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By David Rothman

Mnybooks.netOwn a cellphone but worried about the complexities of reading e-books on it?

Then you might try the phone-related area of Manybooks.net, which, according to BlogWorld, is easier than alternatives such as YuetReader.

In techese, others may “require a lot more fussing about and unzping the jar file, splitting the book into manageable size chunks and zipping the junks and the associated classes from the JAR file back up and putting it onto your phone again.”

Mnybks.net—notice the deliberately missing letters, perhaps recognition of the need for URLs to be brief on cellphones?—works with modest little Midp2.0 phones.

The global Digital Divide angle

In library-short parts of the world and elsewhere, cellphones aren’t substitutes for, say, beautiful E Ink tablets or an OLPC laptop-tablet. But they’re far, far better than no e-books at all, and perhaps the simplicity of Mnybks.net can reduce tech support issues. See Mobile phones: A way to spread e-books around in Africa, a TeleBlog post by David Ajao, who lives there.

Odd fact: The TeleRead proposal for well-stocked national digital library systems goes back to the early ’90s when phone modems were the main way of access the Net even in wealthy countries such as the U.S. The “tel” can still refer to telecommunications. Meanwhile, if nothing else, I like the idea of its referring to books accessible on cheap cellphones, so popular among young people, including many from less-than-affluent families. The challenge is to get them actually to use the phones, and that means not just technical help but also appropriate books.

And speaking of the Digital Divide here in the U.S.: It’s alive and well, as a perceptive Washington Post article pointed out, and librarian Jessamyn West has done a good little follow-up.

 
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