Brazil may not have enough school libraries at the moment, though they surely can look up to the cloud of books they have at their disposal. The pun is intended, as it’s Nuvem de Livros (which means cloud of books in local dialect) that it’s being called. The brainchild of Jonas Suassuna, who hails from a business community, Nuvem de Livros is being put forward to make up for there not being enough books at affordable price for the students. No wonder there already are over a million subscribers of the online library in the two years of its existence, and that it currently boasts over 10,000 titles. Students are charged just a dollar a month for unlimited access to the ebooks, while the same for general subscribers is also a quite affordable $3.50 per month.
“The government signed a law that says that by 2020 all Brazilian schools, public and private, must have a library with at least one book per student. Anyone familiar with the reality of Brazilian public schools knows that will be very difficult,” said Suassuna to explain the justifiability of his project. As per a recent estimate, 34 percent of schools in Brazil lack a dedicated library for its students. Surely an online library is an easier solution in a country that ranks 5th in computer usage and 7th in internet usage.
A positive aspect of the online library, which can be located at http://www.nuvemdelivros.com.br/, is that the books can be read on any platform, be it a PC, a tablet device, or even a smartphone. Readers will also have the option to search through the ebooks chapter-wise, along with the usual features of bookmarking or searching any specific term. Set up in partnership with the Spanish telecom firms Telefonica and Vivo, the online library is already accessible in Argentina and is slated to debut in several other countries in South America as well as in Spain in September. Others who have contributed to the project include Itautec, manufacturer of computer equipment, as well as the newspapers O Estado de S. Paulo and O Globo. Publishers who have been signed to contribute to the online library include Moderna, Ediouro, Conrad, A Girafa, Vermelho Marinho and several others.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.