Group items tagged

Google seems to be in the news again. Article 1 of 2: Thousands of authors can sue Google in a class-action lawsuit over its plan to create the world's largest digital book library, a federal judge ruled on Thursday. U.S. Circuit Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan also rejected Google's bid to dismiss claims by The Authors Guild and several groups representing photographers and graphic artists, which would have forced their members to sue individually.

The article offers an interesting model of a "Book Place"-- a sort of combination library/bookstore of the future that offers things like printed books on demand if they're not in the store (thanks to the awesome Espresso machine and the 7 million titles it has on EspressoNet), and rental/subscription services for users-- including DRM free options for electronic media.

Vodafone Romania, in collaboration with a publishing house Humanitas, launched an ambient advertising campaign, which is simply fantastic. A Victoria Square metro station was turned into... a digital library. The walls are being covered with large format posters, from top to bottom. Bucharest commuters who enter the station suddenly discover that they're in an impressive library.

@Sharla can we use this to promote the new Ebsco ebook purchase. . . we just need a big wall!

An interesting if short article about the process and challenges a library in digitizing a largely unique collection most on their own.

Harvard librarians learned that lesson when they set up Twitter feeds broadcasting titles of books being checked out from campus libraries. It seemed harmless enough-a typical tweet read, "Reconstructing American Law by Bruce A. Ackerman," with a link to the book's library catalog entry-but the social-media experiment turned out to be more provocative than library staffers imagined.

Ok. I am seriously tired of the popular fiction/non-fiction side of ebooks. Basically Penguin is saying that they will grant libraries access to their ebooks in the way that will tick off your patrons the most, so that they will never want to use your service. Why does 3M say ok to this? Because Penguin dropped OverDrive earlier this year and this is a new way to entice people to their 3M Cloud Library product. Does MOBIUS really want to work with a company that will accept less?

Two important new developments in access to public funded research, the FASTR Act that requires copies of articles done under NIH research to be deposited into PubMed, and a White House directive for federal agencies to develop public access policies for research and digital data.

A somewhat limited article about "ethnic cleansing" on the Internet. What I can agree with is the prospect of countries making their own versions of popular websites such as Youtube, the larger question that has been debated since the beginning of the Internet is who should decide about material outside the borders of a country that it may still try to control.

An article covering the online legacy we leave behind once we've passed away, and who or how it is managed. Companies are gradually becoming more aware and making some concessions towards "digital estate planning" but there are still legal concerns or grey areas, such as a surviving parent using an accessing the social media account of a child who had died.

An interesting online tool that allows transcription of scanned images of manuscripts, working entirely online and copying line by line from the image. The software is open source but the primary instance is maintained by the Center for Digital Theology at SLU.

One of four articles from the New York Times about the debate if we still need libraries--focusing mostly on Internet access rather than other services.

The second of four New York Times articles, written by a librarian and therefore supportive, but he made several good points. Most learning centers offer computer skills in only English, but to offer those in four foreign languages is impressive, along with the move to circulating digital media and devices.

In good news for readers and libraries, Macmillan, the last of five major publishers in an anti-trust lawsuit, have settled with the DOJ. This means that retailers can begin discounting digital titles they have for sale. Apple is the only publisher still outstanding in the lawsuit.

An article that revisits an older issue (Amazon wiping or removing a book from a Kindle), just this time it was an entire eBook collection and was deleted because of a problem with the user's account. It reinforces what copyright holders have always had but weren't able to enforce until the digital era, that users have only rights to access or use a work, not to actually own it, and those rights can be limited. Further, Amazon is a private company that can dictate policies; all the user knows is her account is "related" to a blocked account without knowing why or how.

Interesting news from Overdrive.

A blog, appears largely inactive, about the Digital Public Library of America and other topics. Notable as it was co-found by Tom Peters, the new Dean of University Libraries at MSU.

A fairly piece but notable as the reasons are relevant even in today's digital era.

This headline caught my attention: "NYU Library Imprisons Students in a Video Game to Stop Them from Killing Themselves." The atrium of the school's main library has been enclosed with perforated aluminum screens, in an effort to curb suicides.

A fairly concerning article about how a student taking a course with his wife didn't see the need to buy a second textbook for the class. However, with the textbook came a mandatory access code for supplementary materials and also to get access to the online discussion board and homework submission system. The student was unable to purchase the access code itself. This highlights an ongoing problem with software and digital access; publishers may legally be in their rights that every user is only granted access to a work and then to only one person, but users expect to be able to buy used books, old software, and so on. By essentially and artificially eliminating the secondary market of used/older materials publishers may increase their revenue per user but also increase user dissatisfaction and distrust.

Interesting (but pretty depressing) article: "But the research is now making it clear that the Internet is not "just" another delivery system. It is creating a whole new mental environment, a digital state of nature where the human mind becomes a spinning instrument panel, and few people will survive unscathed."