RDWLP Supports the ePUB Format

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.

I had the privilege of attending the IDPF Digital Book convention this year in Manhattan and the enthusiasm and momentum behind this format is palpable. Players like Adobe, Sony, and Overdrive stepped up and explained how their future products and services will more strongly incorporate the ePUB format. I even ran into a representative from Microsoft. After a bit of chatting, I found out that Microsoft was one of the initial sponsors of ePUB. They left the consortium after the format was established, but they thought it was time to revisit the format. I said that ePUB is much larger than it had been, and that they would be wise to take a second look at the format.

We have a digital publishing department that helps us organize the various types of content that we offer to our patrons. They handle a lot of files in PDF, MP3, FLV format, but they also deal with a lot of raw text. Our digital publishing department republishes text files in ePUB format, allowing a good number of our books to be read on Adobe Digital Editions, which has all the flexibility and reflowability that a proper xml-based reader should have.

I do want to give a shout-out to Teleread and the work they are doing to champion ePUB as an industry format. Teleread is probably writing more on the topic of digital publishing and the ePUB format than any other group out there. Their well-reasoned support for the ePUB format is one of the reasons we decided to use ePUB as our main container format.
Finally, I do realize that the ePUB logo in this post is an unofficial one, as introduced by Travis Albert. We do want to comment that it is an attractive logo, and IDPF wouldn’t be losing anything by adopting it.