For a better e-reading experience

The New York Public Library and the European Digital Reading Lab team up for a better e-reading experience.

EDRLab and NYPL have decided to collaborate 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.

EDRLab is currently developing Readium LCP, a vendor-neutral, interoperable and accessible Digital Rights Management technology that is embeddable in any application based on the open-source Readium SDK. EDRLab will help on the integration of Readium LCP inside the Library Simplified codebase so that library patrons can have, at last, a fluid experience when lending ebooks.

NYPL and EDRLab have a common mission to improve the accessibility of digital publications and reading systems. 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 objectives being an increase in performances and stability, clarity of source code and documentation. The architectural phase has already begun, and the year 2017 will see the birth on a refactored version of Readium, called Readium 2. Such work will guarantee that Readium stays for the coming years the best open-source reading engine for EPUB 3 documents.

Credit photo: Jonathan Blanc