This month I’ve got just a few quick items to share. First, I’ll ]]> Each month I try and sort out some of the more accessible and interesting entries on the SEPW to share with readers interested in issues such as library digitization, open access, and electronic journals. You can check out my previous entries here.

This month I’ve got just a few quick items to share. First, I’ll draw attention to “Creating the Mark Twain Project Online” by Lisa Schiff. The MTPO is a neat little project I had never before heard of. Its aim is to make free to the public a wealth of the great author’s personal documents and correspondence by “providing access to more than 2,300 complete texts, over 28,000 records of other known items, and almost 100 facsimile images.”

The case study linked to above isn’t about Mark Twain itself, though it will provide an interesting bit of reading for those interested in digital archiving and techie site creation stuff. Readers interested in getting into the Twain papers made available by this ambitious project should check out the Mark Twain Project directly.

“E-Books or Print Books, ‘Big Deals’ or Local Selections: What Gets More Use?” by Robert Slater provides a nice comparison of the changing ways in which people access books. Researchers at Oakland University tracked several hundred books and compared the usage of ebooks versus that of their deadtree counterparts.

Right off the bat, it is interesting to note that

Similar comparisons of print and electronic book usage have shown that overall electronic book usage is comparable to print book circulations. However, some specific subject areas do tend to be used more in one format than the other. Over time, there has been a trend towards e-books receiving more use than their print counterparts.

It probably won’t come as a surprise that humanities subjects such as linguistics and history tend to get more paper usage while the math and science see higher ebook numbers. The researchers also determined that locally selected ebook collections (by, say, librarians or a department) see much more popularity than those that were offered through “consortially selected collections.” The best news of all, however, is that scholarly ebook usage remains on the rise, and is perhaps accelerating.

Finally, interested in seeing just how important and far-reaching systems such as Google Book Search have become? Check out this Google Book Search Bibliography.

And here are a few quick links that aren’t free to access but may be of interest to some readers:

• “Unless Otherwise Indicated: A Survey of Copyright Statements on Digital Library Collections” by Melanie Schlosser
• “Describing Digital Objects: A Tale of Compromise” by Jessica Branco Colati, Robin Dean, & Keith Maull
• “The National E-Books Observatory Project: Examining Student Behaviors and Usage” by Lorraine Estelle & Hazel Woodward

Copyright law is dastardly business, with more nickel-and-diming and squabbling over percentages than most people probably gather. The music and film industries have gone batshit with copyright law since the rise of the internet, as evidenced by all the tricky take down notices and bogus fair use violation actions taken against ]]>

Copyright law is dastardly business, with more nickel-and-diming and squabbling over percentages than most people probably gather. The music and film industries have gone batshit with copyright law since the rise of the internet, as evidenced by all the tricky take down notices and bogus fair use violation actions taken against YouTubers and bloggers every day.

Imagine if everyone who contributed to the ingredients of a can of soup had a different stake in the overall profit of the can, then on top of that, the percentages paid out to the pea farmers and noodle makers changed depending on what side of the ocean the soup was purchased on. Same farmer; same soup. Once the soup gets old, and the farmers are dead no one can really claim the money anymore (unless they stick a new label on it and add a dash of salt). Books, more so than canned goods, have a tremendous shelf life.

I do not have Disney's permission to post this image.

Like with the music industry, the publishing industry is going crazy on trying to tighten up their copyright protections as they march timidly and reluctantly into a digital model. Also like the music industry, their main purpose of copyright is to retain as much money as possible for themselves at the expense (literally, and understandably) of their customers. The knee jerk reaction to this statement is “but the artists deserve to be paid for their work.” And indeed they do.

Authors make money from royalties on sales, say 5-10% per book for the average author. They get a (usually pretty meager unless your Stephen King) advance, and don’t collect on the royalties until their advance is covered. Once the book makes the transition from hardcover run to paperback, the author’s earnings drop significantly. (The Dear Author blog has a nice breakdown of how this works in a digital setting.) It’s an undertandable reaction to think that the rise of ebooks might cut into print runs and hurt authors, especially when companies like Amazon take a ridiculously large cut of the pie. But as we’ve mentioned so often on this site (and pulled straight from like minded thinkers) free ebooks and even internet piracy can help authors, perhaps more than it can hurt them. Many people, myself included, buy the stuff they want, and download a whole lot of stuff they wouldn’t otherwise pay for. I’ve discovered a lot of good artists, authors, musicians, and movies this way, and many of them have made money from me since. Expanded exposure can be invaluable, especially when compared to a $.32 (yes, cent) cut of a paperback novel.

