eBooks

The World eBook Fair was a bit tricky to use, one had to register and pay a fee. I expected to find a copy of 'The Canterbury Tales' free to view on the web, but it was not so, I had to pay up first. A bit more luck with the Internet Archive - I found a copy of 'If this is a man' by Primo Levi published in 1959, all 226 pages of it (.pdf format) complete with date due slip attached with dates stamped from 27 December 1960. Understandably it took a few minutes to load, but it was remarkable to get a copy of it 'free' on the web. I can see the value of these eBook repositories for out of print material or hard to get classics. It can act as an adjunct to university and public libraries. Even so, I find it hard to read texts online and I wonder how authors would react to their work being available to millions free of charge. At times it may be of value for scholars to be able to be able to actually handle these old texts for study purposes, I am thinking of Melbourne University downsizing its collection of classic and ancient texts at the Parkville campus thus making it harder to consult them. But I digress ... there is certainly value in being able to access older publications so easily and I applaud the online repositories of these resources.