, some company will devise an irresistible combination of software and hardware for book buyers. That company may be Amazon.