This is why I find ebook DRM so silly. I want to own my books, I want to draw in their margins (or save my note files to them, whatever), to share them with my friends. Buying a DRMed book is like buying a book that self destructs if you take it off of your bookshelf and lend it to a friend. Read it and then it more or less has to sit out of sight. Books are meant to be shared. And while I’m on the subject, if authors are really that concerned about ebooks killing their royalties, why didn’t the Authors’ Guild sic their attack dogs on all those damn libraries that dare share books with the public for free?

This photograph of this girl's cool carp tattoo is licensed under Creative Commons.

Books are more important than just means of profits for authors and publishers. They are important to readers, they mean something to us. As does all art. This is why fair use is important for books as well as other media. Art remains an evolving concept, where each generation builds off (or builds against) what came before. There is, of course, a fine line between homage and plagiarism, and that’s were Creative Commons is stepping in and trying to evolve our notions of copyright and sharing.

A Creative Commons license allows an author or artist to decide the parameters of how his or her work is shared. Will you allow your song to be remixed, your book to be copied for free in writing classes, will you modify your license to require a percentage of the profits from anything that borrows from your work? It is flexible, and it makes sense, and it leaves the power in the hands of those who created the work, rather than those with the most lawyers on retainer.

Their mission is simple and straightforward:

Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

We provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

[emphasis theirs]

In a mere 8 years they’ve already licensed over 120 million works, under the four main headings of Attribution, Share-alike, Noncommercial, and No Derivative Works. The license names are rather self explanatory, but you can read more here. This is building the internet into a broadening public domain, where art as business and art as a social right can coexist peacefully and without passwords. It’s not just for small fries either, with heavy hitters like Nine Inch Nails and writers such as Cory Doctorow seeing much success with these licenses. And it’s best for readers and users, who have un- or lightly fettered access to a wide variety of culture and art on the internet (not unlike visiting a library rather than a Borders).

This was the part where I was going to break down the basic differences between Creative Commons and copyright, but I then I came across this excellent example, so in the interest of sharing work, I’m going to point you directly their show at the end of this paragraph. Unfortunately, I can’t embed it (it’s a flickr slideshow-book-thing), but I’m going to have the link open in this window in order for the show to get full attention.

Watch the slideshow here: A Tale of Two Fish by Yiibu.

The second half of our interview swap (at least part 1 of the second half–we have a lot to say) with online magazine Fringe is now available on the  Fringe blog. Thanks a lot to Lizzie Stark and the others at Fringe for doing the interviews and asking some great questions.  Check out their questions and our responses ]]>  

The second half of our interview swap (at least part 1 of the second half–we have a lot to say) with online magazine Fringe is now available on the  Fringe blog. Thanks a lot to Lizzie Stark and the others at Fringe for doing the interviews and asking some great questions.  Check out their questions and our responses here.

Lately I’ve been poking around on a great directory called the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (located here), which compiles articles about ebooks published in scholarly journals. In general, scholarly journals don’t get very much love from non-scholars. The articles can be pretty dry, and the gists sometimes tough to parse without a ]]>

Lately I’ve been poking around on a great directory called the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog (located here), which compiles articles about ebooks published in scholarly journals. In general, scholarly journals don’t get very much love from non-scholars. The articles can be pretty dry, and the gists sometimes tough to parse without a filter. However there’s always a lot of interesting reading provided from some very smart people in them, and they’re usually the first places to learn of new trends, studies, etc., before they are disseminated through newsprint and the internet. 

I’ve filtered out some of the most intriguing and provided brief abstracts for them below, and I’ve only included articles that can be accessed for free in this post.

Though some articles linked to by the SEPW are gold Open Access (OA), many aren’t. Most of the people who read these sort of things have subscriptions through scholarly sources, but it’s still frustrating there isn’t a better (read: affordable) way for laypersons to access them. Some journals offer unhindered access to schools and laypersons alike through gold OA, but since scholarly journals aren’t exactly lucrative, most have to remain green OA (which scholar decided to use two “g” words to qualify OA I don’t know) to keep afloat. Makes me wish for the good old days of college library access so I could read any I wished. I’m still waiting for a truly great electronic library to spring up at some point and make this point moot.

Speaking of libraries, this first entry describes how the many different functions of libraries can be enhanced through expanded mobile access. Not directly about ebooks, though they obviously play an important role as libraries become higher tech, the author presents some nice points about how libraries can efficient evolve to meet the changing needs of library users.

People use a growing array of services to manage their digital lives. Although some are local to their devices, a growing number are on the network. Think, in different contexts, of Zotero, Delicious or Connotea; Flickr, YouTube or Slideshare; Google Docs, Scribd or Zoho. Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, as well as others, will continue to aim to provide a framework within which people manage their resources, communicate, and build their online identity. Two thoughts come to mind. One I have already mentioned: some of these resources may be important to the institution, which may want to provide backup services to ensure their continuity. The other is increasingly interesting: how do library resources play in these environments? Can I link to individual catalog records, journal articles or e–books? Can I mix library resources with those in my personal collections? Are library resources RSS–ified?

