ARLINGTON, Va. - The Air Conditioning Contractors of America (ACCA) Educational Institute has announced that it will be releasing its technical manuals and standards in electronic format for e-readers.

And the association announced that it has now made the first two of its publications available in electronic format. Residential Duct Diagnostics & Repair is a manual explaining how to diagnose problems with duct systems and the benefits of repairing them. LEED, Follow or Get Out of the Way!, by Ellis Guiles, is the story of how a commercial contractor discovers the profit to be made from “green” contracting.

These manuals can be purchased and read on a computer, an iPad, an iPhone, a Kindle, an Android phone, or a BlackBerry. “Because we don’t want to require people to purchase a specific device in order to benefit from our publications, we are using the Kindle format, at least initially,” said Kevin Holland, ACCA vice president for Business Operations & Membership. “The Kindle platform allows for viewing and searching of books on just about every device possible, including a desktop computer, using free Kindle reader software available from Amazon.”

Holland noted, “Our technical publications are large, complex documents, and reconstructing them for electronic distribution is not a simple process, to say the least. And given the large size and reference quality of many of our publications, we don’t see print going away any time soon. But we have been talking with schools and training programs, as well as contractors, and there’s no doubt that we must continue to expand our publications and make them available through a diversity of distribution methods.”

Information on ACCA’s e-books (the first two of which are available for a limited time at more than 70 percent below the regular print price), including purchase and software information, is available online at www.acca.org/ebooks.

ACCA said it hopes to release all of its core manuals in e-reader format by the first quarter of 2011, and will continue to update www.acca.org/ebooks as they are released.

Publication date: 07/05/2010