After 7 months of development, the Olivet University department of R&D is proud to announce the launch and immediate availability of the RDWLP v2.0 Christian e-library. The latest version of the e-library includes the following features: Read the rest

The Ralph D Winter Library Project has just signed up for EBSCO’s Academic Search Premiere journal database. EBSCO will provide MARC records for the 4,758 full-text journals currently in this collection allowing Olivet University students to access hundreds of thousands of academic journal articles. This collection is licensed, so RDWLP partners who wish to sign up for EBSCO access will need separate usage agreements. Read the rest

The RDWLP is proud to annoucne its newest partner in making quality Christian content available to Christian academic institutes and organizations. The Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) has agreed to provide its content to the Ralph D Winter Library under special licensing terms, meaning that the students of Olivet can now access over 800 high quality Christian e-books ranging in scope from Spurgeon’s collected sermons to St. Augustine’s City of God. Read the rest

I have been following the development of the Sony PRS-505 with interest since the ADE integration was demoed at the Digital Book conference back in May. At the conference, Sony reps demonstrated the ability of the PRS-505 reader to import content (with all DRM support) directly from ADE via a new drop-down menu inside of Digital Editions. In my eyes, this feature placed the Sony PRS-505 ahead of the Amazon Kindle when evaluating e-book platforms for educational use. The Kindle can theoretically download ebooks over the internet via its built-in wireless, but its lack of .epub support and integration with ADE leave it unsuitable for serious consideration. Read the rest

The Ralph D Winter Library Project was able to finalize a licensing agreement with the Theological Research Exchange Network, the premiere distributor of over 10,000 Christian theological theses and dissertations published by students from 70 different institutions. The work is academic and Christian in nature, representing the exact sort of high-quality content we are seeking. The sheer number of titles represents a huge boon for our digital library, at once adding thousands of titles to our standing collection. Read the rest

The RDWL e-Library was launched a couple of weeks ago with all the requisite features and content for a version 1.0 (or a ‘beta’ version in web industry jargon) application. Although the platform was serviceable for a launch and for showing off the technology we will be utilizing - especially ePUB and Adobe Digital Editions - we have received a lot of feedback from the library community, and will be moving immediately to act on it.
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On Tuesday, Olivet University staff and RDWLP representatives visited Dr. Ralph D Winter in Pasadena at the US Center for World Mission headquarters. Olivet works closely with Dr. Winter’s group, and we meet periodically to give reports and share updates. We were able to present the RDWLP to our project’s namesake for the first time. Read the rest

Michigan State University maintains a number of special book collections on campus. Some of these collections have been painstakingly digitized and made available over the internet. These books, some of them hundreds of years old, may not have reached another dozen readers in their current forms, but digitally have the ability to reach millions. Read the rest

The RDWLP is designed to deliver content to the end-user (our e-Library patrons) now and into the future, regardless of how technical details and format evolve. At the present time, we are proud to announce that we whole-heartedly support the ePUB open ebook format, sponsored and championed by the International Digital Publisher’s Forum. Read the rest

Olivet University is a Christian institute of higher education, conspicuously located in the heart of downtown San Francisco. Olivet has a strong number of resident students, but the majority of our students are online students. In order to offer our online students access to the same quality of resources as our resident students (as per accreditation requirements) we have always been committed to building and maintain a strong e-Library full of Christian content. Read the rest