Brave New eWorld
I just discovered that Google eBooks just released* an iPad (and iPhone and iPod touch) app that allows you to read eBooks on your device. Just like Kindle books. Just like pdfs. Which means... I can now sit at home reading Jon Mombaer's Rosetum exercitiorum spiritualium et sacrarum meditationum (Milan: H. Bordonum et P.M. Locarum, 1603) without having to go to the Newberry Library to read their (admittedly older) copy (Lyon: Scabalerius, 1510). From which I was only able to request 30 pages in photocopy the week before last.** And now I have the whole thing, all 784 pages (in the 1603 edition), right here on my iPad. I am in shock. On the edge of a whole new world of scholarship. Suddenly, all of those early modern printed editions (provided the libraries of the world are willing to scan them) are available to me. I wonder if this is how the first subscribers to Migne's Patrologia latina felt when his presses started churning out their editions of the works of the Fat...