This is similar to a problem I'd heard about regarding non-copyrighted books, namely repackaging what could be had for free and charging for it when there's little to no added value. Now books with titles similar to popular offerings but otherwise having nothing in common are coming up in the hopes that buyers not paying attention will click on them. Examples are "I am the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "Twilight New Moon." This is also a very old trick, as I've heard for years of knock-off electronics being sold under brand names like Panasoanic and JCV.

An interesting although perhaps idealistic view of what could happen. The author contends that Google faltered in paying and making arrangements with publishers rather than defending Book Search as fair use, although I'd argue it led directly to the Google Play store for selling media including books. Libraries cooperating to make a Digital Public Library is to me a much more agreeable plan than getting materials digitized and put online by means of a corporation.

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.

The Handle System "A digital object may incorporate not only informational elements, i.e., a digitized version of a paper, movie or sound recording, but also the unique identifier of the digital object and other metadata about the digital object." It is the larger group that DOI belongs to and helps with providing electronic resources not only with a persistent link but metadata associated with that resource.

I found this interesting as it covers many of the links we're seeing in our electronic resource records (dx.doi.org) Pat of the larger Handle System the DOI is essentially a stable link for resources and citations.

Lastly, Harvard is also lending dogs now at one of their libraries. This is one of several experiments in lending things other than books (everything from tools to people) but I still question the relevance:

Harvard also had an Oxford style debate about the future or purpose of libraries. While interesting it didn't really cover anything new:

Time Magazine reported on how even Harvard is having trouble affording academic journal subscriptions, and how it may be time for an open access model. Some journals cost up to $40,000 a year, and single articles cost $30-$40.

I couldn't find a way to link directly to presentations or their materials. Probably the most interesting sessions I attended were: Solving the Complexities of Ebook Record Management in Millennium INN-Reach: Implementing Peer to Peer Functionality Between two INN-Reach Systems The Ebooks presentation was about checking for duplication, quality control, and making sure all the records an institution paid for are present and have valid links. There were a lot of good techniques that could be relayed to our members as a group of best practices. The Peer-To-Peer INN-Reach is a new product that allows two INN-Reach systems to share materials as if they were one. It was a done in Ohio as a response after one consortium added two public libraries and began to see their single INN-Reach server overwhelmed. From what I could tell it works well, with each INN-Reach server able to retain it's own loan rules and identity, but did require all the libraries and pickup locations to be added to both servers, which quickly would present patrons with a very long list of libraries to choose from. I wasn't very clear where the super-union webpac resided; whether on it's own server or produced from both of them. The users that were present seemed happy with it.

It looked at several of the recent themes in the library world such as "Library 2.0" and how they've failed or the ideas have been accomplished better outside of libraries. What I found interesting is it was written by the Vice President of Library Support Services for LSSI, the private company that has started to run many public library systems, so I'm curious what his intent was with this article.

We're at the dawn of the tablet era now. Earlier this month, Apple sold 3 million of its new iPad during the opening weekend, with some analysts expecting over 60 million of the tablets to be sold worldwide. What's more, e-book readers are selling even more briskly than tablets.

At least two of the big-six publishers are refusing to sign new annual contracts with Amazon. While that could result in their "buy" buttons being turned off, it is more likely that the feud will result in less promotion of big-six publishers' titles on the site.