LISNews Librarian And Information Science News

Post at Teleread discussing an ebook article in American Libraries called, "The Elusive E-book".

The adrenaline-pumper of the week? American Libraries has just run an article titled “The Elusive E-book,” by Stephen Sottong, former associate librarian at California State University, Los Angeles, whose faculty home page appears with the headline, “Retiring on September 26, 2003.”

Dissecting the Sottong piece, an information manager named Stephen Leary writes: “People won’t read entire books on these readers, Sottong assures us, yet that’s exactly what I have done myself. I’ve read dozens of books on my Sony reader, and on my desktop computer as well. Somehow I didn’t make it into Sottong’s academic research. Like other book lovers, I read many at one time. A reader is a great leap forward for many like me who don’t want to carry around a load of print books.” Exactly.

Full Teleread article here.

Daily Trojan Online Reports The dean of USC Libraries announced a strategic plan that will upgrade all collections, technology and customer service to be more digitized and unified in order to match other university libraries' quality.

The Associated Press looks into a dimly lit back room on the second level of the University of Michigan library's book-shelving department, Courtney Mitchel helped a giant desktop machine digest a rare, centuries-old Bible.
Many libraries began digitizing books a decade ago to preserve them. Funding from Google allows the 28 libraries it's working with to cut their digitizing costs because they don't have to pay for scanning the books Google wants to include in Book Search.

According to a front page note from Jeff Bezos the Kindle is in stock and ships immediately. Prior to this the Kindle has been shipping sporadically. Clearly some were shipping because a slow but steady supply of Kindles were showing on eBay. There is also a link to Amazon's current letter to shareholders included with the front page announcement. Amazon.com main page.

Voluminous A tool to find, download, organise and read free books. "The Internet is full of free books. But who has time to search for them? Let Voluminous bring the books to you. It finds, downloads and organises a vast library. Buy now, and access hundreds of years of classic literature. Take the free trial and see what's on offer."

Gizmodo Points to The Digitizing Line DL-3000 Book Scanner, billed as the fastest book scanner in the world. "We share the vision of a near future where a majority of books will be reachable online and where full text search would be possible inside their content." It'll Turn and scan 1500 to 3000 pages per hour in unattended operation..."The Automatic book scanning solution everybody is looking for !"

It's been some months since Amazon.com released the Kindle, and no one is sure whether the latest e-book reader is really hot — or not. But publishers believe that the Kindle has helped, if not revolutionized, the tiny electronic market.

From ComputerWorld Blog: The Amazon Kindle's "secret sauce" -- the feature that sets it apart from competitor eBook readers like the Sony Reader -- is unlimited, free wireless mobile broadband access, which lets you auto-download books, magazines and newspapers and give you access to the Internet. The catch: It works only in the U.S. Take it abroad, and its advantage goes away. Or does it?

On my second major foray into the "extreme telecommuting," nomadic lifestyle, I find myself living in -- and working from -- Greece. I've been here in Athens for two weeks, and I've learned three valuable rules: 1) never stop looking for a better connection; 2) never give up on your U.S. carrier; and 3) never leave your Kindle behind. I've dealt with each of these in this three-part series.

Full story here.

Entry at Teleread titled: The library tech skeptic at work: Good Kindle advice for Amazon from Walt Crawford, despite his past misses

Excerpt: Behold! A few nice words about the Kindle have come from none other than Walt Crawford, a well-known library automation guru and tech skeptic—even if they show up with major conditions.

I’ll get to Walt’s somewhat pro-Kindle remarks and K-related advice in time. His very qualified praise is blog-worthy since he has just about made a career of skepticism toward futuristic library tech. For now, here’s a little context for you to take in, while the suspense builds about the exact Crawford quote.

Full entry here.

Inside Higher Ed Takes A Look at The State University of New York Press' new “Direct Text” program that provides another alternative for the college faculty member and her students. Under the program, which was announced Tuesday, the press will simultaneously make available, for $20, electronic copies of front-list books that are released only in hardcover. Professors, students or others have several options: They can download or print copies of the book, or they can gain online access to it for 180 days. About 20 such titles are available now, and the press expects 100-plus books to be available in this format each year, many in its core fields of philosophy, political science and Asian studies.