Thing Twenty-Two

Thing Twenty-Two – Ebooks and NetLibrary

I have actually been using EBooks for years now. I think the first time was, I hate to say it, downloading the Cliff Notes to Much Ado About Nothing, which I was in, back in 1995 or 96. I, of course, knew the play well, but needed help getting some of the finer points of comedy. Since then, I have downloaded dozens of EBooks. There are a few that, when I was doing a major research paper on Constantine the Great, were so rare that they were only available via scans. I spent quite a bit of time in front of computer screens translating old Latin. It would have been great to actually hold the books or manuscripts and work off of those, but I felt lucky to have any kind of access to some of the oldest texts in the world, all through download. Granted, those weren’t from some NetLibrary, they were essentially e-mailed directly to one of my professors, but I see it as nearly the same thing. I see both as a great tool, especially for hard to find or out of print books.