The Handheld Librarian

ALA Program Summary: E-Elephant in the Room, by Sue Polanka (TeleRead)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:13:12 PDT

On Saturday, June 23, 2012 at the ALA conference, several hundred librarians gathered for an interesting discussion on eBook collection development practices. This ALA Program was a panel discussion featuing eBook collection development practices from both academic and public libraries. It was organized by Serin Anderson and Christopher Platt. Heather McCormack from Library Journal moderated the discussion. A summary of the program and presenter contents is below. The slides from all 4 panelists are available here: eBook elephant 06232012. Library Journal and ALA both had summary articles of the program as well.

Read more:
http://www.teleread.com/library/ala-program-summary-e-elephant-in-the-room-by-sue-polanka/

Libraries Cut E-Book Deal With Penguin (Wall Street Journal)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 14:35:44 PDT

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.

If successful at the New York Public Library and the Brooklyn Public Library—two of the country's largest library systems—Penguin said it could offer similar deals to libraries across the U.S., including school and university libraries. And the deal could prompt other major publishers that currently don't sell e-books to libraries to soften their stances, said Matt Tempelis, global business manager for the 3M Cloud Library.

Penguin is one of four major publishers that don't make e-books available to libraries. Two others—Random House and HarperCollins—impose prices or circulation limits that make e-books impractical for libraries to acquire, library officials say.

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.

Full story:
http://on.wsj.com/NROpP2

E-books may take a page out of digital music's book (ars technica)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Wed, 23 May 2012 21:10:42 PDT

by Megan Geuss

On Friday, an association of e-book publishers—including major companies such as Harper Collins, Random House, and Barnes & Noble—issued a statement suggesting an outline for a new “Lightweight DRM.” This proposed Digital Rights Management standard could increase interoperability of books on hardware like e-readers.

Don’t get excited yet—the outline was only an invitation to a conversation that the association, called the International Digital Publishing Forum, wants to have. Still, it suggests the traditionally conservative publishing industry is learning how to do business in the Internet era. Hopefully, publishing is realizing something that the music industry has known for years: DRM is dead.

Of course, publishers aren't giving up entirely on DRM yet—they just want a different kind. But the IDPF suggested version of content management doesn’t require a lot of proprietary hardware or software to decrypt e-books (like the system we have today). In DRM’s current incarnation, books bought on a Kindle won’t work on a Nook, and books purchased on a Nook won’t work on a Kobo.

In the Friday statement, prepared by Bill Rosenblatt of Giant Steps Media Technology Strategies, the IDPF said a lightweight DRM option would lower production costs in terms of providing secure hardware and robust software. It would also reduce intensive client-server interactions. And of course, the IDPF suggested a new format would be favorable to consumers because it would be easier to use and understand.

Full story:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/05/e-books-may-take-a-page-out-of-digital-musics-book/

Apple Unveils App and Tools for Digital Textbooks | NY Times

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:04:34 PST

By BRIAN X. CHEN and NICK WINGFIELD| January 19, 2012, 10:17 am

Apple wants students to bid farewell to the days of lugging around backpacks of heavy textbooks, and to welcome the iPad tablet as their new all-in-one reading device.

On Thursday the company released iBooks 2, a free app that will support digital textbooks that can display interactive diagrams, audio and video. At a news conference, the company demonstrated a biology textbook featuring 3-D models, searchable text, photo galleries and flash cards for studying. Apple said high school textbooks from its initial publishing partners, including Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, would cost $15 or less.

“Education is deep in our DNA and it has been from the very beginning,” said Philip W. Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, at the event at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Apple also announced a free tool called iBooks Author, a piece of Macintosh software that allows people to make these interactive textbooks. The tool includes templates designed by Apple, which publishers and authors can customize to suit their content. It requires no programming knowledge and will be available Thursday.

Full story:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/19/apple-unveils-tools-for-digital-textbooks/

Penguin Group Has Halted Library Lending For E-Books

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:43:07 PST

The Digital Shift blog is reporting that as of today, Penguin Group USA will no longer permit any library lending of its new e-book titles. Overdrive, which powers the back-end of e-book lending for thousands of libraries, has confirmed that Penguin is no longer allowing library lending of its new titles. This decision does not effect any e-book titles currently in library circulation.

