Group items tagged

CrossRef is the official DOI registration agency of the international DOI Foundation. It was launched in 2000 and includes over 900 voting members and publishers who represent over 3000 societies and publishers. The organization includes metadata services and on the front page a resolver so DOI strings that are not hyperlinked will connect directly to the resource to determine what it is.

Interestingly enough, III seems to use it for WebBridge (which I know little about): http://csdirect.iii.com/webbridge/index.php?n=LinkSyntax.DOI-CrossRef

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.

In France eBooks are only 1.8% of the general market, and total sales of books have actually increased by 6.5% from 2003 to 2011. Some interesting conclusions are drawn from this, namely that prices for French language books are fixed by government decree and set by publishers--not by price discounters such as Amazon, and last year the publishers lobbied to do the same for eBooks. The French government is also friendly to booksellers, offering grants and help with rent. The result is French language bookstores are doing well, while some such English language bookstore such as the 30 year old Village Voice are closing because of the competition from resellers like Amazon and eBooks. The article surmises that the French are really only delaying the inevitable, but I find it curious that nothing is really stopping them from turning entirely to eBooks now, the main factor is cost rather than convenience or access.

Earlier this week the ALA sent a strongly worded open letter to publishers about the need to figure out way for publishers to sell libraries e-books for "equitable use at a reasonable price."

Some of the latest developments in the ongoing copyright infringement case with Georgia State going back to 2008. A judge last year had granted a nearly complete victory ruling that only 5 of the 99 instances broke copyright. However, the ruling has been appealed and there is some question if the DOJ may file a brief siding with the publishers.

Penguin Group and electronic-book distributor 3M have made a deal with two New York City public library systems that will return Penguin e-books to library shelves for a one-year pilot. Penguin is one of four major publishers that don't make e-books available to libraries. The pilot, crafted to protect e-book sales, will delay the release of e-books to the libraries for six months after the titles go on sale in stores and online. Each library e-book will expire after a year.

"The makers of the POD Espresso Book Machine currently installed in fewer than a hundred bookstores nationwide, have announced new partnerships with Eastman Kodak and ReaderLink Distribution Services. Under the arrangement, the company's POD technology will be made available to retailers who have Kodak Picture Kiosks, currently installed in 105,000 locations according to Publishers Weekly, including drugstores and supermarkets. "

An interesting about the unique environment in Iceland where writing is very popular and 1 our of 10 people will publish a book.

Researchers found a nearly linear relationship between time of sharing of the resource and the percentage lost, with a slightly less linear relationship between time of sharing and archiving coverage of the resource. From this model we conclude that after the first year of publishing, nearly 11% of shared resources will be lost and after that we will continue to lose 0.02% per day.

An article that addresses a problem which has come up before, namely "junk" books made from electronic files, in this case physical copies as opposed to eBooks, but with the same problems. Material in the text is missing, as well as the publisher and print date, edition, the notation about original language or any information about the author. Such information, separated from the original work, means that the context and in some cases documentation for the book are lost, which could harm research and preservation in the long run.

Wayne Bivens-Tatum at the Library Journal offers a general criticism at how current copyright law is designed solely with the benefit of publishers in mind.

An article that covers some open access and peer reviewed projects such as the Public Library of Science (www.plos.org) and ultimately makes the conclusion that research should be free because no part of the process should cost very much, and some of the hold up is academia not considering open access journals "prestigious" enough to merit tenure. I would agree in principle, especially if commercial publishers are removed from the equation. However, a lot of applied science and research relies on funding that may involve copyrighted or trademarked material, so some research will always be restricted.

Tor Books, one of the leading publishers of Science Fiction, has reported that since they did away with DRM in their files a year ago that their business has hardly changed. Their reasoning was simple, their readers tended to be technologically savvy and DRM is a constant problem to them.

This was of interest considering my visit to the Wolfner Library during the conference. The issue seems to center around loosening copyright restrictions so blind readers can have more easy access to materials that have be converted into a format accessible to them, and the resistance of the entertainment and publishing industries even though it would be beneficial.

"The global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors' income streams. It seems almost every player - publishers, search engines, libraries, pirates and even some scholars - is vying for position at authors' expense."

An article I found interesting both for how the Douglas County Libraries was trying to own rather then license much of their e-resources and store it on a server, but also how they were working with the metadata for those resources, converting it bu a crosswalk from the publication industry's XML-based ONIX (ONline Information eXchange) or simple Excel into Marc.

An article that references the closure of the University of Missouri last year, and mainly emphasizes that university presses need to focus on fund raising, advocacy, building alliances, and maintaining relevance in a changing publishing landscape.

This is really big news for the publishing world.

A video from French publisher Editis, with an inspiring vision of what ebooks and tablets might be able to do.