eBooks: A Sign of Things to Come?

The New South Wales Government in Australia is getting ready to include eBooks schools and libraries. They are initiating a new statewide collection of eBook resources accessible to all public schools. The programme, set to launch in 2013, will be run by the State Education Department's School Library and Information Literacy team, based in Sydney.

The new eBook programme will start with the ‘Empowering Local Schools’ initiative, in June. It will gradually see a staggered release of the eBooks to all schools by 2015. Giving all public schools access to thousands of eBooks. The plan is to standardise all public school libraries and facilities on a hosted school library system.

There will be 5000 titles available in June to the first group of schools participating in the eBook programme. Students will be able to read the titles on State issued e-readers and tablets, or devices of their own.

Currently, issues are being resolved surrounding the cost of the programme and how much the Government will have to pay.It is likely that they will be a combination of royalty free open source books, that are in the public domain. 

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Image: Catorze14, Flickr