I’m going to start my talk with the masterpiece written by Joanne K. Rowling, the Harry Potter series.
Please raise your hand if you have read at least one of the Harry Potter series.
Then, raise your hand if you’ve brought all the books of the series to read them during your long-time trip or business trip.
Even though you have enough time to read all series during the trip, it might be stupid to bring these heavy books.
who want to bring all of those books?
However, bring all the books of the Harry Potter series for your trip is not stupid any more, because of an e-book.
You might already have an e-book device in your hand.
There are a lot of ebook readers like Kindle, Android devices, iPad, or iPhone despite its small size.
These have huge advantages over conventional books.
No trees are required to manufacture paper for the pages of ebooks.
Ebooks are searchable. You can easily search for any information in an ebook, instead of turning page after page.
Ebooks can be interactive and contain audio, video and animations, which can enhance the message that the author is trying to convey.
Ebooks take up less space. You practically don't need any space to store them. You don't need a library or a room for them. You can store hundreds and thousands of ebooks on your device.
Finally, ebooks are portable. You can carry an entire library on one device, without worrying about their weight.
Even though ebook readers are technically electric devices, they quite look like real books.
Whenever we move to other pages, we can see the effect like a real book.
It is also quite portable. We can highlight impressive parts of the book, use dictionaries, and make a bookmark while we hear the audiobook.
If you worry about eye strain due to reading for hours, you can choose more paper-like e-book such as Amazon Kindle.
While the iPad and other android devices have LCD-based screen, this type of ebook has quite paper-like screen called e-ink.
Can you be sure which one is a real book printed in papers and which one is Kindle?
So far we knew how e-books are convenient for heavy readers.
Now I’m going to talk about e-book contents.
As if we buy books in bookstores, we can get e-books in online bookstores.
Let me show you the price of a real book and its e-book version.
This last volume of Harry Potter series is $11.33 for paperback and $9.99 for Kindle version ebook.
Even though ebook never has a physical object, it is not so cheaper than the paper-based book.
Then, is there any other way to read ebook contents for free?
Let’s look back real books.
Where can we go for reading and borrowing books?
It’s a library.
We read books in the library and borrow them at the library.
Then, is there a library for ebooks?
Yes, of course.
We can borrow ebook online.
As a Lafayette resident, I’m letting you know the simplest way.
When we go to the website of West Lafayette public library with the membership number of it, there is a link to digital library.
If click it, we move to Indiana Digital Download Center.
After searching the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, we can borrow and download it to our mobile devices.
Now we can go anywhere with all books of Harry Potter series.
Today, let’s try to carry all books that you want to read on you smartphone, tablet, iPad, and Kindle.
