Has the digital e-book moment arrived?

Amazon's new Kindle e-book device -- touted to make reading easier -- may be setting the digital world aflame, with initial supplies quickly selling out after its unveiling last week despite its $399 price tag. Company officials say they're not sure if those who order now may get it in time for the yuletide holidays.

But experts say it may take many months, if not years, for Kindle and other e-books, such as Sony's similar Reader device, to make their way into the digital mix among Long Island's libraries and public schools.

In the past decade, new technology has dramatically changed the information and entertainment offerings on local shelves and in classrooms. Fuzzy VHS cassettes have given way to high-definition and Blu-ray DVDs. Aimed at ears rather than eyeballs, audiobook downloads for iPods have become plentiful.

So far, however, e-books -- of which Kindle is the latest version -- haven't made much of a dent among the Island's ever demanding digital literati.

"It's going to be a long time for the schools to convert, because of the cost of these machines," says Rita Kaikow, a library media specialist at Oceanside High School and president of the Long Island Media Association, a 200-member school group overseeing technology mostly in Nassau County. "If you have a large school, how do you buy and safeguard this equipment?"

Wireless delivery system

Over the past decade a few libraries invested in other e-book devices -- such as the Rocket ebook introduced in the late 1990s by NuvoMedia Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif. -- but mostly met with disappointment. "A couple of libraries tried it in Suffolk, but it was a bust," remembers Peter Ward, library director of the Lindenhurst Memorial Library. As for Kindle, Ward said that if the prices go lower and more patrons want it, "then certainly we will be required to get it."

That's the hope of Amazon, the giant online retailer, which wants to reignite reading with its Kindle. The 10-ounce device offers a wireless delivery system to call up as many as 90,000 available books as well as blogs, magazines and newspapers. It is readable on a high-resolution display that the company says "looks and reads like real paper." Bestselling books can be bought and downloaded for $9.99, about half of Amazon's already discounted price for those books.

The square, somewhat awkward device has received generally favorable reviews in the press. "Amazon believes it has created the iPod of reading," Newsweek gushed last month in a cover story about Kindle, part of "a revolution (already in progress) that will change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish."

Other critics have been more temperate. "We had no issues reading the display under a multitude of circumstances, including in bright lighting and while riding a Long Island Railroad train," Melissa J. Perenson wrote in PC World, a trade publication. "Since the display lacks a backlight, however, the surface wasn't readable in dim lighting."

The Wall Street Journal's high-tech guru, Walter S. Mossberg, liked Kindle's "good readability, battery life and storage capacity" but said its hardware design and software interaction are "marred by annoying flaws," such as a clumsy design.

Ian Freed, Amazon's vice president, says buyers at Amazon.com bought all available Kindles within 51/2 hours of its debut. He said Kindle was selling mostly to individual customers, but he expressed confidence its popularity would soon extend to libraries and schools. "We're very pleased with the reception," Freed said.

Wait-and-see approach

Rival Sony has been selling its Reader e-book device since last year, with a new updated version now priced at $299, $100 cheaper than the Kindle. Sony has sold most of its e-books to customers who are 35 or older, Freed said, "particularly to the traveler and the avid reader." But e-books will face some technological challenges in trying to become ubiquitous among students and in local libraries, Freed said, because many still record documents and information on Adobe's PDF format, which isn't easily readable by e-book devices.

Until e-books become more popular and manufacturers figure out ways to overcome these existing obstacles, many libraries and schools will take a-wait-and-see approach.

"Anything that encourages people to read is something that libraries would applaud, but I doubt if it [the e-book] could replicate the written page," said Therese Purcell Nielsen, a Huntington reference librarian who is on the media committee of the Suffolk County Library Association. "There have been a number of electronic books like this. Some people just don't want to download books."

At current prices, Nielsen said, it was doubtful Long Island libraries would soon invest in the "hardware, buying the necessary number of e-book devices needed to support a change in their media spending. "You always want to see if something flies at first," Nielsen explained. She said she still keeps VHS cassettes at the Huntington library because so many patrons still have VCR players at home, and some classic movies aren't available on DVD.

Buying new media is a big and growing business for libraries nationwide, estimated at between $120 million and $150 million annually. At the Lindenhurst library, Ward said bound copies of printed books still make up the vast majority of its purchases. But he noted the audiovisual part of his annual budget has steadily climbed, from 8.2 percent in 1986 to 14 percent this year. He said e-books will be fighting for a piece of that pie down the road.

"More and more, electronic formats are being added, more of our collection is digital," Ward said. "The big question is: How do you keep up with it? Most libraries have replaced their VHS collection with DVD, and now there's Blu-ray coming out? So you ask: What technology will stick?"

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