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Big news today: a ten-year-old lawsuit about Google Book Search has been resolved in Google's favor -- basically, the law has ruled that it was okay for Google to scan in-copyright books because it had no plans to publish the whole version of those in-copyright books online in http://books.google.com. Compare this to what we've heard about celebrity photographs and Pinterest. Here's a quotation from the story: "When Google started work on its book search engine a decade ago, the company realized that getting the approval of copyright holders would be a logistical nightmare. Not only would major publishers likely demand high fees for permission to scan their books, but for many older works, it would be difficult to even figure out who the appropriate copyright holder was. So Google took a gamble, scanning library books without seeking copyright holders' permission and relying on copyright's fair use doctrine as a justification."

We had discussed in class about how many books we thought there were in the world. This article explains how Google reached the estimated number of books.

There have been a couple of occasions when my Dad has been looking for an obscure book - this is the site he usually uses when he's searching.

Another one is AbeBooks, which was not created by but is now owned by Amazon: http://abebooks.com

This article proposes that digital technologies actually AID in keeping the book a widely spread and accessible media, rather than hurting its future.

For those who have ever wondered how many different books are out there in the world.

Great minds think alike -- I posted the same thing. :) The estimate keeps going up, probably because more books keep being published!

This piece of writing shows the difference between Google books and other digital content repositories, Mirlyn and Hathi Trust. And she also tells you the most efficient way to find the best sources by using all three repositories.

Great link, Jimin -- explains better than I did in class why HathiTrust is sometimes preferable to Google Books.

A book about the history of microfilming newspapers after World War Two. Baker then set up his own newspaper repository, which he donated to Duke Libraries in 2004.

I found this article to be pretty interesting. It is about what scientists believe is to be the first book ever written (about 2,000 years ago!). I thought it was pretty cool!

The ultimate guide for students who don't want to carry around their text books but still enjoy marking them up. With over 75,000 textbooks, Questia is an explosive host of information for the weary researcher. I really enjoy its easy navigation, ability to add comments in books, and wide range of topics. For an annual price of $100, I cut down on my book expenses and killed some book clutter in my apartment.

Great article of why there is a drastic statistical decline in people reading e-books

An article that talks about how Yelp has incorporated SeatMe directly into the Yelp experience so users can now book restaurant and bar reservations from the venue's Yelp listing.

This is a free website that allows users to search for books not only by the title or author, but by ISBN numbers. I found this helpful for when textbooks are hard to find. Instructors usually provide the ISBN numbers in their syllabi and this is one resource a student could use to locate out-of-stock books.

Interesting article on how the Fairfax Country Library is throwing away a lot of their books. Makes one think about the future (or lack thereof) of libraries

This book, Digital History, exists in print form as well, but it is entirely available for free on the open web. It is written for historians who want to "go digital," so you as undergrads (and not necessarily History majors!) aren't exactly its audience, but the book is nevertheless excellent as an introduction to the underpinnings of the internet and the web.

Video about one person's take on what libraries will be used for in the future. Very interesting opinion.

Hmm, interesting. The service she describes where libraries sell books is fairly rare, still, although it's made possible by a thing called an Espresso Book Machine that prints copied of ebooks: http://www.ondemandbooks.com/ I hate when I can't figure out the date of things. I even looked at the source code to try to find out when that video was recorded, but I couldn't. I did discover that the girl in the video (I love her sweater!) is one of the co-hosts of another How Stuff Works podcast called "Stuff You Missed in History Class" at http://shows.howstuffworks.com/stuff-you-missed-in-history-class-podcast.htm -- that might be useful! Certainly relevant. :) Their latest episode is about an 18th-century "Vampire Panic" in New England. Sign me up.

I listen to that podcast all the time!

You can use Google to search for magazines and magazine articles that date all the way back to the 1960's.

Hey, that's super-useful, Talia, thanks! When Google scanned things from research libraries, that included a lot of magazines. Or maybe Google made deals with the publishers directly for these. There are some weird titles in there, though -- no Time, no Newsweek, but you can search through _Torque_, "Singapore's best homegrown car magazine" :)

Interesting article about how a lego mindstorm bot got rid of DRM on a kindle device.

If you want to know more about the International Standard Book Number, go visit this web page. It especially tells you what elements the ISBN is made up of besides its history and facts.