Category: Books
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Google and AAP settle
Read all about Google's "groundbreaking agreement with authors and publishers." "Three years ago, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and a handful of authors and publishers filed a class action lawsuit against Google Book Search.Today we're delighted to announce that we've settled that lawsuit and will be working closely with these industry partners…
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Gale’s new eCatalog
Received an email about Gale’s new eCatalog which I almost deleted, but then decided to take a look at. I thought they did a good job in the email selling it as a green alternative, but was curious to see how useful it’d prove. It’s actually pretty nifty – you can link to a specific…
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Shrinking Books, Shrinking Fair Use
Peter Brantley has a really thought-provoking piece on his blog entitled Shrinking Books, Shrinking Fair Use, in which he wonders (via Scott Walker at UIUC) how Fair Use (and Fair Dealing) will work when content routinely becomes unbundled. The rule of thumb for a book, for instance, is that you can use 10% or a…
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Google Book Search Bibliography
Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has published version 2 of his Google Book Search Bibliography. From the introduction: “This bibliography presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Book Search. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Book Search and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. Where…
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Wikitannica
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the Encyclopaedia Britannica is “about to launch a new initiative” that will allow users to participate in the EB Wikipedia-style. From the press release, “A complete redesign, editing tools, and incentive programs will give expert contributors and users the means to take part in the further improvement of…
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Library Use of E-books, 2008-09 Edition
From their press release: Primary Research Group has published Library Use of E-books, 2008-09 Edition, (isbn 1-57440-101-7). Data in the report is based on a survey of 75 academic, public and special libraries. Librarians detail their plans on how they plan to develop their e-book collections, what they think of e-book readers and software, and…
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SUNY Press allows you to choose – $75 or $20
Sue Polanka at No Shelf Required notes that SUNY Press is now allowing customers to download frontlist titles as PDFs for only $20. Check her link for more details.
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What’s up with Amazon’s Search Inside this Book?!?
Search Engine Showdown posts that Amazon appears to be dropping the Search Inside this Book feature! And the end of the post they note the apparent partial reappearance of the links, but when I went in today, while I could find plenty of logos on the book covers, I couldn’t search inside books that I…
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Some Thoughts on the Future of Print
I just finished reading Print is Dead: Books in our Digital Age, by Jeff Gomez. It wasn’t a terribly well-argued book, IMHO (Walt Crawford has taught me to be very wary of large numbers of global statements), but damn did it spark a copious number of questions and ideas for me. The basic premise of…