Ebook collections: Difference between revisions
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While OLPC is not publishing official collections of books or other materials, it would be a good idea for libraries, archives, and other repositories to be able to identify and broadcast selections from their collections that are suitable for use on the OLPC and by children around the world. This will help students, teachers and others find eBooks they can enjoy. |
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== World Public Library == |
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The World Public library is selecting books from its large collection of public domain texts and organizing them by categories relevant to OLPC. |
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All eBooks are not automatically suitable for the OLPC |
All eBooks are not automatically suitable for the OLPC collection. In order to be in the collection, books must meet '''ALL''' of the following criteria: |
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* No fee required to download a copy of the eBook and no limits on making additional copies to distribute as desired. |
* No fee required to download a copy of the eBook and no limits on making additional copies or derivatives to distribute as desired. |
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* The book's content is suitable for school-age children. Many eBooks are written for adults so they will not meet this criteria unless there are educational support materials readily available. For instance William Shakespeare's plays or the Koran are written for adults, however there is a lot of material available to support the use of these books in education. |
* The book's content is suitable for school-age children. Many eBooks are written for adults so they will not meet this criteria unless there are educational support materials readily available. For instance William Shakespeare's plays or the Koran are written for adults, however there is a lot of material available to support the use of these books in education. |
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* The eBook is availble in one of the 4 supported eBook formats, namely [[DJVU|DejaVU]], [[PDF|Acrobat]], HTML or XML. It is not sufficient |
* The eBook is availble in one of the 4 supported eBook formats, namely [[DJVU|DejaVU]], [[PDF|Acrobat]], HTML or XML. It is not sufficient for converters to exist. In order to be in the collection, the eBook must already be converted to one of the 4 formats. Note that [[OpenDocument]] is in XML and is therefore suitable. |
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==Mechanics of the Collection== |
===Mechanics of the Collection=== |
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The bulk of the eBooks in the collection will not be available on an OLPC website. Instead, the OLPC Collection consists of a set of links to books that are stored elsewhere. In some cases, this may be to an original repository, such as a Project Gutenberg mirror. In other cases it will be to a website set up to support OLPC. |
The bulk of the eBooks in the collection will not be available on an OLPC website. Instead, the OLPC Collection consists of a set of links to books that are stored elsewhere. In some cases, this may be to an original repository, such as a Project Gutenberg mirror. In other cases it will be to a website set up to support OLPC. |
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Revision as of 23:30, 18 March 2007
While OLPC is not publishing official collections of books or other materials, it would be a good idea for libraries, archives, and other repositories to be able to identify and broadcast selections from their collections that are suitable for use on the OLPC and by children around the world. This will help students, teachers and others find eBooks they can enjoy.
World Public Library
The World Public library is selecting books from its large collection of public domain texts and organizing them by categories relevant to OLPC.
Criteria for Inclusion
All eBooks are not automatically suitable for the OLPC collection. In order to be in the collection, books must meet ALL of the following criteria:
- No fee required to download a copy of the eBook and no limits on making additional copies or derivatives to distribute as desired.
- The book's content is suitable for school-age children. Many eBooks are written for adults so they will not meet this criteria unless there are educational support materials readily available. For instance William Shakespeare's plays or the Koran are written for adults, however there is a lot of material available to support the use of these books in education.
- The eBook is availble in one of the 4 supported eBook formats, namely DejaVU, Acrobat, HTML or XML. It is not sufficient for converters to exist. In order to be in the collection, the eBook must already be converted to one of the 4 formats. Note that OpenDocument is in XML and is therefore suitable.
Mechanics of the Collection
The bulk of the eBooks in the collection will not be available on an OLPC website. Instead, the OLPC Collection consists of a set of links to books that are stored elsewhere. In some cases, this may be to an original repository, such as a Project Gutenberg mirror. In other cases it will be to a website set up to support OLPC.
Volunteers Needed
Obviously, there is a lot of work needed even just sorting through the vast number of books in English. But we also need books in many other languages, particularly Portuguese and Arabic at present. Note that some books may be suitable for use in other countries even though the book is in English, for instance some of the Audubon bird books found here in DJVU format: http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/