Close Topic Options

Deseret Book - LDS Related Books Online

DESERET BOOK TO LAUNCH WEB-BASED GOSPELINK
See Source

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah - Deseret Book Company has announced that this week it will launch GospeLink.com, a new subscription Web service featuring a searchable library of writings related to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The new service contains more than 2,000 published works.

Online Books Related LDS Book Deseret

I would love to have access to that kind of a library! Although I do have a CD with the Journal of Discourses and Nibley and Talmage, etc., I would love to browse and search through "The Words of Joseph Smith" and "Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith" and other works with direct quotes from the Prophet.

So it all depends on what the cost is.

Roz

Deseret Book - LDS Related Books Online Studies Doctrine Mormon

GospeLink is still available on CD. I can't stress enough how wonderful the program is.

https://gospelink.com/subscriptions

At the bottom of the page is info about the CD.

I will have to look it all over more to see if I should get the subscription. Only if there is going to be significantly more content than is on the CD.

Online Books Related LDS Book Deseret

Well, this last weekend, I broke down and subscribed to the GospeLink online. Since we own the disk version, we got a discount.

I see several different issues involved in the online version. Several of them are troubling, some of them are quite nice.

1. It is an annual subscription. So, if you are just purchasing a subscription without any discounts, it costs about $50 per year. While that isn't much, it is a constant drain. The disk version costs about $70 one time.

2. The online version gets frequent updates to the content. So, some books are added frequently, and a lot of papers, reports, and other documents are readily available. The disk version only provided updated access to a few documents, such as conference reports. However, this could have been easy to add to the disk version.

3. The disk version is ONLY available for Windows. So, if you want to use a Mac (like me), or Linux, or anything else, you are just out of luck. This is troubling, since for some reason the church has mandated that nothing but Windows will be supported in anything. Even PAF is fading in all systems except Windows. So, the online version is the only way I can have access through my iBook.

4. Conference is readily available in the online version, and includes some powerful search capabilities.

5. There are some good bookmarking capabilities, as well as notes in the online version. However, those bookmarks and notes are kept on a central server. The disk version is just as good, but also includes 16 highlighters which can be labelled and searched. So, it is very easy to locate information that you, personally, find important. However, the online version does allow the creation of "lists" where you can add a particular paragraph or verse. However, these lists are designed to be shared with a community. So, there isn't an apparent way to highlight a section so that when you are reading through a chapter, those paragraphs or verses jump out at you. I find this a little bit sad. I like highlighters for scriptures.

Overall, the online version (GospeLink.com) is good. My $30 subscription isn't bad, but I am going to miss the highlighter. I can't see any reason at all that a front end for the disk version couldn't have been developed for OS X and Linux.

The single biggest advantage to GospeLink.com is that it can be accessed by any computer, anywhere.

Online Books Related LDS Book Deseret

Thank you for that informative review, Nighthawk. I will definitely check it out! I would love having access to so much information.

Deseret Book - LDS Related Books Online

Deseret Book undergoes transition from frontier bookstore to digital innovator

More than a century ago, a small bookstore opened its doors on South Temple in Salt Lake City Ref. Source 2

Deseret Book LDS Related Books Online

For Deseret Book to continue, it needs not only to be a digital innovator, it also needs capital and market. As the LDS book market isn't that much. Deseret Book is fighting almost a losing battle, they are going against multi-billion dollar companies, Amazon, E-Bay, Wal-Mart, and other Christian digital book re-sellers, like Logos, which I have.
Since this is mainly talking about Gospelink.com, I"ll review it. I did have the Gospelink CD (well, still do, but it doesn't work any longer), and went to the website early on. At first the site was good. It had a forum, it promised at least one new book a month. Then all of a sudden the site "up-graded" by deleting the forum , stopped the promise of adding a new book a month. The site is almost a shell of itself, it hardly ever updates the books, since it's an online site, you need internet to access it. It would be unfair to compare Gospelink to Logos, since Logos has by far more capital and market share than Deseret Book could dream of having.
It's not all bad, the good aspects of Gospelink are that for only $50 a year you get access to hundreds of books, old magazines and newspapers, like Improvement Era, Millennial Star, and large book volumes like Journal of Discourses and History of the Church. Because of the high price that some authors and publishers charge for other companies to have their books, then Deseret Book will almost be forced to only have their books, and no other publishers books. This will only hurt them. They will only hope that other companies, like Logos, doesn't get access to the Public Domain books of its own books. This is a list of the books that might one day be available on Logos of LDS books:
The Book of Mormon, 1830 and 1921 editions; Doctrine and Covenants and Perl of Great Price, 1878, 1918; Journal of Discourses 1854-1884; History of the Church, 1902-1932; and various biographies of early Church leaders.
If Logos gets this set of books, I have almost no need for Gospelink, since Logos is SO much better.

Deseret Book LDS Related Books Online Mormon Doctrine Studies

I still can't get used to ebooks or any kind of digital material. I have to feel the edges of the paper in my hands and the weight of the book to enjoy reading. Maybe a web page or something small is good for digital reading but not a whole book.