Penguin sent a statement to Digital Shift (which is a blog under the Library Journal umbrella) stating that the decision to halt new e-book lending stems from concerns over “the security of our digital editions.” The decision doesn’t appear to be a permanent one, but rather Penguin states that it will be holding off on allowing lending again until such time as they have “a distribution model that is secure and viable.”

Additionally, while older Penguin books will still be available in certain eBook formats for lending, none will be available for library lending for the Amazon Kindle. This decision comes just a few weeks after Amazon’s library lending partnership with Overdrive and public libraries came online. It’s also been made, perhaps more tellingly, a few days after Amazon announced its new lending library program for Amazon Prime customers. Amazon’s relationship with publishers over e-book publication on its Kindle e-readers has been contentious at times, but it’s yet to be seen if this is one of them.

Read more: http://onforb.es/tCafaW

Amazon, Now a Book Lender (Wall Street Journal)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:45:00 PST

By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG And STU WOO

As the e-reader and tablet wars heat up, Amazon.com Inc. is launching a digital-book lending library that will be available only to owners of its Kindle and Kindle Fire devices who are also subscribers to its Amazon Prime program.

Amazon is launching a digital-book lending library that will be available only to owners of its Kindle devices who are also subscribers to its $79-a-year Amazon Prime program. Jeffrey Trachtenberg joins Digits to discuss how it works and why big book publishers may not be thrilled about it.

The program will be limited, at least at the beginning, in what is available to borrow. Amazon will initially offer slightly more than 5,000 titles in the library, including more than 100 current and former national bestsellers, such as Stephen R. Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People."

None of the six largest publishers in the U.S. is participating. Several senior publishing executives said recently they were concerned that a digital-lending program of the sort contemplated by Amazon would harm future sales of their older titles or damage ties to other book retailers.

Read more: http://bit.ly/ufVZj9

Anoka-Hennepin teachers write their own online textbook, save district $175,000

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 15:33:08 PST

CHRIS WILLIAMS Associated Press

MINNEAPOLIS — The new textbooks in Michael Engelhaupt's statistics class at Blaine High School are kind of cheap and won't last long, but he doesn't mind. After all, he wrote them.

Instead of mass-produced textbooks, the more than 3,100 sophomores in the state's largest district are learning from an online curriculum developed by their teachers over the summer with free software distributed over the web.

Engelhaupt, 31, was one of three district math teachers who spent about 100 hours each developing the lessons, which cost the district about $175,000 less than buying new textbooks.

Engelhaupt said the project began last year when a group of math teachers began talking about new books the district had budgeted $200,000 to buy. They decided they could do a better job.

The problem with mass-produced textbooks, Engelhaupt explained, was that they can cost $65 each and aren't aligned with Minnesota's math tests so the district would be paying for whole chapters that are never used.

Read more: http://bit.ly/s1FX54 http://bit.ly/s1FX54

Trends in Mobile Medicine Panel (Metro)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 18:55:56 PDT

When: Wednesday Oct. 26, 2011
Time: 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM EDT

Where: METRO Training Center (4th floor)
57 E. 11th Street New York NY 10003
Phone: (212) 228-2320

Panelists:
Emily Morton-Owens
Asst. Curator, Web Services Librarian
NYU Health Sciences Libraries

Paul Albert
Digital Services Librarian
Weill Cornell Medical Library

Sarah Jewell
Reference Librarian
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Library

Presented by Metro's Smart Phones and Mobile Computing SIG

Registration deadline is Wednesday 26-Oct-11 3:00 PM:
Registration: http://www.metro.org/en/cev/reg/106/

The Fight Over the Future of Digital Books (The Atlantic)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 15:42:35 PDT

The mysterious tower of the Cambridge University library, once rumored by undergraduates to be filled with pornography, is actually stocked with more interesting stuff: Edwardian spy novels set in far away lands, old country cookbooks, and legal thrillers by authors who are long gone, all conscientiously saved for posterity. Today scholars greatly value collections like these and the librarians who had the foresight to create and keep them. Without such troves we would have precious little to study to understand our past, present, and future.

In a plot turn that surprised many last week, the Authors Guild, led by modern-day legal-thriller writer Scott Turow, filed suit against five universities and the digital tower, called HathiTrust, that those universities created to preserve and make available to students and faculty scans of books from their collections.

