North York Central Library Blog

While eBooks seem to be a relatively new development, they have actually been around for forty years.  The first ebook was created in 1971 when Michael Hart of Project Gutenberg created a text file of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.   EBooks developed slowly over the next decades as devices such as Sony's Rocket eBook had limited memory (10 book maximum) and were heavy and cumbersome.  Ebooks themselves were limited in availablity, although Project Gutenburg was (and is) and great resource for free public domain eBooks.  It was not until the arrival of Amazon's Kindle and a few years later, Apple's iPad  and the Kobo eReader that popuarlity of ebooks skyrocketed.   Today, eBooks files are available  from many sources and the current devices have increased memory (many will hold hundreds of eBooks), functionality and are much more user-friendly.

The Toronto Public Library has been providing access to ebooks for many years now, but  the the use has grown incredibly over the last year -  a 400% increase from May 2010 to May 2011!  The Toronto Star recently published the article  Huge spike’ in e-book downloads at Toronto libraries about this rapid growth in use of the library's eBook collection.

North York Central Library staff will be presenting an eBooks  and eBook Readers session on Thursday, June 23rd at 12 noon until 1:30 p.m. (in Room 2/3)  for anyone interested in learning more about eBooks.  The presentation will consist of an overview of eBooks and eBook readers in general, followed by information and a demonstration on using the different eBook Services available through Toronto Public Library – with particular emphasis on OverDrive.   Please stop by the Browsery desk on the main floor, or call 416-395-5672, to register.