Further IA e-book news

I attended a meeting of the newly reformed METRO Smartphone & Mobile Computing SIG this week, and at one point I mentioned that Biodiversity Heritage Library books were available in ePub format through the Internet Archive. Someone answered that ePub couldn’t be read on the Kindle. When I answered that they could if converted using Calibre, they said that conversion was too complicated a process for the average library patron. A point which I’m not sure I’m ready to concede. In any case, it’s a moot point, as IA just began offering Mobipocket format as well, the basis for the Kindle’s native format. I’ll post what I find out when I get the Apples of New York in .mobi from the site.

Update: I’ve downloaded Apples of New York, and it appears to be identical to the ePub version, save the introductory cover images. The OCR is broken in exactly the same places.