Library Stuff

“De Gruyter, the international academic publishing house, announced today that it has signed an agreement with YBP Library Services (YBP), the academic division of Baker & Taylor, whereby nearly 10,000 titles from De Gruyter’s eBook program, e-dition, will be made available for purchase through GOBI3 (Global Online Bibliographic Information), YBP’s acquisition and collection management interface. De Gruyter publishes more than 850 new titles annually in medicine, the humanities, natural sciences and law, in addition to more than 600 journals and digital media publications.”

via PRNewswire

“To the casual observer, the e-book revolution has produced two bumper crops: smutty trilogies à la “Fifty Shades of Grey” and lawsuits. First there were the authors (as represented by the Authors Guild), who sued Google Books for digitizing their work without permission. Then the Department of Justice sued five publishers and Apple for adopting a policy known as the agency model. Finally, a trio of independent booksellers filed a class-action suit last week against the six largest book publishers and Amazon, accusing them of collaborating to create a monopoly on e-book sales and shutting small retailers out of the market. The booksellers — Fiction Addiction of Greenville, S.C., Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, N.Y., and Posman Books of New York City — are demanding the right to sell what they term “open-source and DRM-free” e-books, files that can be read on a Kindle or any other e-reading device. The publishers are accused of entering into “confidential agreements” with Amazon making this impossible.”

via Salon.com

“The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) and twelve members of the Association of Canadian University Presses/Association Des Presses Universitaires Canadiennes (ACUP/APUC), in conjunction with eBOUND Canada have partnered to promote and support the availability of Canadian scholarship in ebook format throughout Ontario’s universities. Innovative in both scope and design, the agreement reached by OCUL, ACUP/APUC and eBOUND Canada will provide access, via OCUL’s Scholars Portal Books platform to a comprehensive collection of over 3,000 ebooks published primarily between 2007-2012.  The agreement also has a roll-forward licensing provision and it is anticipated the volume will grow to a total of nearly 4,000 titles by 2014. This collection, which is comprised of ebooks, almost all of which are not currently owned by the OCUL community, will significantly expand OCUL’s ebook holdings of Canadian scholarly works. The agreement provides OCUL with perpetual ownership and local hosting rights on the Scholars Portal Books platform for all of the content provided.”

via Ontario Council of University Libraries

“The Kerala State Central Library, which happens to be one of the oldest in India, has made the big leap to the digital age by having digitized hundreds of books,  some which dates back hundreds of years. Located in Trivandrum, the capital city of the South Indian state of Kerala, the library has to its credit books, documents and letters in which physical access to them are highly restricted. The library has started their digitization drive since 2006 and has been making digital copies of its rare collection to be added to its Digital Archive. During the initial phase, 707 rare documents which includes 644 English and 63 Malayalam books comprising 3,28,268 pages were added to the Digital Archive. 480 more English books comprising a total of 1,84,321 pages were added in the second phase in 2012.”

via

UC Berkeley students in the campus’s School of Information are collaborating to enhance the efficiency of e-books in the hopes of revolutionizing the accessibility of information among researchers and the general public. According to Master of Information Management and Systems (MIMS) student Jacob Hartnell, research on e-books will improve an inefficient system that is “app-based” instead of “Web-based.” He noted that existing e-books viewed on one device are often viewed differently or cannot be viewed at all on another device.”

via The Daily Californian

“Ebook distributor Impelsys is entering the library ebook market with its new eBook Ordering System, joining OverDrive and 3M in a small but growing market. The new technology was developed with the help of the Douglas County Libraries in Colo. Ebooks in libraries is a contentious issues in the industry. Librarians are keen to stock their digital shelves economically. Most U.S. publishers cooperate by selling their ebooks to libraries through OverDrive and 3M; some of the largest, however, do not sell ebooks to libraries at all or sell them at an inflated price compared to what consumers pay.”

via Digital Book World

Like many avid readers, Peg Wenrich of Enola found a Nook under her Christmas tree last year, and was looking forward to downloading e-books of her favorite authors, like James Patterson and Danielle Steele, through the public library. She headed to Cleve J. Fredricksen Library in Camp Hill last Friday to visit the free eBooksHub for assistance in setting up her device, and was surprised to find out that new Patterson titles are among those not available on e-book lending.”

via PennLive.com

“Reading always seemed to be the most private of acts: just you and your imagination immersed in another world. But now, if you happen to be curled up with an e-reader, you’re not alone. Data is being collected about your reading habits. That information belongs to the companies that sell e-readers, like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. And they can share — or sell — that information if they like. One official at Barnes & Noble has said sharing that data with publishers might “help authors create even better books.” The data is also, of course, a brilliant marketing tool. Best-selling author Scott Turow says e-readers can collect a lot of information about their owners.”

via NPR

“A bill proposed to the Connecticut General Assembly would mandate that publishing companies sell ebooks to libraries at the same rates as they sell to consumers. The bill, introduced by Representative Brian H. Sear of the 47th district (Dem.), doesn’t mention terms, like the number of times a library would be allowed to lend a copy of an ebook before it would have to purchase it again, but one can assume the intent of the bill is to level the ebook playing field for libraries and thereby eliminate those kinds of stipulations.”

via Digital Book World

“Penguin has released a digital version of Anne Frank’s famous diary, with Penguin imprint Viking working with digital producers Beyond the Story and charitable foundation Anne Frank Fonds to develop the app for the iPad and Nook devices. It is Penguin General’s first app. Priced at £6.99, it includes the full text, as well as five missing pages discovered in 1998, together with audio extracts read by Helena Bonham Carter.”

via he Bookseller