iPhone apps for textbooks and another library catalogue

Yesterday brought two interesting iPhone apps to my attention.  The first is iUSask, the University of Saskatchewan iPhone application, which includes a category for searching the OPAC.  This is touted as "the first iPhone application of its kind in Canada for University Students."  I played with is a bit yesterday and unfortunately wasn't very impressed.  The campus map was VERY slow to resize, and I couldn't tell if my iPhone had frozen, or if it was still just chugging away.  Of course it's the OPAC we really care about, and while it worked just fine, it was very difficult to read; small white text on a black background (unlike what's shown in the demo on the site).  Hopefully this is just a starting point for them.

The second is CourseSmart, an application for reading textbooks on the iPhone/iPod Touch.  Here's some background on the provenance of the product: CourseSmart takes on Kindle, puts textbooks on iPhone. I signed up for a student account and looked around a bit.  You'll have the choice to buy an Online Version OR a Downloadable Version; I believe you must choose the Online Version in order to be able to access the content from the iPhone application.  They do offer a pop-up explaining most of the differences between the two options.

Interesting model in that you don't get to own the textbook; they all have a subscription model for either a 180 day subscription (most common) or a 360 day subscription.  There are a few sample textbooks available when you download the app, and I don't think I like them.  On the one hand, it's nice to be able to see the same pages you'd see in the print version, with sidebars and images and such, but on the other hand, there's so little real estate on the screen these extras make the text much harder to read.  Another minor problem is that you can't purchase textbooks from the app; you have to do that from the website.  Pretty minor as students would likely buy a few at the beginning of the year and be done with that, but still.

They've covered themselves in their TOS with what I'm dubbing "The Kindle clause":

From time to time CourseSmart may move, delete or update material on the CourseSmart Site and you agree to periodically check that your links and any Licensed Material are current and promptly remove or update any link that is broken or incorrect or any Licensed Material that has been deleted or is out of date. CourseSmart reserves the right in its sole discretion to revoke these licenses at any time for any reason, and if you are so notified, you agree to immediately remove all links to the CourseSmart Site and all Licensed Material from the Instructor Website. You agree not to not use or display the links or the Licensed Material with any other material that could be viewed as disparaging the CourseSmart eTextbook or its author or publisher or otherwise casting the CourseSmart eTextbook or its author or publisher in a negative light.

So a couple of starts, with room for improvement.  Speaking of which, I'm now off to revisit SafariBooksOnline to see if there's been any improvement there from the library POV.