E-Book Collections are taking off in libraries and private subscriptions, but how to they compare? What follows is a work in progress based on perceptions of the Librarians at Drexel University’s Hagerty Library of the e-book platforms we use. It was created for a presentation to faculty about the growing e-book options available through the Library as part of the Institute on Innovation in Training and Teaching conducted by the Drexel Office of Information Resources and Technology, September 10-11, 2009.  (starting at slide 72)

E-Book Collections	In a Nutshell	Pros	Cons
	141 Medicine & Science Items	Lots of core medical textbooks, good graphics & basic definitions	No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.
	8,284 Business & InfoTech Items in HTML	Depth of IT books in the “ITPro” collection.	No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.
	32,000 Items on All topics	Breadth of collection. “PDF-like” hi-fidelity.	No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.
	???	It’s free.	Some downloads, hard to print, must be online to use. Omits pages.
	1,576 Engineering Items in PDF	Depth of data in the handbooks. True PDF’s are downloadable.
	3,688 Engineering Items in PDF	Depth of data in the handbooks. True PDF’s are downloadable.
	18,643 Business & InfoTech Items in HTML	Breadth of collection . Not much else.	No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.
	923 InfoTech Items in HTML	Core IT manuals from all main publishers. Code search option.	No downloads, hard to print, must be online to use.

Please help us evaluate Drexel’s electronic book collections and fill in the blanks below. Use the comment feature or email comments to siftar@drexel.edu.

Coming soon! A comparison of features in the following open-source EBook platforms…

ACLS Humanities Ebooks
Alex Catalog of Electronic Texts
Baen Free Library
Bartleby.com
Bibliomania
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Free On-line Library
Health Information for International Travel 2008
Internet Archive Texts
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Internet Public Library On Line Texts
Online Library of Literature
Perseus Digital Library
Project Gutenberg
University of California Press eScholarship Editions
University of Pennsylvania On-Line Books Library
University of Virginia Electronic Text Center

Professional associations are good investments. Whether you are networking for a job, keeping skills up to date or just seeking the company of colleagues, your reward from participating will exceed your investment many times over. A recent inquiry about local Philadelphia area associations that focus on IS/IT related topics provided the basis for this post.

While I don’t mean to slight national associations, I have only included groups that I know to have an active chapter in the Philadelphia area, just as a way to illustrate the F2F aspect of association activity. Many of these have an affiliation with a national organization, while others are strictly local. Techies outside Philly can use this list to get ideas about groups that might exist in your area. Even if you do not live in an urban area, you I encourage you to explore ways to network with other IS/IT professionals who meet face to face even if you have to take the first step.

Just choose the place to meet, and a discussion topic for the first meeting and then post an announcement to Meetup or Craigslist.  Just DO it! I promise you will be rewarded many times over! As always, I welcome your comments or any additional suggestions for this growing list of Philly area associations.

Regards,
Tim Siftar