Here is B&N's answer to the Kindle.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/technologylive...

Hm...good to see Amazon get some competition in the area...

Competition is always good. And B&N is a great book store.

I can't believe they are calling it "nook" haha anyone know who helped them? like sony, etc?

I was at B&N last night. I bought a book I've been drooling over the last couple of times I've been in there and the guy at the cash registered slipped a flyer in my book. They also had thick pamphlets they were giving out.

Interesting...I hate those touch screen things though.

I don't like the look of it at all. It looks like it was designed by Fisher Price.

I'm with BunWat on the design. From a purely aesthetic perspective I'm thinking that the upcoming Sony reader, with wireless capability, might be the one that finally pushes me into the world of e-books:

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stor...

BunWat wrote: "I don't like the look of it at all. It looks like it was designed by Fisher Price. "

I agree, it somehow just looks too blah.

I do like the idea that you could lend books though.

I think you can only lend one at a time and they expire after 14 days but still kinda cool

They said that on NPR tonight. You can lend it once, and you don't have access to it while it is lent (like a real book, I guess), and the publishers have the right to opt out of the lending part.

It looks like one school district is going paperless.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2...

And some aren't very happy about it.

One commenter on the blog parentdish.com urged, "Save the books, fire the instigator of the book-burning. Let Hitler stay dead."

I looooove the student comment,

"Dr. Tracy, I love him, I respect him," she says. "But has he read a dystopian novel?"

Oh that was awesome.

What I want to know is how many students this school has. Did I miss it in the text someplace?

I didn't see it either Bun, but it did have 20,000 books, that seems like quite a few to me. Not overwhelming though.

I was wondering because 65 e-readers don't seem like that many, unless there aren't very many students at this school. Or maybe a lot of them already have readers or i-phones or something? I mean if only 65 kids can have books at the same time...

Good point

Then you must think the iPod looks like it was designed by Fisher-Price, Bun. I think it looks fine.

BunWat wrote: "What I want to know is how many students this school has. Did I miss it in the text someplace? "

http://www.cushing.org/about/index.shtml

They have 450 students, 371 of which are boarders.

450 is roughly the size of my high school. And I can't imagine our school library getting rid of the books and going for 65 e-readers. The number of books a library has isn't always an indicator of the "freshness" of the material-- we had a decent amount of books in our library, but do encyclopedias from the 1980s really serve a purpose?

I think the school administration is trying too hard to be "hip."

Thanks for looking that up Angie. Yeah 65 e readers for 450 students doesn't sound like enough.

This makes me wonder how many of the students have their own Kindle.

Or maybe the library is just getting no use, no one reads, and research will be done on computers, and a lot of the e-readers will be sitting idle.

It did say that all of the students have laptops, so maybe they are doing most of their reading on the laptops. But I don't like to read on a laptop. You can't get as comfortable.

Univ of Missouri has a HUGE library and book selection but barely anyone checked them out so even though there won't be many ereading devices at that school, I doubt they will all be used at once. Everyone just went to the library to do homework and play on the computers at Mizzou. Mostly the computer part.

Circulation of library materials at high schools and colleges does seem to be pretty low. I didn't check out from either of my libraries much. And when I did, the old call cards were usually in the pockets and some of those books hadn't been checked out since the 60's. I think they went digital in the mid 90's so it is safe to say that really was the last time they were checked out. Poor May Sarton. No one reads her books anymore.

I bet 65 readers would be more than enough. Unless teachers started forcing the kids to use the library. Then it could get a little rough.

It seems Walmart is now selling Sony's new version (well 5 anyway, it may not be the newest) ereader (or is my store just behind the times? I do live in the sticks...) And it is weird. My husband fiddled with it for awhile. I wish it had a keyboard. I heard it would be a touch screen, but it wasn't. And it was pretty small, too. I think I'll stick with my kindle.

Abigail wrote: "It seems Walmart is now selling Sony's new version (well 5 anyway, it may not be the newest) ereader (or is my store just behind the times? I do live in the sticks...) And it is weird. My husband f..."

Sony has several different types of readers and only one of them is a touchscreen currently. Maybe you bought the sony pocket reader?

Oh I didn't buy it, we just played with it for awhile. Okay so it isn't their newest version. Still kind of weird to see it at Walmart. And with a sample of H2G2 on it too...

Abigail wrote: "And with a sample of H2G2 on it too..."

No WAY. lol

I was amused. It's not the kind of thing people read down here. The entire book section at this Walmart is romance novels, urban fiction, and vampire stuff. So I was really surprised.

I heard another segment about this private school that eliminated the paper library. It seems that all of the students have laptops. So the 65 e-readers are just for people who don't want to read on their computers.