Read the whole article (only a few pages) here: Always on: Libraries in a world of permanent connectivity by Lorcan Dempsey.

Next, an interesting piece calling for the digitizing of all documentation by expanding programs such as Google Book Search to encompass film negatives, manuscripts, physical art, etc. The article provides a nice breakdown of how the current digitizing efforts work, and some suggestions for how it can help preserve information in danger of being lost. I found the techniques for cleaning up images and digitization most interesting. It’s really great to see effort like this being made to prevent a modern disaster occurring á la the Library of Alexandria.

Read it all here: Toward Digitizing All Forms of Documentation by George V. Landon.

Finally, here’s more of an opinion piece that bounces around a bit, but mostly focuses on some interesting comments about online journals. Most of this is done by pulling various quotations together like that which set this up:

The message here is that, for some nations at least, online journals may be the only realistic way to publish peer-reviewed articles. For other nations and fields, print may already be a less-satisfactory alternative.

You can find the many viewpoints complied in the bottom half of the article. In the first half, the author brings up nice interesting points about open access to information online, something I wish more people would find concern with:

Gratuitous statements by OA advocates to undermine topical-repository mandates and suggest that institutional repositories don’t cost anything to establish and operate don’t get us there—but help assure that we never will get there. There doesn’t seem much question that IRs are in trouble; that doesn’t bode well for green OA as the only or even the primary answer. And nonsense like the reintroduced Conyers bill threatens to undermine what progress has been made on what should be the low-hanging fruit for repositories: research funded by the Federal government, which—if it was carried out in Federal labs—would automatically be in the public domain.

The whole page: Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large.

And, if you’re into stats, here’s a nice state-of-the-industry piece about OA ejournals: LIS Open Acess E-Journal: Where Are You? By Izabella Taler.

According to rumors stemming from Amazon’s design headquarters, the third version of the Kindle will be available as early as August of this year. It will reportedly have a touchscreen, backlight, full color display, and a host of new features and functions.

The art-deco color electronic paper display will surely appeal to a broad audience.

According to rumors stemming from Amazon’s design headquarters, the third version of the Kindle will be available as early as August of this year. It will reportedly have a touchscreen, backlight, full color display, and a host of new features and functions.

Purportedly among the “experimental” functions of Kindle 3 is Amazon’s new “Guess What Book I’m Thinking Of,” with which users will be able to find books they can’t remember the title of by giving Kindle “clues” such as “author probably Russian” and “think the grandmother dies.”

Reading will be easier and more pleasurable than ever, as Kindle 3 has 1024 shades of color, and will come with special Kindle contact lenses, which will display the text of books even while the user’s eyes are closed.

In a controversial step to further lock users into Amazon’s Kindle Store, if the user attempts to load a non-Kindle-proprietary book onto the device, it will emit a high frequency whine until the offending book is deleted, at which point the user receives a light fingertip shock.

Luckily for Kindle 2 buyers, a steep “loyalty discount” will be available. If you trade in a Kindle or Kindle 2, the new device will cost you only half as much; if you sign a special contract forfeiting your right to purchase non-Amazon books in paper form as well as digital, the Kindle 3 will be free, and you’ll get 10 free ebooks as well.

Frankly, this is exciting news for all fans of ereading. The next-generation functionality of such a device could revolutionize the way people read books, even while the restrictive content options derevolutionize the books they are allowed to read.

Of most concern to traditionalists, however, is the video playback feature, which will automatically connect to film versions of books through Amazon’s Video on Demand store, and allow users to watch video segments of particularly long or boring passages.

On the horizon, according to the leaked emails, is a social networking feature called Kindle Fireside. The goal of Fireside is to allow users to chat about books while reading them, which Amazon hopes will replace book groups and, eventually, school. The system will also keep advanced data on “anonymous” user statistics, including books read, reading speed, sharing trends, etc.

Lastly, Kindle 3 will be able to remotely scan readers’ brainwaves, in order to harvest rich customer data for Amazon’s website. You’ll soon be able to see not only whether readers liked a certain book, but which parts of their brain they use when they read it (this feature will be disabled when the user reads Jodi Picoult or Nicholas Sparks). This is reportedly also intended to help Amazon fine-tune their marketing and content acquisitions programs.

Sadly, public libraries are still not compatible with Kindle 3. It includes a special GPS chip which, if taken into a used bookstore or library, will make the Kindle 3 explode.

[via AF 4-1]

Today is evidently link day, so here are some links about it: