I have just finished a paper on smell for the AIOH2008 conference in Perth in December. One of the references I wanted was Gilbert, A. (2008). What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life , published in June. Gilbert was one of the authors of the 1986 National Geographic Smell Survey of its 10.5 million readers, using a questionnaire and micro-encapsulated scents.
A quick check on Google Books gave the publication details and a link to libraries worldwide:
What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life
By Avery Gilbert
Published by Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2008
ISBN 0307449300, 9780307449306
Two libraries had the book, but they were interstate, so I looked further. A local on-line bookshop listed it for $55, somehwat higher than the converted $23.95USD price from the publisher – around $35AUD. The publisher’s website gave me links to various ebook vendors.
- Amazon Kindle
- BooksOnBoard.com
- Sony Connect
- CyberRead
- Diesel-ebooks
- eBookimpressions
- eBookMall
- eBooks.com
- eBooks About Everything
- eBookwise
- eChapterOne
- eFollett
- eReader
- Fictionwise
- Franklin
- Microsoft
- Mobipocket
- Powells
Comparison was difficult, as some gave in-house coupons, other required special hardware, some like Sony Connect were only for US and Canada and perhaps UK. I ended up selecting eChapterOne for $19.16USD and paying by secure link using my credit card. That will end up around $30AUD with the plummeting Australian dollar.
At first I was unable to download the file – the brief instructions were limited and I assumed that the Adobe PDF Reader 8 was fine. Eventually I worked out that I needed “Adobe Digital Editions” and the file downloade and opened up in this new program installed. Unfortunately the Digital Rights Management is quite over the top – no copying or printing. It rather goes beyond restricting “fair use” in being able to copy a sentence or detail for my own publications. I guess one can OCR a screen grab, but that’s not the point. When I upgraded to Adobe Reader 9, attempting to open the ebook PDF file automatically linked me to Adobe Digital Editions.
It looks like I could also register my laptop with Adobe and read the eBook on it too, though I don’t like other people’s programs lurking in the background. What I didn’t like was not being able to preview the book like you would in a bookshop.
Other vendors like National Acadamies Press allow you to preview reports, one page at a time, so you know what you are getting.
I save all my PDF files on my server and search my server and computer with Google Desktop, which also indexes PDF files – a great way to find that detail amongst thousands of files. I find reading a paper copy much easier and I like to scribble in the margins, so I print most PDF’s on a duplex laser printer. It saves boxes of paper a year.
It was nice to email my paper this afternoon to the conference organisers this afternoon.
