Are You Social Reading?

"The term “social reading” can mean different things depending on its context. Social reading can be the kind of work that happens in a literature class where a group of participants all read the same novel (or short story or poem or play) at roughly the same pace and work together .... It could also mean the kind of reading that happens for book groups ....“social reading” has recently also taken on a technological turn as more and more people embrace e-reading technologies: Kindles, Nooks, iPads and iPhones, ...

"Social Kindling,” [is] Amazon’s practice of sharing your highlighted passages and/or annotations with other users. ... even if you do not decide to share ... reading on a Kindle is inevitably a social experience because the default setting on most of the devices is to have “Popular Highlights” enabled. This feature is not unlike buying a used book that has been highlighted by a previous reader–the difference is that instead of a single reader, your e-book will have highlights from hundreds maybe thousands of other readers." Read more here.

Social Reading.  Try it this summer!

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

New, Free E-Books from CALI

Just in time for Spring Semester, the folks at CALI (Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction) have announced some new free e-texts to save you some money. In addition to the Restyled Federal Rules of Evidence (subject of our December 6 post), CALI has added other new titles to its eLangdell collection of digital books for your laptop and a variety of mobile devices, including Kindle. Among the recently released titles for download are books for securities law and regulation, bankruptcy, and civil procedure, as well as a recently revised version of Peter Martin's Introduction to Basic Legal Citation. Keep your eye on CALI's eLangdell web site for more titles to come.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Federal Rules Ebooks For Free!

Here's some great news. Three staples of legal education--the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, and the Federal Rules of Evidence--can now be downloaded free and read on your iPad, iPhone, Nook, or any device or software that supports .epub files. Go to this CALI page to learn more about the ebooks and how to download them directly to your device or transfer them from a computer.

CALI has joined with Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute (LII), the highly respected free legal information site, to publish these federal rules ebooks for everyone. Of course, creating them was costly, and commercial equivalents are expensive, so please consider donating something to LII, if you can, to help them continue the good work.
Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

New Site for Digital Books

We all know about Google Books, but where else can a virtual cat go to curl up with a virtual book? A new site called BookServer helps people (and cats) find information on digital books that are available for free or for a fee.

This service is provided by the Internet Archive - one of the great resources on the Internet - and subject of past and no doubt future postings.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat