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HathiTrust Launching Full-Text Library of Books
by Barbara Quint
Posted On October 22, 2009
With all the controversy still swirling around Google Books and its post-settlement offerings, an alternative route to the millions of digitized books and journals supplied by leading Google Book Search library partners has arrived. The HathiTrust (www.hathitrust.org) is a collaboration of 25 research libraries already participating in Google Book Search to produce a shared digital repository for preservation and access to a curated collection. By mid-November, the HathiTrust Digital Library will have a full-featured, full-text search service for 4.3-5 million items. The searches will retrieve bibliographic citations and page references, including those for in-copyright books. Content will extend beyond the digitized copies of books returned to early library partners by Google. HathiTrust is pushing to acquire other digitized special collections from its members, as well as making arrangements for opening access to university press books.
Posted by Roy Tennant on August 25, 2009As seen in Engadget today, and reported by Macworld, Sony is moving to integrate access to library purchased ebook licenses. From Macworld:
On Tuesday Sony also announced the launch of Library Finder, a new feature of the eBook Store developed in cooperation with OverDrive, which helps users locate e-book content at their local library. Public libraries working in cooperation with OverDrive can offer e-books to be checked out onto a Sony Reader using a valid library card; the library sets the duration of the loan. When the checkout period expires, the book simply expires as well, so users aren't dinged late fees.For an example of the range of content available to Sony ...Read More
Basics for Beginners: Getting Started with Social Media Tools
This online seminar was recorded and can be accessed by clicking on the link to the right, along with the PowerPoint presentation. Please post additional questions to the TechSoup Community forums for a special day-long online asynchronous (not live) event.
via cc.readytalk.com
Newspaper Nostalgia « Collections 2.0.
Newspaper Nostalgia
Posted by: Steven Harris | June 26, 2009When I was a kid we had a Sunday morning family ritual. After breakfast we would all take coffee or tea and adjourn to our favorite spot, 2 adults and 4 kids lounging around the livingroom and kitchen with sections of our Sunday newspaper and a hot beverage. (Yes, we drank coffee and tea from a young age.
I’m sure it stunted my growth. I’m only 6 feet tall.) My brother was usually on his belly on the livingroom floor. I was lounged on the couch with my legs draped over the arm. Mom and dad in chairs. Sisters here and there. Sometimes the dogs would have a lick or two of coffee from a cup sitting on the floor. It was a good time. And we learned about the world, as reflected in our local paper, which wasn’t all that good, mind you.
Online catalogue of books is the library that never closes | Technology | The Guardian.
The library that never closes
The Open Library hopes to unite the net and the printed word by creating a web page for every book.by Bobbie Johnson, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 July 2009 18.15 BST, Article history
The internet's relationship with books, it is fair to say, has been a tumultuous one. Ever since the digital revolution started changing our relationship with information, the printed word – one of the most successful technologies in history – has been on the back foot.
Amazon has altered the face of the industry twice – first in the 1990s by changing the way books are sold and then, more recently, the way they are consumed, with its Kindle electronic book reader. Google has caused its own earthquake in the print world with its Book Search scheme – a plan to suck the text of millions of books into its search engine that has raised the hackles of publishers and authors alike.
Talk to workers at either of these technology companies and there is a feeling of technological inevitability: that the printed book is a stepping stone in the evolution of information, and now lies ready to be devoured by its hi-tech successors. Not everybody thinks that way, however, including the Open Library – a project with an audacious goal that it hopes can bring the web and books closer together.
First look: Firefox 3.5 released, ready to "upgrade" the Web - Ars Technica
First look: Firefox 3.5 released, ready to "upgrade" the Web
Mozilla has officially released Firefox 3.5, the next major version of its popular open source Web browser. Ars takes a close look at the new version and evaluates its enhancements. Support for HTML 5 video and other important emerging Web standards make this one of the most significant Firefox releases ever.
By Ryan Paul | Last updated June 30, 2009 10:20 AM CT.
Resource of the Week — Fast Facts Anyone? A Brief Users Guide to Wolfram|Alpha
By Gary Price, Chief/Founding Editor
As of 10:34 PM EDST on Friday, May 15, 2009 the site is live.Since Wolfram|Alpha, (W|A) — a new fact/answer engine (the company calls it a “computational knowledge engine”) — was preparing to go live over the weekend of May 15-17, we decided to give it a try. Thanks to the Wolfram team for the the early access. Here’s our brief report and hopefully some other useful information for future W|A users.
With E-Readers Comes Wider Piracy of Books - NYTimes.com.
Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web
By MOTOKO RICH, Published: May 11, 2009Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction writer, was perusing the Web site Scribd last month when she came across digital copies of some books that seemed quite familiar to her. No wonder. She wrote them, including a free-for-the-taking copy of one of her most enduring novels, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”
Neither Ms. Le Guin nor her publisher had authorized the electronic editions. To Ms. Le Guin, it was a rude introduction to the quietly proliferating problem of digital piracy in the literary world. “I thought, who do these people think they are?” Ms. Le Guin said. “Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?”
This would all sound familiar to filmmakers and musicians who fought similar battles — with varying degrees of success — over the last decade. But to authors and their publishers in the age of Kindle, it’s new and frightening territory.
Google Killer Killed - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com.
March 31, 2009, 2:31 pm
Google Killer Killed
By Miguel Helft
When Jimmy Wales, the driving force behind the hugely successful Wikipedia, rolled out Wikia Search, a community-built search engine, 15 months ago, he said that his goal was to build a “Google-quality search engine” over time.
On Tuesday, Mr. Wales announced on his blog that he was pulling the plug on Wikia Search.
The end of Wikia Search is only the latest reminder that building a search engine, let alone a Google killer, is far from easy. Dozens of companies have tried to offer alternatives to the big search engines but none has managed to attract a large audience. Indeed, over the years Google has increased the size of its user base, sometimes at the expense of the other large search engines like Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.com, by a far larger amount than the total audience amassed by any search start-up.
Microsoft closing the book on Encarta | Beyond Binary - CNET News.
March 30, 2009 1:10 PM PDT
Microsoft closing the book on Encarta
by Ina Fried
Microsoft has quietly confirmed that it is getting out of the encyclopedia business, ending its long-standing Encarta product.
As noted by Ars Technica, the software maker says it will discontinue all its online Encarta products by October, with the exception of Encarta Japan, which will run through the end of the year. It will also stop selling Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium, paid software products that included the online encyclopedia.
In a posting on its Web site, Microsoft said that the move reflected the change in the way people use reference material. It didn't mention Wikipedia by name, but I think we all know the biggest change to encyclopedias to come around in recent memory.
"Encarta has been a popular product around the world for many years," Microsoft said. "However, the category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed. People today seek and consume information in considerably different ways than in years past. As part of Microsoft's goal to deliver the most effective and engaging resources for today's consumer, it has made the decision to exit the Encarta business."
Search EFF's FOIA Documents
EFF's Freedom Of Information Act project has gathered thousands of pages of material. These shed light on controversial government surveillance programs, lobbying practices, and intellectual property initiatives.
You can use the EFF FOIA Search Engine below to search and examine the documents' contents.
If you find something you think is significant, send us an email: foia@eff.org. The search engine is still in 'beta testing,' so results may not yet be complete or error-free.
Is it the end of the desktop PC? | Technology | Reuters.
Is it the end of the desktop PC?
By Kelvin Soh TAIPEI (Reuters)
Wed Jan 7, 2009 1:20pm ESTThe age of the desktop PC appears to be over as its more portable cousin, the laptop, surges ahead with consumers clamoring for light-weight computers in funky designs for use at home, in cafes and on the train to work.
Not a single desktop model figured on online shopping portal Amazon.com's top 10 selling PC and hardware list the weekend before Christmas, while seven laptop models made the list.
It was yet another sign that the former dominance of desktop PCs is fading as wireless advances and lower prices make laptops the preferred option for millions of PC users around the world.
About MAKE
MAKE Magazine brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. MAKE is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. We celebrate your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.
Published as a quarterly since February 2005, MAKE is a hybrid magazine/book (known as a mook in Japan). MAKE comes from O'Reilly, the Publisher of Record for geeks and tech enthusiasts everywhere. It follows in line with the Hacks books and Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks, but it takes a highly visual and personal approach.
Our premiere issue showed you how to get involved in kite aerial photography — taking pictures with a camera suspended from a kite — and how to build an inexpensive rig to hold your camera. We've also shown you how to make a video camera stabilizer, a do-it-yourself alternative to an expensive Steadicam® and how to create a five-in-one cable adapter for connecting to networks. Some projects are strictly for fun, others are very practical, and still others are absolutely astounding.
Is There Life in Second Life?
Matteo Varvello†⋆, Fabio Picconi†, Christophe Diot†, Ernst Biersack⋆
† Thomson, Paris, France
⋆ Institut Eurecom, Sophia-Antopolis, France
{matteo.varvello,fabio.picconi,christophe.diot}@thomson.net, ernst.biersack@eurecom.fr
ABSTRACT
Social virtual worlds such as Second Life are digital representations of the real world where human-controlled avatars evolve and interact through social activities. Understanding the characteristics of existing virtual worlds can be extremely valuable to optimize their design. In this work we perform the first extensive analysis of Second Life. We have crawled around 13000 Regions over one month, and gathered information about objects, avatars, and server state. The analysis of our traces shows several surprising results. We find that 30% of the Regions are never visited during a six day period, whereas only few Regions have large peak populations. Moreover, the vast majority of Regions are static, i.e., objects are seldom created or destroyed. Interestingly, avatars interact similarly to humans in real life, gathering in small groups, visiting the same places and meeting the same avatars again, showing a highly predictable behavior. Based on these observations, we discuss several techniques to enhance Second Life or other similar social virtual worlds.
...
Also found online via Goggle Scholar at http://www.thlab.net/tr/CR-PRL-2008-07-0002.pdf
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Paul Auster: The Book of Illusions: A Novel
Going to get a copy.. loved his "New York Trilogy"... (***)
J. K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
Order a copy here.. well, I've pre-ordered a copy.. final book, hard to believe this series and Harry Potter are coming to an end.. (*****)
Neil Gaiman: Fragile Things
Just started this one.. dreams and stories, ah ha...
Dean Koontz: The Husband
New Koontz thriller.. just got a copy from the library to have a "summer read"...
Bill Clinton: My Life
The book of the year, from hype to Presidential lives and politics and yes, scandals.. a must-read... (****)
Beth L. Bailey: From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America
Teenagers now and then.. worth a look... (***)
Shelley E. Taylor: The Tending Instinct: Women, Men, and the Biology of Relationships
Paper version of an intriguing book on nurturing, "Taylor, a psychology professor at UCLA, makes the claim that 'we are fundamentally a nurturant species,' biologically programmed to 'tend and befriend' one another." -Publisher's Weekly (***)
Ron Smith: The Ballpark Book : A journey Through the Fields of Baseball Magic
Recommended summer America's game reading.. see the blog item on this as well for more details... (*****)
David B. Wexler: When Good Men Behave Badly: Change Your Behavior, Change Your Relationship
"A book written especially for men that provides real tools for men who have trouble dealing with the emotional demands of relationships and those affected by them. Men learn how to curb destructive behaviors and build deep, meaningful relationships. Refers to recent research about the male brain." -from the publisher... (****)
John Gray: Mars and Venus on a Date: A Guide for Navigating the 5 Stages of Dating to Create a Loving & Lasting Relationship
Yes, old.. but the title caught my eye.. so, dating to loving and lasting relationship.. maybe something here, maybe.. just starting to read it now, from the library...
