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How can we navigate through the information landscape that is only beginning to come into view? The question is more urgent than ever following the recent settlement between Google and the authors and publishers who were suing it for alleged breach of copyright. For the last four years, Google has been digitizing millions of books, including many covered by copyright, from the collections of major research libraries, and making the texts searchable online. The authors and publishers objected that digitizing constituted a violation of their copyrights. After lengthy negotiations, the plaintiffs and Google agreed on a settlement, which will have a profound effect on the way books reach readers for the foreseeable future. What will that future be?

Historical perspective on research library--access vs ownership.

This is just the conclusion chapter of the book, "The Academic Library in the American University" bu Stephen Atkins and Charles Lowry. The recommend librarians become better advocates of the library in order to increase the stature of the library on campus.

access vs ownership

Volume 64 of the Encyclopedia of Library and information Science: Access Versus Ownership discussion. There are articles in this volume that touch upon all aspects of our project.

This article describes exactly how to measure a sample size for any given library. However, it involves a lot of hands on counting which may not be feasible for our study.

The programs at two recent conferences (the Charleston Conference and London Online) confirm that ebooks have established themselves in libraries. While the trade and consumer book markets still struggle to find an affordable and compelling ebook reader, library users have embraced the ebooks connected to the library e-collection and accessible via the PC or laptop they typically use.

This is the Website for the Universal Digital Library project at Carnegie Mellon University. The "Copyright Policy" page clearly spells out how the project adheres to the existing copyright law, and provides information for authors who either want to add their work to the project or have it removed. It is interesting that this project allows for self-publication.

Now, most of the attention on changes in scholarly publishing has been focused on e-journals. We wish to expand that circle of light so that it takes in the indexing of serials. The index, as every scholar knows, is critical to the quality of the research. The value of a library's serial collection is only as good as its indexing. What scholar has not wondered about the impact of overlapping, inconsistent, and incomplete indexing services on their work? When the weaknesses of the current indexing services are matched against the potential of open-access systems, we may have a tipping point in convincing scholars that the profession would be far better served by open-access publishing systems. We argue that a primary candidate for scholarly publishing's tipping point is the coherence, integration, and precision that these open-access systems can bring to the scholarly exchange and enhancement of knowledge, especially when compared to the current state of the serial index and the hit-and-miss of full-text Web searches.

There is a chart of costs of some electronic indexes, although it may be outdates (2000-01). This article examines the degree of overlap between different academic databases.

An examination of the literature published about electronic books (e-books) between 2000-2007 helps to determine the factors that may have influenced academic e-book offerings and the adoption of e-books in academic libraries. The literature reflects e-book concepts and offerings dating back to 1945, as well as studies and perceptions of opportunities and challenges related to e-books. In an attempt to explain why the integration of e-books into academic library collections has been very gradual during this period, this article presents a summary of the literature that addresses issues related to electronic versions of books that are made accessible online. This includes both books that are digitized and born digital.

library for new university. Comment suggests that they initially considered doing an all digital library, but went with LEEDS building "While it now has shelves for 152,000 volumes, its potential capacity is significantly larger-573,000 volumes."

NYT asks: Do schools need to maintain traditional libraries? What are the educational consequences of having students read less on the printed page and more on the Web? * James Tracy, headmaster, Cushing Academy * Matthew G. Kirschenbaum, English professor, University of Maryland * Liz Gray, library director, Dana Hall School * Nicholas Carr, author, "The Big Switch" * William Powers, author, "Hamlet's BlackBerry" Comments indicate strong belief in the importance of books

Skeptical paper on shift to digital colelctions