NYPL and European Digital Reading Lab Take a Better E-Book Experience International

On Infodocket, Gary Price reports "New York Public Library and European Digital Reading Lab Team Up For a Better E-Reading Experience." Two two entities are collaborating "on the development of open-sourced mobile applications based on the Readium EPUB 3 reading engine.  This collaboration has three aspects: ebook lending management, accessibility and enhancements of the user experience on mobile devices."

"Both organizations will join their forces to ensure that the Library Simplified mobile app offers a great experience to visually impaired people on both iOS and Android devices. In order to respond to the rapid increase in use of mobile devices for ebook access, the Readium Foundation, EDRLab and NYPL are launching a major evolution of the Readium SDK codebase, . . . The architectural phase has already begun, and the year 2017 will see the birth [of] Readium 2."

ReadersFirst applauds the effort to enhance the library e-book experience, especially to improve accessibility on mobile devices. To make library e-content available and readily usable by all is to live the most basic of library values. That this effort is international is all the more impressive, fulfilling RF's hopes for cooperation across borders.