Helen Fisher: Why We Love
Good book review in NY Times.. about her research into romantic love, chemistry, and the physical side of emotional responses to love and emotions... (***)
Michael Crichton: Prey
Nanotechnology runs wild, relationship of programmer husband and scientist wife explored, good reading so far.. (****)
Neal Stephenson: Cryptonomicon
A breathtaking tour de force, and Neal Stephenson's most accomplished and affecting work to date, CRYPTONOMICON is profound and prophetic, hypnotic and hyper-driven, as it leaps forward and back between World War II and the World Wide Web, hinting all the while at a dark day-after-tomorrow. It is a work of great art, thought, and creative daring... --Amazon description (*****)
Ruth Reichl: Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
Ruth Reichl's first book, the autobiographical Tender at the Bone, disarmed readers with its droll candor. The former restaurant critic of The New York Times and editor in chief of Gourmet magazine told great stories about growing up and loving food. [This book] begins where the first book ended, tracing Reichl's evolution from chef to food writer while detailing the dissolution of her first marriage, the start of a second, and motherhood at the age of 40. The book also limns a sensual journey, Reichl's awakening to the pleasures of sex as well as food, and also to love. --from Amazon.com review (***)
Ruth Reichl: Tender at the Bone : Growing Up at the Table
Recommended by a friend, former NY Times restaurant critic, memoir.. a new appreciation of the pleasures of the table... (****)
Judith Sills: The Comfort Trap (or, What If You're Riding a Dead Horse?)
Recommended by a friend, sounds interesting, and some excerpts online at her Web site, see here...
Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife
The love story of Henry and Claire whose lives are punctuated by Henry's disappearance to different points in time--sometimes even back to visit Claire as a young woman. When Henry meets Claire, he is twenty-eight, and she is twenty. He's a hip, handsome librarian; she is an art student with Botticelli hair. Henry has never met Claire before; Claire has known Henry since she was six...
Tim O'Brien: July, July: A Novel
"At the 30th reunion of Minnesota's Darton Hall College class of 1969, ten old friends join their classmates for a July weekend of dancing, drinking, flirting, reminiscing, regretting. ...[jacket copy] Good so far, from National Book Award winning writer of "Going After Cacciato"... (****)
Ethan Watters: Urban Tribes: A Generation Redefines Friendship, Family, and Commitment
Interesting take on social groups, "urban tribes," friends who are not married banding together.. see also the post on the blog on this topic... (***)
Susanna Moore: In the Cut: A Novel
Meg Ryan's new movie role.. erotic thriller of NY teacher of writing and murders and some great characters.. her writing is gemlike and a pleasure.. recommended... (*****)
Nancy Pearl: Book Lust
Librarian from Seattle, infamous now for the "action figure" controversy, has a book out. I'll have to take a look....
Jonathan Franzen: How to Be Alone: Essays
From Amazon: " 'Why Bother' is an essay arguing that our current cultural milieu of speed, shallowness, hedonism, and information-without-wisdom doesn't even allow us to see that we are losing our relationship to solitude." Recommended...
Eric Darton: Divided We Stand: A Biography of New York City's World Trade Center
And this was the second book I read, trying to make some small sense of the changes that happened, and what that *place* was, really.. highly recommended... (*****)
Angus Kress Gillespie: Twin Towers: The Life of New York City's World Trade Center
This was the first book I read after the attacks, and still one of the most memorable. It was the only thing in our Library's collection at the time about the World Trade Center.. re-issued after 9/11/01.. (*****)
Richard Schickel: Woody Allen: A Life in Film
Just out, Sept 5, 2003.. more from the interview with Schickel, that wasn't included in the documentary.. see the article in the Film category on the documentary as shown on TCM... (*****)
Cecile Lamalle: Glutton for Punishment
A culinary mystery.. don't ask me why, but I'm reading these as I find them.. fun, and food a part of the mystery tale.. a great opening epigraph: "We think our castles of sand are the ramparts of the universe." --John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (****)
Cathi Hanauer: The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth About Sex,
Title of the year award? Not reading it yet, comes out in Nov, 2003.. a sleeper book to watch for!
