Sue Polanka (Wright State University, and author of a blog by the same name as this book) has collated nine chapters on current aspects of e-books. That each chapter has a different author is at once disconcerting and helpful; read straight through, the reader first learns the history of e-books, then is introduced to e-book issues in school media centers, public libraries, and academic libraries. The final chapters synthesize e-book issues touched on in previous chapters. Each chapter in the book varies in tone, depth of coverage, and complexity. Although the first chapter on the history of e-books provides an overview for the general reader as well as library worker, the final chapters on acquisition, preservation, and e-book standards will appeal only to those with experience managing electronic resources. Each chapter can stand alone. The downside to this construct is that important issues are not fully discussed in one place. Digital rights management (DRM), for example, is mentioned in five chapters, licensing in six. E-book readers are covered in five chapters, although the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle also are mentioned separately in additional chapters.

The first chapter, “E-books on the Internet” by James Galbraith, offers a thorough and highly readable history of electronic books. Galbraith reminds readers that despite the recent “so-called crass commercialization of e-books,” (2) prevalence of e-book readers, and availability of e-book acquisition models, e-book collections have been with us for decades due to “a relatively small but influential e-book community” (2). Galbraith is referring to Project Gutenberg, which created the first digitized document in 1971 (The Declaration of Independence). Project Gutenberg was followed a decade later by Tufts University's Perseus Digital Library, one of the first single-subject e-book collections. This chapter describes the creation of other collections, recounts the technical challenges in making digitized documents widely available in the early days of the Internet, and provides an even and succinct overview of the Google Books controversy.

The next two chapters address e-books in school libraries, with discussion of e-books for student learning and e-books in the school media center. With the premise that e-books as multimedia tools will engage students in reading and are thus advantageous, both chapters recommend e-book subscription services such as Big Universe, BookFlix, International Children's Digital Library, Tumblebooks, and Tumblereadables for new readers, and free e-book collections such as Google Books, Project Gutenberg, Internet Public Library, and Bibliomania for K–12 readers. The chapters touch on use of e-reference books in the media center and adoption of e-textbooks, which have the potential to enhance learning through provision of dictionaries, pronunciation guides, read-aloud capability, links to relevant sites, embedded multimedia, and built-in learning assessments. Both chapters acknowledge issues with adding e-books to school media collections, and despite the overlap in content and loose platitudes, these chapters are helpful for school media specialists who wish to add e-books to their collections.

Chapter 4 covers e-books in public libraries and considers audiobooks as public libraries’ first foray into downloadable monographs. One wonders why the author felt the need to include a paragraph on the advantages of e-books (no shelf required, for one) since these are fairly well established. Three of the primary book vendors for the public library market are profiled: Overdrive, Ingram Digital, and Netlibrary (EBSCO's recent purchase of the last is noted), with e-reader compatibility charts, delivery methods, licensing options, and collection tools for each. Formats beyond PDF such as EPUB, Open eBook, and Mobipocket are explained succinctly. Another strength of this chapter is the contributor's exploration of how public libraries have collected and applied usage statistics for e-books. New York Public Library, for example, measures e-book use as a “virtual branch” (70) in terms of circulation reports. Acquisition for public libraries focuses on title-by-title selection, not package purchases that may be more common in academic libraries.

Chapter 5, “The Academic Library E-Book?” is a handy and highly practical chapter of interest to academic librarians, whether they are involved in e-book collections or not. It provides a thorough and much-needed discussion on the flexibility and options available in acquiring e-books, including subscription models, title-by-title selection, patron (or demand-driven) acquisition, short-term loans, subject and publisher packages, and pay-per-view. Negotiating points and issues inherent with each acquisition model are included. The chapter acknowledges the range of e-book genres of interest to academic libraries: popular, scholarly, audio, and e-reference books, as well as monographic series, scholarly bibliographies, and freely available classic texts. This chapter also describes University of Texas at Austin's experience with e-books and provides a case study of Penn State's e-reader project. A range of marketing and discovery advice is included, such as adding e-books to the catalog, utilizing vendor-sponsored webinars, embedding chapter links in course management software, creating search widgets, and highlighting e-books in information literacy courses. This chapter also acknowledges the issue of librarian buy-in, which is not addressed elsewhere in the book, and perhaps most helpfully, identifies common issues in e-book use in academic libraries. Some of these issues include what to do when a patron requests a print version of an e-book, Americans with Disabilities Act compliance, DRM issues, and interlibrary loan. Two areas not discussed that would be appropriate here are e-book weeding and the entry of university presses into the e-book market.

Chapters 2 through 5 focus on e-books by type of library; chapters 7–9 address the nuts and bolts of e-book issues, such as acquisition, use, preservation, and standards. These chapters expand on content mentioned in less detail in the early chapters, and those staff involved in any aspect of e-book acquisition will benefit. Vendors make e-book acquisition easy; much more complicated are the myriad platforms, restrictions, access models, and device compatibility issues that librarians must understand to make e-books accessible to patrons. Polanka and contributor Emilie Delquié cite Petway's barrier of thirty: “There are nearly thirty devices on the market (and counting), and there are thirty formats for e-book content, many of which are proprietary” (136). They follow with an alphabet soup of e-book-related acronyms (XML, ILL, DOI, ISBN EBUB, DRM, and SERU) that should be required study for all librarians.

Highly readable, this book is primer for libraries entering the e-book market, a cautionary tale for those who are wading in, and a bird's eye view for those whom e-books are business as usual.