Most of these scans are the institutional copies of books digitized by Google, which the Authors Guild sued six years ago in a complicated case that has still not been resolved. (The parties met with a judge yet again last Thursday.) This is the first time Google's university partners have been directly targeted by the plaintiffs.

Unlike Google, which ambitiously -- some would say recklessly -- planned to make all scanned books available in some form to the public, from "snippets" to full views, HathiTrust simply wishes to make available for scholarship older, out-of-print books whose authors and publishers cannot be located. Often called "orphan works," these books exist in an unclear realm: still technically in copyright but without identifiable rights-holders. What is very clear is that without the orphanages we call libraries, many of these works would no longer be available for scholars to read.

Authors Guild v. HathiTrust is a strange legal twist. For an association of professional writers, the Guild seems to have forgotten some of the basic principles of its craft, such as not placing sympathetic figures like librarians in the role of villains. Almost comically, the Guild's press release trumpeting its lawsuit against HathiTrust augurs a dark day in the not-too-distant future when old works, including obscure Yiddish texts, are "abducted" and "released" to thousands of students and professors.

Read full article: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/09/the-fight-over-the-future-of-digital-books/245577/

The Dog-Eared Paperback, Newly Endangered in an E-Book Age (NYT)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 10:33:03 PDT

By JULIE BOSMAN Published: September 2, 2011 These are dark and stormy times for the mass-market paperback, that squat little book that calls to mind the beach and airport newsstands. Recession-minded readers who might have picked up a quick novel in the supermarket or drugstore are lately resisting the impulse purchase. Shelf space in bookstores and retail chains has been turned over to more expensive editions, like hardcovers and trade paperbacks, the sleeker, more glamorous cousin to the mass-market paperback. And while mass-market paperbacks have always been prized for their cheapness and disposability, something even more convenient has come along: the e-book. A comprehensive survey released last month by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group revealed that while the publishing industry had expanded over all, publishers’ mass-market paperback sales had fallen 14 percent since 2008.

Read more: http://nyti.ms/pQ7xUh

Amazon to Introduce Library Lending for Kindle (Chronicle of Higher Ed.)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 17:39:00 PDT

By Jennifer Howard

Amazon.com announced today that it will make Kindle books available for library lending later this year. Its partner in the Kindle Library Lending program is OverDrive, a widely used distributor of e-books and audiobooks.

“Customers will be able to check out a Kindle book from their local library and start reading on any Kindle device or free Kindle app for Android, iPad, iPod touch, iPhone, PC, Mac, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone,” the company said in its announcement. “If a Kindle book is checked out again or that book is purchased from Amazon, all of a customer’s annotations and bookmarks will be preserved.”

How? “Normally, making margin notes in library books is a big no-no,” said Jay Marine, the director of Amazon Kindle. “But we’re extending our Whispersync technology so that you can highlight and add margin notes to Kindle books you check out from your local library. Your notes will not show up when the next patron checks out the book. But if you check out the book again, or subsequently buy it, your notes will be there just as you left them, perfectly Whispersynced.”

Link

A message from OverDrive on HarperCollins' new eBook licensing terms (OverDrive's Digital Library Blog)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:48:00 PST

From Steve Potash, OverDrive CEO:
Since Friday, we’ve heard directly from many library partners about the new eBook licensing terms instituted by HarperCollins. As an initial step, here is what OverDrive is doing about it.

Beginning March 7, we are making changes in the eBook ordering process. HarperCollins eBooks and their catalog of titles will be moved from our general eBook catalog to a separate collection. Until we have time to review the effect of these new terms with our library partners, HarperCollins eBooks will not be listed in our Library Marketplace. You will be able to review and order HarperCollins eBooks from a separated catalog, if you so choose.

For those librarians who are less familiar with me or OverDrive, we know that you have expressed concern that OverDrive failed to stand up for you and your readers in this situation with HarperCollins, and that OverDrive did not do enough to prevent these changes. This sentiment does not accurately characterize my and OverDrive’s work in the library market over the past decade, nor does it reflect our discussions with HarperCollins regarding these changes. OverDrive did not invite, recommend, or suggest the need for any changes in terms.

