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| Returning from her gig in the Philippines - Andrea! We all prayed for her, and she went from 2+ pounds to 12+ in about three months. |
At 5 AM I was talking to our Philippine missionary and to Ivy, whose baby Andrea was born in the Philippines while she was visiting. The digital age has expanded our reach and shrunken our world. I was getting real time photos of baby Andrea - and a short video too.
Job's Comforters, whose descendants are legion, enjoyed the extreme poverty of our little Bethany Lutheran Church. We had no building or mortgage; no church lawnmower, since we lacked a lawn. But that only freed us to blog and to publish.
During that time, the Internet reached a new stage of maturity. When I first taught online, we used printed books, so they arrived by mail when I had new classes. Soon the texts were all ebooks which were already in the online classroom when the course started.
I enjoy printed books and still routinely order them for hobby reading (US Navy) and for theological research. However, they are a problem of weight, delivery, and cost, even though inexpensive when sold as used books.
Lutheran Library Publishing Ministry
Alec Satin began collecting public domain (no copyright) books and publishing them as ebooks: no cost, instant delivery, many potential formats.
Since certain 19th century press-lords want to control printed books and gather the dollars from that monopoly, it suits us to make them free as ebooks, public domain for anyone's use. No one needs to worry about the press-harpies jumping on them and creating problems. If someone wants to reprint or edit Catholic, Lutheran, Protestant - no problem.
Faithful Lutherans Need E-Library Nodes. You Can Be One.
Public domain is the opposite of the monopoly approach. No one can tell you what to do or how to do it.
Lutherans in various locations and countries should set up public access to the books they want others to have. That can be a blog or website. Others have already done this for Luther's Sermons and other Luther books.
My favorite way to transmit and to share is using Dropbox. The lower level is free and people can build up a lot of free storage space by inviting people, etc. I may go professional soon.
Dropbox.con
A Dropbox link can open up an ebook, whether the user has the software or not.
Some of our members and friends took the time to scan and save all of Lenski in PDFs, so we have them linked here.
As long as I am around, I will add public domain sources to that link. But we all know that websites and Internet sources go away, sometimes without warning. If a number of people share their own Internet Luther, Lenski, the old classic Lutheran books, etc, they will not disappear as some of Bunyan's printed works did - from constant use and sharing.
Those who value these works should keep local backups of their favorites and Internet sources like Dropbox. We know software changes and the hits of today become the Netscapes of yesteryear.
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| Norma A. Boeckler has her own books, helps others with theirs, and illustrates all of mine. |
Printed Books Are Still Loved and Used.
The policy for all my print books is to publish them retail for no profit, with Kindle ebooks at 99 cents. Those who want the printed books at my cost can order them at roughly a 75% discount over retail. Just write me at greg.jackson.edlp@gmail.com
The initials are for Every Day Low Prices!
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| These are books being delivered to the Philippines, in person, by our church attorney, Glen Kotten. Notice the covers by Norma A. Boeckler. |
