Ebooking Anthropology (2) - tips

I'd like to share some information and tips for ebook reading that I've discovered so far.

1. File formats

Most widely supported ebook file formats are ePub and Mobi. (Check this wikipedia page.) Many apps are available to read ebooks on electronic devices such as iPad, tablets and cell phones based on Android platform, and needless to say, PC, and so on. For example, amazon.com provides Kindle-book (file extension .azw) apps for various environments (download).

2. Useful apps

calibre (free) is useful to manage ebook collections, to read, to change meta-data of ebook files, as well as to convert text files (doc, txt, rtf, html, etc) into ebook files. Mobipocket Creator (free) is also good.

One member of an ebook online community here made a list of useful softwares to edit and manage ebooks, so let me share a part of the list (others are mostly related to file formats and encoding problems found only in Korea). I haven't checked none of them yet.

1. EditPlus

(trial) - This is not a free software but is commonly used to edit html files; useful to create table of contents, notes, and so on.

2. DarkNamer

(free) - This utility renames several files at once.

3. TXTcollector (free) - This merges several smaller files (even with different formats) into one file.
4. CRAutoFix (free) - This automatically re-adjusts uneven line heights and spacing with its grammar check function.

I'd also like to share information on a few useful softwares to edit PDF files. (PDF files are not good to read on mobile devices except large ones like iPad or Kindle DX.)

4. A-PDF cut (trial) - This splits each page of double-paged PDF files into two separate pages and rearranges the output in the proper order. Only a small watermark is added on the upper side of the first page.
5. PDF OCR

(trial) - This converts image PDF files into text files. But the output depends on the original file's resolution.

6. Nitro PDF

(trial) - This crops out the margin, splits the pages, automatically detects headers and footers, etc.

3. Basic procedure to convert PDF files into ebook files

1) image PDFs : some scanned PDF files are actually composed of image files.
(Crop out the margin to remove headers and footers; this is to prevent things like page numbers appear in the converted files, as well as to remove the margin itself) → Convert the file into a text file via OCR programs → Edit the text file when necessary → Convert the edited text file into eBook files

2) text PDFs
(Crop out the margin) → Edit the text file when necessary→ Convert the edited text file into eBook files

3) text files (doc, rtf, html, txt, etc)
Convert the files into eBook file formats

4. Public domain anthropology ebooks on the internet

Project Gutenberg (here)

Digital Book Index (here)

Open Library (here) is also good though it doesn't provide the category "Anthropology"

Internet Archive (here) - the fun thing about this library's contents is that a few scanned books show the name of the original copy's owner. (You will find out when you see some of them.)

Prickly Pear Pamphlets (here) and Prickly Paradigm Press (here) - not exactly in the public domain, but good to read.