We did have an option to stop carrying or distributing HarperCollins eBooks to our library partners. Instead of taking this approach, we made the decision to continue to make the world’s second largest publisher’s catalog of eBook titles available to you, communicate the changes in advance to our library partners, and offer the option to make informed purchasing decisions.

As a library advocate, my team has made dozens of presentations to publishers and their associations in the US and abroad communicating the marketing and discoverability, and the economic opportunities the library market represents to publishers. We are aware of the challenges you face because of increased demand, shrinking budgets, and incompatible devices entering the market. As a result, we are prompting publishers to consider less restrictive licensing for eBook and digital media lending. OverDrive’s advocacy efforts for libraries have been ongoing for most of the past decade, most recently with the UK Publishers Association and at Digital Book World 2011. Last year we also released a White Paper to encourage library eBook lending.

We are also a firm believer and supporter of open standards and greater compatibility for digital content. OverDrive was one of the founders of the IDPF (EPUB standard), introduced iPod-compatible MP3 Audiobooks (no DRM), provided thousands of DRM-free Project Gutenberg titles, and developed the first mobile apps for direct over-the-air access to library eBooks. We proudly partner with Bookshare.org for LEAP, which supplies accessible eBooks to your visually-impaired customers.

I have been listening to public librarians for more than 10 years on how you want your digital book lending system to work. We have visited with you in all 50 states (and a dozen countries) hosting events with your libraries, your associations, and via the Digital Bookmobile. We will continue to listen to your concerns and are actively asking for your direction, through initiatives like our OverDrive Library Advisory Council and our user group conference this summer, Digipalooza. We’re also following the unofficial channels with which many of you are already familiar (#HCOD).

I can promise you that we will make the OverDrive platform even easier to use for you and your customers. We will protect your ability to make informed choices and we will work with you to set the direction and policies that serve your customers’ interests. Most importantly, we will continue to innovate, invest, and advocate for libraries so readers will have the best options for accessing digital books, anywhere and everywhere.

Link

Expert Predicts a Deluge of Tablet Computers on Campuses (Wired Campus)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 17:00:03 PST

By Josh Fischman

Las Vegas—In his keynote address at the Higher Ed Tech Summit, Walt Mossberg, the influential technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, told an audience of higher-education officials and company executives that their future held many tablet computers. And not just the iPad, but some of the 70 or so new tablet devices that have been announced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show here.

Speaking yesterday, Mr. Mossberg noted that CES this year should be renamed “TES” because there were so many of the things. (There was Motorola’s new Xoom, for instance, and Dell’s Streak 7, Lenovo’s IdeaPad Hybrid—a laptop with a detachable tablet—and devices from Samsung, Toshiba, Motion …)

Link

Amid E-Book Growth, Students Still Prefer Paper Textbooks (ReadWriteWeb)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 07:40:56 PST

Over the past half-year, we have written extensively about e-books ande-readers. We've discussed the merits of e-books over paper books. We've covered Kindle e-books outselling hardcover best-sellers and theirstrength over the holiday season. We've even included the growth of e-readers and e-books in one of our Top Trends of 2010 posts.

But, as ReadWriteWeb editor Richard MacManus discussed in "5 Ways that Paper Books are Better than E-Books," everything from price to packaging to, most importantly, the feel of physical books may keep them on the shelves for a long time to come. Now, in a study called "Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education," another round in the debate has been settled on the side of paper. 75% of student preferred old-fashioned, paper-and-board textbooks over electronic versions.

The surveying entity, the Book Industry Study Group, announced the results yesterday. The 75% who preferred paper textbooks cited "a fondness for print's look and feel, as well as its permanence and ability to be resold."

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amid_e-book_growth_students_still_prefer_paper_tex.php

Amazon Kindle Now Lets You Loan Your E-Books (Sorta) (ReadWriteWeb)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:17:34 PST

One of the features that the Barnes & Noble Nook has had that the Amazon Kindle lacked is the ability to lend e-books. No more.

You can now lend your Kindle books, as the feature, first reported back in October, has gone live today.

But before you get too excited about the ability to share your digital library, there are a number of key restrictions.

Read more

Handheld Librarian 4 Online Conference: Call for Program Proposals!

