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This blog is dedicated to the topics of Course materials, Innovation, and Technology in Education. it is intended as an information source for the college store industry, or anyone interested in how course materials are changing. Suggestions for discussion topics or news stories are welcome.

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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

e-book file conversion

This summer we have a couple interns working with us who will be contributing to the blog. We hope it provides a fresh new perspective and some new views on content. Here is another of their contributions -- one from the tech file:

A recent article at How-To Geek walks through the process of converting PDF eBooks into ePub format, using Calibre, which is an interesting program that allows users to organize their eBooks and to transform them into pretty much any format. It also supports many format conversions, including MOBI, which is used by Kindles.

“Calibre is program to manage your e-book collection. It acts as an e-library and also allows for format conversion, news feeds to e-book conversion, as well as e-book reader sync features and an integrated e-book viewer.”

Converting from PDF makes eBooks much easier to read on smaller, mobile devices, on which the PDF format forces readers to zoom in and move around the page in order to see everything. If the PDF contains text, rather than only scanned images, this conversion will instead make the book reformat to fill the screen of your device. Additionally, the many file conversions supported by Calibre allow users to read non-copy-protected eBooks on various devices and e-readers that do not support every format.