The most marketable alternative — or perhaps just the most technologically advanced — is the hand-held electronic reading device. Gadgets like the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader are small, Game-Boy-sized devices that digitally store books, magazines and other reading materials using technology that attempts to make them as similar to books as possible.  Amazon’s Web site states that the Kindle displays ink-like particles electronically and can be read like paper without the glare produced by most other computer screens. The device weighs 10.3 ounces, less than most paperbacks, can hold over 200 titles and uses a wireless connection to access the “Kindle Store” anywhere. The Kindle has impressed many, earning a spot on the Wired magazine’s top 10 gadgets of 2007 list and even gaining support in the book community; authors such as James Patterson, Toni Morrison and Daniel Handler have all praised the Kindle’s simplicity and ease of use.
   

Electronic reading is transforming the Internet world as well. Google has announced plans to make the full text of millions of library books accessible online with the help of Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan and the New York Public Library, according to a May 2005 article from Technology Review, a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Information once only available in books is becoming accessible online to anyone with an Internet connection, not just through online companies, but also through the help of the ultimate protector of books: librarians.
      According to school librarian Linda Guitron, new technology is changing her job. “It seems like every month some new electronic method, like the Kindle, is available for reading,” Guitron said. “To keep up with the changes means attending workshops, reading library journals and participating in list serves to learn what is new in the field of library science.” The workshops teach librarians about new forms of electronic books in addition to teaching them how to form Wikis and participate in podcasts to help library users access the information they need, according to Guitron.
Guitron believes that the old-fashioned paper book will never go out of style, however, and that new technology should serve to keep reading in fashion.  “Whenever I go to Borders, the store is full of people reading actual books; on buses and planes many people are still reading books, magazines and newspapers,” she said. “However, people are reading less and less all the time, so whatever turns people on to reading I support!”
Some publishers are joining Google’s initiative to get books online and attract more new readers. A Stephen King novella was published exclusively online, according to a July 2000 Technology Review article. Besides the actual text, the e-book offers readers the chance to search

 Random House Inc., the world’s largest English-language trade publisher, has offered approximately 6,500 e-books as of January 2008, according to Matt Shatz, vice president for digital at Random House. "As a content company, Random House needs to keep up with the products available online,” Shatz said. “People are reading more and more on screens every day; we don't believe that book content will be an exception to that trend.” Random House has published a relatively small percent of its titles as e-books for the past seven years, according to Shatz. “We are now converting pretty much all format appropriate titles.  Exceptions would be heavily illustrated books such as art or cook books,” he said.

    Students give the online reading experience mixed reviews. Junior David Wiggins, for example, who recently read Neil Strauss’s The Game on his computer, said the experience was less than satisfactory. “Reading a book on your computer is not as cool or as easy as it sounds,” Wiggins said. “I constantly found myself annoyed that I couldn’t go read it in bed before I went to sleep or bring it into the living room to read on my couch or something.” But Senior Rhea Kumar appreciates online texts after being encouraged to use the online version of texts in an AP English class last year. “The online texts were really helpful and the appendixes really clarified the meanings of the passages so you weren't really lost throughout the rest of the novel,” Kumar said. “Because it's online, I could keep up with the reading if I left my book at school and it helped with finding quotes if I only remembered a section of them.”
   

    Electronic reading may soon become part of the Lowell student’s daily life, according to Guitron. The library now offers e-books and digitized copies of reference books available to students through its home page (http://follett.sfusd.edu/common/welcome.jsp?site=110). “It basically expands Lowell ’s library to a 24-hour service,” Guitron said.
The school’s library also offers audio-books, hand-held listening devices available to be checked out overnight, according to Guitron.
    The  collection will increase in the near future. This March, for the first time, the Lowell Library home page will link directly to an online literary database consisting of two sets of e-books, Novels for Students and Drama for Students, both 22 volumes, according to Guitron. “Students and teachers will have access in one place to analysis of almost 700 of the most-often studied novels and plays,” she said. “Each article includes an author biography, plot summary, list of characters, themes, style and literary devices.” Also in March, the library will be adding 20 new audio books, and in the fall of 2008 will add Poetry for Students and Epics for Students to the database, according to Guitron.
    Lowell is not alone in adding digital resources to its library. “E-books are more popular with some librarians than others, but with the increased digitizing of print media, they will probably require a larger part of our library budgets in the future,” she said.  
Guitron hopes that electronic reading options will help prepare a wide range of students for university-level work, and improve their technical literary skills. “It is my philosophy that libraries should offer books and other materials in a large variety of formats, to appeal to the different learning modalities of our students,” she said.