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1.1: Purpose and Scope In order for electronic-book technology to achieve widespread success in the marketplace, Reading Systems need to have convenient access to a large number and variety of titles. The Open Publication Structure (OPS) Specification describes a standard for representing the content of electronic publications. Specifically: * The specification is intended to give content providers (e.g. publishers, authors, and others who have content to be displayed) and publication tool providers, minimal and common guidelines that ensure fidelity, accuracy, accessibility, and adequate presentation of electronic content over various Reading Systems. * The specification seeks to reflect established content format standards. * The goal of this specification is to define a standard means of content description for use by purveyors of electronic books (publishers, agents, authors et al.) allowing such content to be provided to multiple Reading Systems and to insure maximum presentational equivalence across Reading Systems.

"You have all heard about the more popular open source content management systems such as Joomla and Drupal. However, there are many more open source content management systems out there that are more than capable of accommodating the needs of your website. In fact, some of the less popular CMSs actually provide features that cannot be found in the standard CMS. Not all CMS live up to their developer's hype though, so we've compiled a comprehensive list of the top 20 open source content management systems."

"OpenDOAR logo Directory of Open Access Repositories Home | Find | Suggest | Tools | FAQ | About | Contact Us The Directory of Open Access Repositories - OpenDOAR Search for repositories | Search repository contents | List of repositories | Repository Statistics OpenDOAR is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. Each OpenDOAR repository has been visited by project staff to check the information that is recorded here. This in-depth approach does not rely on automated analysis and gives a quality-controlled list of repositories."

"DICE aims at providing support to teaching and non-teaching staff of Swiss higher education institutions in copyright management of digital content for eLearning. The goal of DICE is: (a) Increasing awareness of copyright issues related with digital content, in order to provide sound knowledge and eliminate unreasonable fears. (b) Developing fundamental skills in intellectual property and copyright management for higher education staff (e.g. understanding basic rules applicable in Switzerland, using Creative Commons licenses, etc.) (c) Increase the readiness and ability of authors to publishing open access resources (aka Open Educational Resources)"

Obi, an open source audio recording tool released by the DAISY Consortium, enables a broader audience to produce accessible, navigable information for people with print disabilities. DAISY audio books created with Obi can be produced with chapters, sections, sub-sections and pages, providing navigation to the content. Obi is fully accessible through assistive technologies such as screen readers. In addition, Obi reduces the time required to work with sophisticated production tools and significantly reduces tool costs that may create barriers for some.

The project will create open content electronic textbooks that will be freely available from a website. Distribution will also be possible via paper, CD, or DVD. ...The goal is to make textbooks available to the many who cannot afford them. ... The Global Text Project is funded by the Jacobs Foundation.

Alfresco is the Open Source Alternative for Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

Amazon's new world-beating gadget isn't the savior of the e-book, genre. It's a proprietary, market-protecting anomaly in a world of increasingly open standards and accessible media. Shame on you, Amazon. (...) The thing that e-books need, I'm convinced, is PDF. Secure, reflowable, customizable PDF. The reader devices need to be easy on the eyes, lightweight, and allow users to shunt any PDF to it, whether it's a specially formatted e-book or not. If I am paying $300+ for essentially a document storage device on steroids, I need to be able to put my own junk on it, too. (...)You might be lining your own pockets and making a few sales, Mr. Bezos, but you're also promoting confusion in the marketplace and causing division in the e-book space at a time when everyone else is pushing for convergence and open standards. Thanks for nothing.

The Learning Registry is a new approach to capturing, sharing, and analyzing learning resource data to broaden the usefulness of digital content to benefit educators and learners. Not a website or repository… not a search engine… and not a replacement for the excellent sources of online learning content that already exist…

The celebrated openness of the Internet -- network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic -- is quietly losing powerful defenders. Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers.

I'm working on a story to actually assess the state of development among big-name textbook publishers and will have more soon on that. For right now, though, it's quite clear that we have a very long ways to go. While a lack of content is a major issue, perhaps a bigger issue is the lack of standards via which the content can be disseminated. Obviously, DRM is a serious problem for textbooks. Copyright aside, though, there are currently around 30 formats in which e-books are published. If you're Pearson, into which basket will you be throwing all of your eggs? Frankly, there is only one that I see that makes a lot of sense right now. EPUB, developed by the International Digital Publishing Forum, is open, XML-based, and can grow as our needs increase. Even this format, though, needs traction with major publishers.

In preparation for WIPO's initiative on Exceptions & Limitations to Copyright, the US Copyright Office is currently soliciting comments on the topic of "facilitating access to copyrighted works for the blind or persons with other disabilities". Written comments are due next week (April 21st, 2009), and there will be a public meeting in Washington on May 18th. EFF will be sending our own submission, as will many other IP and disability groups. But if you've worked on software or hardware to overcome your own visual or other disabilities, or co-operated informally (perhaps in an open source project) to provide wider access to content for users with disabilities, or have dealt with a publisher regarding the accessibility of texts, we'd like to encourage you to send the copyright office your own stories - and cc: us at accessibility@eff.org.

Amazon's Kindle, the first eBook reader that has really started to catch on with the public, deals almost exclusively with eBooks that have DRM. According to Ian Fried, the vice president of Amazon Kindle, customers don't seem to mind: "We've had very few if any customer responses that the choice we made with DRM was a problem." But DRM could become a problem if the Kindle goes bust - then all those people who bought Kindle eBooks with DRM will have no way to read them because no other device can open the files. Beyond that, not everyone agrees that DRM is a good business strategy. Publishing consultant Michael Shatzkin says it's tough to make the case that file-sharing reduces sales. He cites science fiction writer Cory Doctorow who, he says, "does the best he can to give away as much of his content as possible." And by giving it away, Shatzkin says, Doctorow's sales have skyrocketed.

This article highlights a suite of education games called GCompris for K-6 students. It gives a good definition of what Edubuntu is and how it is different than just Ubuntu. It is one more reason to use Linux instead of MS Windows in schools.

Great article on Edubuntu Linux