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Blog About Books Presented by National Geographic for Kids, DogEared is a blog about books-good books, funny books, adventure books; books about animals, friendship, pirates, faraway places . . . every kind of book that kids enjoy. Why is the site called "DogEared"? You know when you read a book and you turn the top edge of a page over to mark your place? That's called a "dog-ear"! Students mark ("dog-ear") the Web page so they can return to it often in order to read real kids' reviews and recommendations. They also share their own opinions and create their own reading wish list-as if it were their own online book club.

Blog About Books Presented by National Geographic for Kids, DogEared is a blog about books-good books, funny books, adventure books; books about animals, friendship, pirates, faraway places . . . every kind of book that kids enjoy. Why is the site called "DogEared"? You know when you read a book and you turn the top edge of a page over to mark your place? That's called a "dog-ear"! Students mark ("dog-ear") the Web page so they can return to it often in order to read real kids' reviews and recommendations. They also share their own opinions and create their own reading wish list-as if it were their own online book club.

Google has been scanning millions of books and uploading them so they can be read for free online. There are currently 20 million books that can be accessed for free through books.google.com, with the company's stated goal of having every book ever printed available. The major publishers of the world have been trying to sue them to stop this from the time they began the project. "Lawsuits trying to stop Google Books have been ongoing since 2005, and Thursday, eight years later, a judge finally ruled in Google's favour. Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. district court wrote that Google's scanning constitutes fair use because it alters the form the text appears in, and also uses some clever code to prevent the material from being copied en masse by users. Google Books "advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders."

@RWW "imagine, if you will, a publishing company - oh, let's say HarperCollins - telling libraries that after checking out a book a certain number of times - oh, let's say 26 - that they've reached the cap on loans. The book can no longer be shared, and libraries need to return the copy or buy the book again. Sound crazy? Well, that actually is the new policy for HarperCollins, reports Library Journal, detailing the new terms for its e-book loans via OverDrive, the main e-book distributor for libraries.

Thought Audio is a producer and provider of free audio books featuring classic titles across a variety of genres. Thought Audio audio books are professionally narrated works that you can listen to online or download to play offline. The library of audio books on Thought Audio contains some titles that are hard to find as audio files. For example you'll find titles like Thus Spoke Zarathustra, The Life of PT Barnum, and The Madman. You'll also find more commonly read titles like Alice in Wonderland, and Poe's The Raven.

Beware of Books an online reading group Share your love of reading, learn about new books to look for, share opinions, accept challenges, and publish book reviews.

Whichbook gives readers an enjoyable and intuitive way to find books to match their mood. Instead of starting from the overwhelming choice of books available, whichbook starts from the reader and enables each individual to build the elements of that elusive 'good read' we are all looking for but don't quite know how to define. The standard way of organising books for choice, on shelves in a library or a bookshop, or on the web, starts from the products available - the authors, titles, publishers or genres. Whichbook enables the choice of book to start from the individual reader and what they are looking for.

The Internet Archive, in conjunction with 150 libraries, has rolled out a new 80,000 e-book lending collection today on OpenLibrary.org. This means that library patrons with an OpenLibrary account can check out any of these e-books. The hope is that this effort will help libraries make the move to digital book lending. "As readers go digital, so are our libraries," says Brewster Kahle, founder and Digital Librarian of the Internet Archive

A report, released by American Library Association (ALA) President Molly Raphael, regarding meetings with e-book distributors during the Public Library Association (PLA) Conference, March 13 - 17.

The Teleread blog covers news related to e-books and online publishing. The blog also includes a section specific to libraries, so readers can easily find relevant library news and stories.

Shelfari is the premier social network for people who love books. Create a virtual shelf to show off your books, see what your friends are reading and discover new books - all for free!

Ebooks outlawed in class. The September issue of School Library Journal addressed not one, but two reader issues pertaining to digital access by K-12 students. Pat Scales, chair of the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee, has dealt with many a book challenge and attempts to ban library materials. In her column, "Scales on Censorship," she addresses situations faced by readers. But "this is the first I've encountered in which a book's format has been censored," she writes.

Beautiful collection artwork depicting: reading, books, imagination...

Naomi Bates' site for book trailer resources. It offers information about creating good book trailers as well as where you can find resources for creating your own.

StorYBook is a free, open source story writing software for creative writers, novelists and authors that helps to keep the overview over the strands when writing a book, a novel or a story. StorYBook assists you in structuring your book.

Free serialized, audio books. Delivered as podcasts, you can subscribe, for free, to any book and start from chapter one.

Listing over 30,000 free books on the Web - Updated Saturday, December 27, 2008

Meet Candy Carter I'm an AP Language and Comp teacher at McQueen HS in Reno, NV. My students lead very busy lives: they're in sports, band, choir, journalism, debate...and on and on. They also do not necessarily live close to one another. In past years, I had had nonfiction book groups in which students chose books from a list and completed projects and presentations on their reading. Over the years, it seems to have become increasingly difficult to find time for them to confer, and the presentations in class took too long. I needed to come up with a way for them to share their ideas in a different way, and I needed to have a way to hold them accountable for their work. I also was aware of the increasing importance of social networking sites in my students' lives. Candy's Perspective I had been introduced to Tapped In at a teacher workshop two or three years ago but had never made the time to really explore it. I was also a bit concerned that some their parents would object to them being online so I wanted to come up with an anonymous way for them to participate so that parents would not worry that their children's names were "out there" online. I hit on the idea of using Class ID numbers (which my students already use for peer reviews to ensure writers' anonymity). I was able to get all three of my classes into the system. I set up a calendar so groups could discuss online without bumping into other groups. Overall, this turned out to be a successful way for kids to share ideas about books. They enjoyed the novelty and talked about their reading in kid-speak, not just so they could impress their English teacher. Except for some technical snags (some kids are not as computer-savvy as others; they also needed to have Java on their computers, which turned out to be a problem for a few of them), this was relatively easy to monitor and manage. I loved reading what they said online--very authentic.

A peice about e-book models offered to librarians by the United States' two largest e-book retailers, Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.