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Books thriving despite internet | NWFP Medical Date sheet
Books are thriving despite the internet
London, May 29, 2008: Books are one of the oldest industries, yet they have been hardly
affected by the digital revolution. Publishers just go on commissioning and
editing them in their own sweet time as if nothing had happened. In an age when
your blog could be out of date in minutes, publishers seem happy to leave
months, even years, between the manuscript being presented and going on sale.
The curious thing is that it doesn't seem to be doing them any harm at all. In
the UK for instance, book sales have risen in volume every year for the past
five years, including a 6 per cent increase last year. No wonder book publishers
are not baying about illegal downloads like the film and music
industries.
There may even be a link between digitisation and the onward
march of books. The pain of reading on screen may be increasing the joy of
enjoying books in their centuries-old format. I recently read an entire volume
on my laptop: an excruciating experience. It involved holding the machine at
different angles to prevent my neck from creaking while trying to manipulate the
two keys needed to move to the next screen and regularly having to press another
key to rekindle the backlight. Never again. It is an altogether better
experience to read books on a dedicated device such as Sony's e-reader, Amazon's
Kindle or the more versatile Linux-based iLiad. They can be read easily in
bright sunlight, the print size can be increased and you can download a new tome
when you have finished an old one. But they are too expensive and have been slow
to catch on in the UK. Unlike publishing, book distribution has been
revolutionised by Amazon and abebooks.com, one of the sites that sells old books
and has given a lifeline to secondhand bookshops that can now trade on the
internet. It has also greatly reduced the chances of coming across an unexpected
bargain because bookshop managers can see what others are charging
online.
Books have also been slow to form Facebook-style communities,
even though what you read is often the biggest thing you have in common with
others. This is now changing, but is still a bit of a minority sport. When I
last wrote about it a year ago, librarything.com was the market leader with only
200,000 members while goodreads.com had only 125,000. Goodreads has now moved
decisively ahead of librarything and shelfari with more than a million members
according to alexa.com. This is huge growth compared with a year ago but small
beer compared with the number of people reading books. Some 51 per cent of
Goodreads members are in the US with only 3 per cent in the UK and, curiously,
17 per cent in Iran. These sites are really good even if you only use their
basic function of cataloging the books you are reading complete with ratings:
you simply type in the first few words of the title and everything is pulled up
including a cover picture from a database. You can also see what your friends
are reading or form local groups.
You don't have to read a book to enjoy
it: you can have it read to you. The market leader by an unhealthy distance is
audible.com, now owned by Amazon. When I last inquired, it had more than 90 per
cent of the market, which may help to explain why its prices are so high in a
digital age when the cost of producing extra copies is almost zero. Khaled
Hosseini's excellent A Thousand Splendid Suns costs $28 at audible, far more
than for a paperback. It badly needs fresh competition of the kind that
silksoundbooks.com provides, where you can download Julie Christie reading
Madame Bovary (admittedly out of copyright) for the equivalent of about $16. If
that is too much then you can download a text-only version of out-of-copyright
books at the venerable gutenberg.org, which now claims 3m downloads a month. The
current best seller (or rather non-seller) is volume one of The Outline of
Science by J Arthur Thomson, followed by the first volume of the Manual of
Surgery. Who said the internet was all about dumbing down?
Dawn/ The Guardian News Service
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NWFP Medical Faculty Date sheet
Peshawar: The NWFP Medical Faculty has issued date sheet for the first, second,
third and fourth semesters of diploma course examination starting from June 7.
The exam would be simultaneously held at paramedical institutes of medical
technologies in Swat, Abbottabad, Dera Ismail Khan and Peshawar, said a press
release issued here. Copies of the date sheet have been sent to all the public
and private sector paramedical institutes, while it has also been put on the
official website of the faculty. Those who failed to receive a copy of the date
sheet can see it on the website: www.nwfpmf.edu.pk, the release said.
Your Comments
"i think and i want to about the faculty students why they are not pass in the exam."
Name: gulnawazdurrani
Email: sami_guldurrani@yahoo.com
City, Country: peshawar ,pakistan
"I am a student of Khyber Institute of Medical Sciences.I have taken the exam of final semester.I have qualified the exam of previous three semesters and I am waiting for the result.Gul Nawaz Durrani has asked"Why dont the students qualify the exam of NWFM Medical Faculty".I suggest him that there is nothing difficult to pass the exam.All you have to do is to learn and understand whar u r thaught. I want to know that when the result of june.2008 session is coming."
Name: Merwis Khan
Email: Merwisk@yahoo.com
City, Country: peshawar ,pakistan
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National Centre for Physics (NCP) to be upgraded
Islamabad: The National Centre for Physics (NCP) will be upgraded as an
academic institution of high repute not only nationally but also
internationally, NCP Director General Dr Hamid Saleem said here
Thursday.
He was addressing a meeting of more than 22 representatives of
national university at the second annual meeting of chairpersons of physics
departments organised by the NCP. He welcomed and thanked the guests for their
interest.
Dr Hamid briefed the participants about the contributions of
NCP and its ongoing research projects in field of physics and nano-sciences.
Highlighting the role of the NCP, he said the centre is committed to producing
high quality research papers in reputed journals, promoting research environment
in universities, collaborating with international universities, facilitating
researchers and promoting industrial and applied research.
The
participants of the meeting lauded the NCP efforts and facilities being provided
to the scientists. The meeting devised future strategies to promote research
environment in field of physics and define the areas of physics to be
focused. The News
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Education News| Updated: 21 Nov, 2008 |
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