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e-Book & e-Information Services

e-Book downloads with OverDrive
Audiobooks downloads with OverDrive
Pre-loaded digital player to borrow with Playaway
e-LIBRARY - e-Books and information services that we subscribe to
External links to free e-Books with Project Gutenberg, Google Books etc
EPUB format
Guide to e-Book readers and other devices

e-Books & Audiobooks downloads with OverDrive

Latest News 20th February 2010

We have added more e-Books and Audiobooks, more than doubling the number of titles that you can now download.

With OverDrive you can download over 800
best-selling and classic audiobooks and e-Book titles.
Listen and learn over 15 languages from Chinese to Swahili
Fiction titles, from 'Bleak House' to the 'Story of Pi'
From guide books to Amsterdam and Istanbul to a biographies of Andy Murray and Obama
You can download anytime and anywhere
Use your RBWM library card and your PIN to login via your PC or Mac
Enjoy digital titles on the computer or transferred to a supported device such as an MP3 player
You can burn some titles to CD
No late fees or penalties for damaged items
No more bulky cassettes or CDs
Use a range of platforms such as PCs, Smartphones, PDAs, MP3s including iPODs
3 eBook formats - Adobe EPUB, Adobe PDF & Mobipocket
2 audio book formats - OverDrive MP3 and WMA.
There are more details on our OverDrive website

Borrow the PLAYAWAY - a digital player pre-loaded with a full length audiobook

Another new generation of audio books - The Playaway - is now available in Windsor and Maidenhead Libraries.

A pocket sized digital media player preloaded with a full length audio book.
Easy to operate and can be used with headphones or played through speakers.
The player automatically bookmarks where you are when you pause, stop or restart.
It can be used at home or on the move.

These are just a few of the 167 Playaway titles currently available:

A concise Chinese-English dictionary for lovers by Xiaolu Guo
The Da Vinci code by Dan Brown ; narrated by Jeff Harding
The end of the affair by Graham Greene ; read by M.Kitchen
The God delusion by Richard Dawkins ; narrated by Dawkins & Ward
The adventure of English; by Melvyn Bragg ; read by Robert Powell.

This new product will provide a wider choice of format to our visually impaired users who will be able to borrow them free of charge. Playaways are available to borrow from Maidenhead and Windsor Libraries. The cost is £2 for a 3 week loan (£1.80 Advantage card)*

* Please note batteries and headphones will not be provided, but can be purchased in the library.

e-LIBRARY takes you beyond Google

Through our e-LIBRARY you can login and use over 800 web-based e-Books and information databases, covering computing, biographies, newspapers, art, music, business startups, family history and social issues.

We subscribe to these high quality online services to help you with your information needs, whether it is for research, homework, developing your ICT skills, searching your family history, setting up, running and managing a business or even doing the crossword!

All the following, with the exception of Ancestry which is only available on the library PCs, can be used on a PC with an Internet link, any time, anywhere. Just login in with your library membership number :

Ancestry Family history records ( Due to licensing conditions, we regret that Ancestry is only available in the library, on the public PCs)
COBRA - The complete business adviser for setting up and running your own business
Issues Online - Current information on social issues
KnowUK - Reference titles covering people, places and organisations in the UK
NewsUK - Full text articles from 67 national & regional newspapers & magazines
Oxford Art Online - All you need to know about the the visual arts worldwide.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - 50,000 people who have shaped the British past.
Oxford English Dictionary Online (from Home) - Oxford English Dictionary Online (In the Library) Over half a million words from across the English-speaking world.
Oxford Music Online - The world of music, including Grove Music
Oxford Reference Online - Dictionary, reference and companion titles
Safari Computer Books online. From your Home PC, please use your PIN as well as your library membership number to login from the Library Catalogue website. After you login the link to Safari will be visible.
Stories from the Web - For children and young people with book reviews and recommended reads. Login with these details - Username: rbwm, password: rbwm07
Thames Pilot - Images & documents on the history of River Thames
Times Digital Archive - The Times newspaper covering the period 1875 to 1985
Who's Who & Who Was Who - Influential people in British public life today as well as the the past.
World Book - A general children's encyclopaedia

External links to Free e-Books

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is the first and largest single collection of free e-Books. There are over 30,000 free e-Books are available to download.

Recent popular downloaded e-Books from Project Gutenberg:

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana by Vatsyayana
History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary Ritter Beard
All About Coffee by William H. Ukers
Dracula by Bram Stoker
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Google Books - e-Books to download

With the Google programme millions of books in the public domain provided by partners have been digitised.
Partners include many academic and national institutions such as Oxford University, New York Public Library, Lyon Municipal Library, National Library of Catalonia and Columbia University Library. With the addition of PDF and EPUB downloads, Google now allows Internet users all over the world to download, print and read offline many out-of-copyright books. These tend to be older publications.

FOR EXAMPLE

Go to Google Books
Do an Advanced Search, indicate 'Public domain only' and then search for 'Maidenhead'.
You will get the following title - 'The history and antiquities of ... Reading in Berkshire' by John Doran, 1835.
This is from Oxford University Press and has a small section on Maidenhead.
You can read it page by page or download it as a PDF or EPUB
On the Overview page you can see the Contents, Key words and phrases used

EPUB e-Book format

The EPUB e-Book format offers a better reading experience with current e-Book readers such as iPhones and Sony Readers. With EPUB the contents will reflow to suit the size of your screen.
You will find out more about downloading EPUB e-Books at epubBooks (external site). This site provides downloads to free e-Books in the open web standards e-Book format.

These are some of the titles available:

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (F Scott Fitzgerald)
Little Lord Fauntleroy (F H Burnett)
Ben-Hur (Lew Wallace)
Dream Days (Kenneth Grahame)
The Prince (Niccolò Machiavelli)
Right Ho, Jeeves (P. G. Wodehouse)
Les Misérables (V.Hugo)

Information about Adobe EPUB books is available at the RBWM OverDrive site

Guide to e-Book readers & other devices

A guide to current UK e-Book readers with e-book-reader-guide (external site)
Compatible devices for the OverDrive downloadable e-Book and audiobook services