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by Judith Jordet, MLS

From the Article:

If each inmate could have a library of over 1,000 titles in one small e-book reader, it would cut down on hiding contraband among the books (such as sandpaper to erase their uniform logo), remove the unsanitary habit of reading books in the rest-room, cut down on repairing books (averaging 20% or over 1,200 books destroyed each year), free up space by limiting the 3 X 8 foot long bookshelves that only hold 640 books for 100 inmates in each unit, encourage struggling readers to listen to a book while reading the text on the screen, and, finally, allow anyone to increase the size of the font so LARGE PRINT will never be limited to a few titles!

However, my research revealed problems that only a niche market can solve. I studied the Kindle, Sony and Nook e-book readers; all of them are equipped to access the Internet. I wish an e-book reader existed that only accessed the millions of legitimately published books (rather than anonymous individuals self-publishing on the Internet, not accountable to anyone even for spelling or grammar). Imagine an e-book reader that specialized in accessing books by title, author, subject, date, publisher, language, format (audio, digital) and/or keyword!

Much More in the Complete Article

Source: Corrections.com

Via Resource Shelf and Frank Sleightholme

2 COMMENTS

  1. I find this original article to be quite daft and bizarre. If they get eBooks that only have wifi and then ensure there is no wifi in the institution then the inmate cannot get access to the web or email. It’s simple. It is also a simple task then to make the inmate come to the library to access books. A lot of baloney about nothing.

    millions of legitimately published books (rather than anonymous individuals self-publishing on the Internet, not accountable to anyone even for spelling or grammar)

    This is quite an offensive and ignorant comment.

  2. Having worked in a library for 10 years (Thank God that’s over!), I can attest to the elitist attitude of most librarians. As a field, they have artificially inflated the education requirements of the job, the degree is nothing but theory and no practical hands-on work (they learn the real work on the job), and a holier-than-thou attitude towards library visitors.

    I’m not surprised by the lack of technical knowledge (some researcher!) and such an ignorant comment about indie authors.

    And where are the classics on her list? They are free after all, and must better literature than most of the authors she does list.

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