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 11:58:43 PST

TAP Information Services and LearningTimes invite librarians, library staff, vendors, graduate students, and developers to submit program proposals related to the topic of mobile library services for the Handheld Librarian 4 conference (HHL4). The event will be held on February 23 and 24, 2011 and feature keynote presentations by digital information pundits Peter Brantley, Jeremy Kemp and Lee Rainey.

Thousands of library and education professionals have participated in previous events – it's time for you to contribute to the conversation! Submit your proposal by December 15, 2010 at:

http://www.handheldlibrarian.org/proposal-submissions

Prefer to participate? Registration is now open with special early bird rates for individuals and groups at:

http://www.handheldlibrarian.org

The Handheld Librarian 4 online conference will feature highly interactive, live sessions, as well as recorded content and relevant resources. We are interested in a broad range of submissions that highlight current, evolving and future issues in mobile library services. HHL4 will also feature a program track with presentations by graduate library students.

Presentations may include, but are not limited to, the following program tracks:

• ebooks

• location-based social networking

• augmented reality

• twitter

• apps

• device and OS trends

• QR codes

• reference

• mobile trend spotting

• mobile technologies impacting society

• web/app development best practices

Submit your proposal by completing this webform by December 15, 2010:

http://www.handheldlibrarian.org/submissions-form

Online presentations may be conducted in one of four formats:

• a 45-minute live online session (i.e. synchronous webcast) • a 15 minute student presentation *** • a 10 minute live online session or • a pre-recorded presentation (i.e. narrated web tour or slides).

***time will be reserved for students enrolled in library science programs at accredited institutions

To view a few great examples of presentation during HHL3, please visit:

http://www.handheldlibrarian.org/archives

You will be notified by January 15, 2011 if your proposal has been accepted. Conference registration fees are waived for speakers. Presenters are expected to:

- Conduct your session using Adobe Connect (computer, Internet, mic required)

- Provide a digital photo of yourself for the conference website

- Respond to questions from attendees

- Attend an online 30-60 minute training on Adobe Connect prior to the conference

Thank you for considering submitting a proposal. If you have questions, please contact:

Lori Bell, lbell927@gmail.com

Tom Peters, TAP Information Services, tpeters@tapinformation.com Susan Manning, LearningTimes, susan@ltgreenroom.org

Remember, proposals are due December 15, 2010. Submit yours today at:

http://www.handheldlibrarian.org/submissions-form

Warm regards.

The Handheld Librarian Team

Great Holiday Expectations for E-Readers (NYT)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 09:06:00 PST

By JULIE BOSMAN

This could be the holiday season that American shoppers and e-readers are properly introduced.

E-readers will be widely available at stores like Target, Best Buy and Wal-Mart, the nation’s largest retailer, and offered at prices that make sense for Christmas gifts — less than $150.

Publishers and booksellers are expecting that instead of giving your mother a new Nicholas Sparks novel or your father a David Baldacci thriller in the hardcovers that traditionally fly off the shelves and into wrapping paper at this time of year, you might elect to convert them to e-reading.

“This is the tipping-point season for e-readers, there’s no question,” said Peter Hildick-Smith, president of the Codex Group, a book market research company. “A lot more books are going to be sold in e-book format. It also means that a lot fewer people are going to be shopping in bookstores.”

Only a small slice of the book-buying public has bought an e-reader. About nine million devices are in circulation in the United States, according to Forrester Research.

That could jump in the coming weeks as consumers begin their holiday shopping, analysts predict. According to Forrester, at least 10.3 million e-readers could be in circulation by the end of the year.

And many of them will be bought for other people. Research from Simba Information, which provides data and advice to publishers, has shown that 1 in 5 of those who own a Kindle, Amazon’s dedicated e-reader, received it as a gift.

Link

Technorati Tags: ebook, kindle, e-books

Digital Underclass: What Happens When the Libraries Die? (ZdNet)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 15:03:00 PST

Jason Perlow:

Over the past several years we’ve seen an ever-increasing move towards digital media as the preferred way of distributing books, magazines and newspapers. Whether it’s eBooks, websites or some other form of digitized distribution mechanism, the writing is on the wall for the printed “dead tree” medium.

Within 20 years, perhaps even as few as 10, virtually almost all forms of popular consumable written media will be distributed exclusively in an electronic format. While there are clear advantages to digital media, such as the instantaneous purchase and delivery of that content, elimination of book shortages at bookstores as well as the obvious portability benefits, it has a sociological impact that many have not considered — which is that the “Have Nots” of society may find themselves denied access to an entire range of content they enjoyed previously with the printed book, newspaper or magazine.

