E Book or an Electronic Book is a document created and distributed in a digital format. It may be a replica of the printed book or may complement the printed matter. E books are also born-digital objects in the sense that the book / document is created only digitally and can be read on free or proprietary software platforms.
The history of the e book can be traced back to 1949 when a Spanish school teacher named Angela Ruiz Robles invented an automated book as a substitute to her heavy books. Later in the year 1971, Michael Hart invented the Project Gutenburg which is being functional and accessed used till date.
Meanwhile, e book publishers have mushroomed in the last twenty years and more so during the COVID 19 lockdown. Printed book prices have surged due to rise in paper productions and the entire book publishing industry is suffering. This can be witnessed in our academic set up where textbooks and reference books are very expensive for personal purchasing. The shift is toward e books but most are not aware about the authentic e book providers. There are many ghost sites and pirated e book sites which are often referred to by one and all. Eventually, the printed book industry is facing a down fall. I reiterate that I am referring to academic books at the moment!
E books can be accessed in the following ways to begin with:1) Proprietary and Authentic e book platforms which abide by the copyright norms such as
e books aggregator - Knimbus
e books publishers - McGraw Hill Access Engineering, Springer, Elsevier, EBSCO, Proqust, DeGruyter to name a few.
The lists are unending and updated almost every day.
2) Free and Open Access e book platforms which abide the CC-BY License such as
Directory of Open Access Books
Note that the links given above are purely as references. Any copyright infringement will be the sole responsibility of the person accessing the links.
This post is a part of #BlogchatterA2Z 2023Tags: Ebooks, e book, digital book, Open Access, Public Domain, Free E books, Copyright, Blogging, Blogger, Libraries
