A disappoint article about a library's response to a reading club winner who is perpetually ahead. There is no evidence he is cheating, but because he wins the contest continually the other kids get discouraged and quit. However, rather than discourage the child from his love of reading, I wonder if an alternate idea would be to make leagues, so there is an overall contest but children also complete with reading groups of a similar level.

A somewhat concerning article about how if you visit an area of the world with a mobile device where your eBooks aren't licensed, the Google Play DRM will delete them. This is akin to traveling to another part of the world with a legally owned Region 1 DVD and device to play it on, and it still erases itself.

A preview of an upcoming publication it doesn't necessarily appear to cover any new ground but does describe the stages in how a disruptive technology that changes an industry is perceived and takes effect.

A fairly interesting read how copyright has diminished the availability of books from 1923 (the start of copyright protections for titles), so there is a large gap of material from before then that is out of copyright and widely available, and currently published material. However, material in between those times is scarce. However numbers can be deceiving as these are books in current publication, not available used copies, and it would make sense that copyrighted material not widely in demand would have low publication numbers.

Thew controversy was mainly about Amazon, and it was as interesting reading the comments as well as the article. Amazon is creating "fulfillment centers" in states for shipping items to consumers, and may even be looking at creating their own delivery service. The business model Amazon uses is very lean with low paid workers, and the American Booksellers Associations claims that for every $10 million that shifts from physical brick-and-mortar stores to Amazon 33 jobs are lost.

HP is offering a service to create magazines and other serial publications in the "cloud." What is interesting is both print and digital publishing is offered. Some of the publications listed do use an ISSN number, but it looks like it's up to the author to obtain it. Print options include worldwide shipping and direct mail, while it looks like the digital version requires a MagCloud account to read the material, although it is available as a downloadable PDF. What I find most interesting is how this service effectively replaces a traditional publisher altogether, although some of the features a publisher can offer--such as marketing and industry contacts, are missing. Digital prices to the consumer are substantially less than print, but I can't find anything about pricing to the user without signing up for an account.

An interesting web vendor that is offering interactive textbooks, which is in some ways the repackaging of the original "multimedia" CD-ROM's of the early 1990's, but now offered as a "book." They claim to be partnered with McGraw-Hill and Pearson, and it looks like a user needs to have a perpetual account to use their material although offline access is allowed. Some features such as streaming video and music are separate from the book so they are not true stand alone files, and purchasing a book as an app is currently only for a handful of titles. The list price of several of the books is very steep, and my main concern is how well the multimedia is integrated with the text and if there is any ability to share or transfer a license, which I can't find listed in their website FAQ.

Wile not particularly new, the gesture technology here uses ideas inspired by devices such as the Kinect motion capture for the Xbox. While interesting I agree with some of the comments that performing gestures for hours on end would be physically fatiguing, along with the impreciseness that a gesture will always be read by the machine correctly. What I would be more interested in seeing is interface design that would offer an improvement over how today's materials are organized on a computer's file system or desktop.

This was another session which showed that with community spaces if you build it they will come. I interviewed at this library in 1996 right after graduate school and it was and still is a large warehouse type building in 70's style. One of the substantial changes to Chattanooga since then is it is known as the "Gig City" for large deployment of gigabit Internet which has brought may Internet developers to the area. The development of the attic into a community space stressed the importance of community outreach and feedback as a sort of ecosystem to keep a project viable.

This was an interesting session about using Apple Configurator to maintain a pool of iPads for circulation to autistic students. The good side is customization can be done and quickly, the downside is a one-to-one ratio for apps licenses and iPads, a steep learning curve to the Configurator software, and being limited to what apps Apple provides.

This was a concept that I wasn't too sure if it wasn't ready for prime time or was simply a bad idea. Library patrons could sign up for a "Cloud" account and be given a thin client laptop that would access a Windows 7 image via Citrix which is "their" computer to install programs on or use as needed. However the initial outlay was $300,000 with $5,000 a year ongoing maintenance costs and considerable bandwidth requirements to stream an HD Windows desktop. Further it was limited to only laptops used in the library with a maximum base of 160 users. I honestly couldn't see this as a good idea because of the cost and limited use. It would be cheaper to rent out laptops and re-image when they are returned.

An interesting article on analyzing the use of keywords in American novels. The author acknowledges that the "American English" subset only examines reading materials middle readers would typically purchase, but I also note context is completely missing, and only so much can be inferred from the existence of words as opposed to how they're used.

A somewhat comic but correct history of typing and typography.

India has shut down it's telegram service, which ran continuously from 1851 until now. I 1985 the service sent 600,000 telegrams a day and as recently as 2008 had 22,000 employees. At the shutdown it had a staff of 968 in 75 offices handling maybe 5,000 a day.

An article that makes the case (not surprisingly) that despite the emotional satisfaction in finding something at random from wandering the stacks that teaching students to be good searchers is better.

An interesting survey where it shows younger readers 16-29 are more likely to use books, use traditional library services, and read e-books on an computer rather than an e-book reader than their older (30-49) counterparts.

The Chicago public library now offers 3D printers to any library card holder.

The legal debate over Google's used of scanned books continues, with a legal victory in the reversal of a court order allowing authors to sue as a group. An eventual outcome is the legal definition of fair use may see a court case that makes clear definitions everyone will be able to benefit from.

The Harvard Graduate School of Design's website for their "Labrary" (Library Laboratory) that tests out library design ideas on a real world 1:1 scale.

An article that mainly repeats many current trends in libraries but is notable for appearing in a mainstream publication (Time Magazine) and being surprisingly aware of some new developments such as maker culture.