Library in Transition

Can be deleted - irrelevant to study.

critique of Google Books

I think this can be deleted, but tagged it just in case. It seems to me to mostly be a critique against Google's digitization project, pointing out better ways to digitize books.

I can't review this for tagging, this article must be purchased.

This site is closed right now (2/5/09) A re-launch was supposed to be in mid-December, but as of this date the site is still closed.

This is also saved under another bookmark. We will have to find a print version of this article for review. North Texas does not carry this journal.

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.

The INKE group is comprised of researchers and stakeholders at the forefront of computing in the humanities, text analysis, information studies, usability and interface design. The network is led by Canadian scholars, but includes members from the USA and the UK. It is comprised of those who are best-poised to understand the nature of the human record as it intersects with the computer. Our work is divided into four key research groupings: textual studies, user experience, interface design, and information management.

The Future of Libraries

The university research library of the 21st century will be a physical place on campus intertwined with a digital presence on student and faculty computers.

I just want to point out that this is a link to an actual library, not an article about a future library. It is great to see a defined mission statement for what this library is becoming. It makes it clear to students and faculty (and just as important: donors) that the library is more than books and journals.

Stanza, iPhone's free e-book reader application, has been downloaded more than 395,000 times and is installed at an average rate of about 5,000 copies a day, according to the app's creator Lexcycle.

Video of symposium held at Texas A&M in Feb. 2009. Excellent group of speakers!

spacer Abstract The University of California's California Digital Library (CDL) formed an Ebook Task Force in August 2000 to evaluate academic libraries' experiences with electronic books (e-books), investigate the e-book market, and develop operating guidelines, principles and potential strategies for further exploration of the use of e-books at the University of California (UC). This article, based on the findings and recommendations of the Task Force Report [1], briefly summarizes task force findings, and outlines issues and recommendations for making e-books viable over the long term in the academic environment, based on the long-term goals of building strong research collections and providing high level services and collections to its users.

This article investigates readers' requirements regarding fiction electronic books, as compared to electronic textbooks. The EBONI Project, which defined a set of best practice guidelines for designing electronic textbooks, provided the methodology to support an exploration of the usability of fiction ebooks in a recent study. It was found that the general guidelines for the design of textbooks on the Internet can also be applied to the design of fiction ebooks. Additionally, in terms of the electronic production of fiction ebooks, the same study suggested that concentrating on the appearance of text, rather than the technology itself, can lead to better quality publications to rival the print versions of fiction books. This article discusses these results together with some from similar studies in order to draw a picture of what readers expect from fiction ebooks.

The scholarly monograph has been compared to the Hapsburg monarchy in that it seems to have been in decline forever! Many publishers, university administrators and academic researchers are still largely wedded to historical and Balkanized Web 1.0 monograph settings. While the ramifications of the fall of the Hapsburg empire are still being felt today in geopolitical terms, university presses can rise phoenix-like through 21st century digital environments and the reworking of scholarly communication frameworks. New e-press developments will provide greater accessibility to scholarly monographic content. Peer-reviewed, digitally constructed monographs, available within open scholarship institutional frameworks, will increasingly be the 2.0 and 3.0 models for scholarly publishing.