What I’m talking about of course is the Public Library. You know, those big, quiet buildings in your town filled with shelves of books, card catalogs, and librarians to help you find that material. In a fully digital society, we won’t need Public Libraries anymore. They won’t be cost effective, and there will be far less new printed books, magazines and newspapers being released to stock these libraries with.

Link

Technorati Tags: ebooks, libraries

Giving E-books a Spot on the Charts (Time)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:00:01 PDT

Will 2010 be the year of the e-book? With Apple's iPad, Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook and a host of other e-devices now on the market, readers have more alternatives to old-fashioned paper and ink than ever. And as a result, digital sales are soaring: the Association of American Publishers reports that e-book sales jumped 207% in the first five months of this year, and on July 19, Amazon announced that it now sells more Kindle e-books than it does hardcover volumes. (See what authors and celebs are reading this summer.)

But don't bother looking for your favorite e-title on a bestsellers list: With the exception of USA Today, national print lists don't track e-books or include their revenues in sales figures. With these digital downloads now accounting for more than 8% of the total consumer book market, though, that's going to start changing soon. "We're certainly looking at it really closely, and will find some way, I think, to inform readers about e-book sales," says Sam Tanenhaus, editor of the influential New York Times Book Review. "But what kind of list it will be, at this point, is undecided."

Link

E-Books Top Hardcovers at Amazon (NY Times)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 17:00:08 PDT

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER

Monday was a day for the history books — if those will even exist in the future.

Amazon.com, one of the nation’s largest booksellers, announced Monday that for the last three months, sales of books for its e-reader, the Kindle, outnumbered sales of hardcover books.

In that time, Amazon said, it sold 143 Kindle books for every 100 hardcover books, including hardcovers for which there is no Kindle edition.

The pace of change is quickening, too, Amazon said. In the last four weeks sales rose to 180 digital books for every 100 hardcover copies. Amazon has 630,000 Kindle books, a small fraction of the millions of books sold on the site.

Book lovers mourning the demise of hardcover books with their heft and their musty smell need a reality check, said Mike Shatzkin, founder and chief executive of the Idea Logical Company, which advises book publishers on digital change. “This was a day that was going to come, a day that had to come,” he said. He predicts that within a decade, fewer than 25 percent of all books sold will be print versions.

The shift at Amazon is “astonishing when you consider that we’ve been selling hardcover books for 15 years, and Kindle books for 33 months,” the chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, said in a statement.

Link

Technorati Tags: amazon, kindle, handheld, ebooks

Stanford Ushers In The Age Of Bookless Libraries (National Public Radio)

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 13:07:40 PDT

by Laura Sydell

The periodical shelves at Stanford University’s Engineering Library are nearly bare. Library chief Helen Josephine says that in the past five years, most engineering periodicals have been moved online, making their print versions pretty obsolete — and books aren't doing much better.

According to Josephine, students can now browse those periodicals from their laptops or mobile devices.

For years, students have had to search through volume after volume of books before finding the right formula — but no more. Josephine says that "with books being digitized and available through full text search capabilities, they can find that formula quite easily."

In 2005, when the university realized it was running out space for its growing collection of 80,000 engineering books, administrators decided to build a new library. But instead of creating more space for books, they chose to create less.

The new library is set to open in August with 10,000 engineering books on the shelves — a decrease of more than 85 percent from the old library. Stanford library director Michael Keller says the librarians determined which books to keep on the shelf by looking at how frequently a book was checked out. They found that the vast majority of the collection hadn't been taken off the shelf in five years.

Full story (with audio)

Amazon to Drop Free Books from Kindle Bestseller List

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:51:58 PDT

Publisher's Weekly:

For some in publishing it may be a curiosity, for others a point of contention—Amazon’s practice of including free downloads in its list of most popular Kindle titles. It will soon no longer be an issue. A representative at the e-tailer has confirmed that the company will be splitting its Kindle bestseller list, creating one list for paid books and another for free titles. The date for the switch is vague—the rep would only say it will happen in “a few weeks”—but the switch will certainly be noticed.