Gina Cascone: Life al Dente: Laughter and Love in an Italian-American Family
Earlier book was "Pagan Babies," and this one sounds just as good.. ba-da bing! the reviews are saying good things, and before there was the Sopranos, there was Gina writing about Italian-Americans in New Jersey... (****)
Richard K. Morgan: Altered Carbon
New hot S-F title to check out.. Joel Silver ("The Matrix") has purchased the film rights..
Jasper Fforde: The Eyre Affair
Meet Thursday Next, hard-boiled detective, in a comic time travel tale c. England 1985.. just getting into it.. first in a series, third one just out in UK.. (****)
Neil Gaiman: American Gods: A Novel
Really fine mythological American tale.. captivating from page 1.. Reading it slow, which is a good sign.. (*****)
David Schickler: Kissing in Manhattan
Stories, intertwined, from a Manhattan apartment building.. "The Smoker" is great, still reading through the collection.. (****)
Chris Sherman: The Invisible Web: Uncovering Information Sources Search Engines Can't See
Re-reading this one, in prep for a forthcoming article to be published in "American Libraries".. Chris Sherman and Gary Price do a fabulous job.. (*****)
Jim Mullen: It Takes a Village Idiot : Complicating the Simple Life
Just starting this one.. saw it noted on jessamyn's site first.. as one writer noted, "Imagine 'A Year in Provence' written by Dennis Miller." So far, funny stuff.. (***)
Terence Gorski: GETTING LOVE RIGHT : LEARNING THE CHOICES OF HEALTHY INTIMACY
This is a winner.. self-help from recovery counselor, on healthy intimacy, building a healthy relationship, and learning to change.. A-plus... (*****)
Engima: Voyageur
On my wish list, hope to hear this new one soon..
Principles of Lust
Enigma: MCMXC a.D.
Since 1990, a New Age and wonderful album, song, and group..
When You Know
Original Soundtrack Serendipity: B00005OAIA
Great soundtrack from the romantic comedy film, with John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, Jeremy Piven..
Ottmar Liebert: Solo Para Ti
Great smooth jazz..
Always on Sunday
Tammany Hall NYC: Back in the Bottle
This song, and Wait for Jane, in variations, used on HBO.. amazingly talented young group, guitars and lyrics are top-notch..
As Time Goes By
Various Artists: Sleepless in Seattle
Soundtrack for "Sleepless in Seattle".. simply takes you away..
George Lucas: American Graffiti - Collector's Edition
Today, I got a library copy of this old favorite, to re-view and check out the special features.. for a couple days, it's "Rock aroun' the Clock".. (*****)
Michael Curtiz: Casablanca (1942)
"Of all the gin joints in all the world..." greatest Hollywood film, agree with Maltin on this.. (*****)
Buena Vista Home Entertainment: Lost - The Complete First Season
.. fine DVD set, probably the best set ever made.. detailed, interesting, 7 total disks.. for any fan of the show, it's a must-have item... (*****)
Buena Vista Home Entertainment: Lost - The Complete Second Season
.. eight extra hours of bonus information.. for any show fan, it's a must-have item... (*****)
ABC: Lost - The Complete Third Season
Studio: Buena Vista Home Entertainment / DVD Release Date: December 11, 2007 /ASIN: B000P6YNSE / Amazon.com Sales Rank: #11 in DVD (as of 6/4/07) (*****)
Benjamin Ross: RKO 281 - The Battle Over Citizen Kane
Making of "Citizen Kane" movie, from HBO.. watched it again last night, still great insights.. makes you want to see "Kane" again.. (****)
Howard Hawks, Christian Nyby: The Thing from Another World - 50th Anniversary Edition
50th Anniversary edition released tomorrow.. in 2001 "The Thing" was added to the National Film registry.. remember: "Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!" (*****)
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