01/11/2013

FORGOTTEN BOOKS: DIGITAL LIBRARIES, OLD BOOKS & NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Like many of you I  initially  resisted the  invasion of e-books and e-readers  into our safe world made of shelves crammed with  printed books. I really didn’t accept such a dramatic  change and looked at the new strange objects with great suspicion. I couldn’t think of a book without its  reassuring smell of dusty paper or its smooth,  black- inked white pages. Anyway, again like many of you,  I had to surrender, to accept their presence in my life and even recognize their charms and practicality. I can now honestly say that I love e-books, though differently than my unforgettable first love, printed books.

Though I still treasure the hundreds of books I’ve been collecting all my life through on my shelves, I’ve recently discovered how easy and incredible is to have your favourite titles, all of them and even more, stored in your iPad or e-reader and be able to keep them  hidden  in your own handbag . That means you can always carry them with you and everywhere!  

What  I  want to share with you today is one of my latest  precious discoveries, related to my relatively new love for e-books. It’s a real treasure for someone like me with a high interest in classic literature and drama. It's ForgottenBooks,  an online digital library with thousands of books that can be of great interest to avid readers, students, academics and scholars of several different fields.

Do you  love Romance? Just try to click here  and browse: you’ll find more than 5,000 titles  from classic English  literature to  rare translations  of works  by  foreign authors  .
There are also thousands of books in the Fiction, Drama, Poetry and Art sections and last but not least a lovely Jane Austen  collection and books on her life. How could I resist? In fact, I couldn’t. I didn’t even try, actually.  And I’m now a proud member of Forgotten Books online digital library.



What are the advantages of my membership?

I can now access old and  ancient books I couldn't consult or examine otherwise. Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text.  
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     I receive a free e-book every day which I can decide whether to download or not,  according to my own interests
For example today I’ve downloaded  Socialism And Future by John Stuart Mill because I’m really interested in anything Victorian and I’ve always been thrilled by the modernity of Mill’s ideas since I first read his On Liberty.

-    When preparing my literature lessons  and looking for information about authors, texts and contexts I can find useful materials at the cost of … a click.

-    I can discover books I didn’t know about, just browsing among the various sections. Then  I can decide to add those unexpected  findings to my wish list or TBR list.  I can download those books without any further  necessity to search  for them online,  in libraries or  bookshops.

You see? It is an undeniable saving  of time, energy, money and space.  My laptop and my iPad can contain thousands of e-books and neither my husband nor my sons will ever need to complain about their haunting presence anywhere in the house. (Though they’ll  have to go on bearing the presence of many other hundreds already collected in all these past years).

Have a look at ForgottenBooks and let me know what you think. I’m for now really satisfied with my new library . I hope to meet you there!

ForgottenBooks are at the final stages of development of their mobile applications for the three leading devices: Apple iPad and iPad Mini, Android tablets and Microsoft Windows Surface.