Currently the top ten bestselling titles on Amazon’s Kindle bestseller list are free downloads, a fact that speaks to how publishers are testing the free model to get attention for certain authors. In a January 23 piece in The New York Times, the paper's former publishing reporter Motoko Rich explored the phenomenon. In the piece, Rich noted that over half of the most popular titles on Amazon's Kindle bestseller list were free downloads. Now, with the list to be split up, one has to wonder if publishers will find free giveaways as valuable a promotion tool.

Publish or Perish: Can the iPad topple the Kindle, and save the book business?

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:30:05 PDT

Ken Aulette writing in the New Yorker on the iPad, the Kindle, and the future of books:

For the moment, Jobs is the publishers’ best ally. “Steve is very proud that Macmillan put a gun to Amazon’s head,” the insider said. But in the long term Apple and Google will not necessarily be better partners than Amazon. One day, they, too, will complain about the cumbersome publishing process, or excessive prices. Just days before the iPad went on sale, on April 3rd, there were rumors that Apple might list best-sellers for as little as $9.99. Apple agreed to the agency model for just one year, and, as publishers are acutely aware, Jobs has a history, with music and television companies, of fighting to reduce prices. One publisher said, “Maybe Apple will want to come back in a year and bite our heads off.” The iPad may even make it possible for Amazon to reach new consumers. Apple now offers about sixty thousand e-books, far fewer than Kindle does, and Amazon has launched an app that allows it to sell e-books on the iPad. No matter where consumers buy books, their belief that electronic media should cost less—that something you can’t hold simply isn’t worth as much money—will exert a powerful force. Asked about publishers’ efforts to raise prices, a skeptical literary agent said, “You can try to put on wings and defy gravity, but eventually you will be pulled down.

METRO Mobile Computing SIG meeting, May 12

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 10:12:49 PDT

Mark your calendars!

METRO's Smart Phone and Mobile Computing Special Interest Group will meet on Wednesday, May 12, 2010, from 3:00 to 4:30 at METRO Headquarters, 57 East 11th Street, 4th floor, New York, NY.

The topic will be mobile reference services provided by libraries.

Our speaker will be Alexa Pearce, Acting Librarian for Journalism, Media, Culture & Communication, from Bobst Library, New York University.

RSVP at http://bit.ly/crfIlf

For more information on the SIG, visit SIG's web site: http://bit.ly/buxD0D

First iPad reviews: Ihnatko, Jardin, Mossberg, Pogue

noreply@blogger.com (Grace Lee) — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 13:52:50 PDT

Sure, the iPad is cool – but is it a real computer? by Andy Ihnatko (Chicago Sun Times)

"I’ve bought an iPad because I quickly recognized that I have an iPad-shaped hole in my life. Also because I need one for the iPad book I’m writing, but really, it was easy to spot that this is a machine that will work well for me. I read all of my books digitally and get nearly all of my entertainment online. I travel frequently and a full-sized notebook is rarely a necessity. I’m self-employed and often feel the urge to flee the office and work for a few hours at The Bagel Place With The Wifi down the street." (with unboxing video)

Apple's iPad is a touch of genius by Xeni Jardin (BoingBoing)

"Flick the switch and the novelty hits. Just as the iPhone, Palm Pré and Android phones scratched an itch we didn't know we had—somewhere between cellphone and notebook—the iPad hits a completely new pleasure spot. The display is large enough to make the experience of apps and games on smaller screens stale. Typography is crisp, images gem-like, and the speed brisk thanks to Apple's A4 chip and solid state storage. As I browse early release iPad apps, web pages, and flip through the iBook store and books, the thought hits that this is a greater leap into a new user experience than the sum of its parts suggests."

Laptop Killer? Pretty Close by Walter Mossberg (Wall Street Journal)

"For the past week or so, I have been testing a sleek, light, silver-and-black tablet computer called an iPad. After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades."

Looking at the iPad From Two Angles by David Pogue (New York Times)

" The haters tend to be techies; the fans tend to be regular people. Therefore, no single write-up can serve both readerships adequately. There’s but one solution: Write separate reviews for these two audiences."

iPad Reviews: Raves For Apple's Latest Product (Huffington Post)

A slide show roundup of reviews from the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Chicago Sun-Times, PC Mag, Telegraph, and TIME .

Technorati Tags: ipad, apple