Sometimes it's a problem pushing the envelope - seems that the BYU Library initiative to use Kindles instead of getting books via ILL has been suspended after "some buzz on library-related blogs for breaking ground in the uncertain area of lending books on the Kindle."
"We are playing it safe," Layton said. "Two people here said we have verbal permission. But if we don't have it in writing, that's a different thing. We don't want to do anything that Amazon doesn't completely agree with."Everyone in the comments seems to be in favour of the initiative. Hope this forces Amazon to acquiesce!
Dartmouth, one of the first two (I think) libraries to sign on as beta partners with Serials Solutions' Summon Unified Discovery Service, has opened the beta up to its entire campus community. And you can search it too! You'll find a prominent link on their home page, or you can jump directly to the search page. A brief overview of the product for their users is also available.
So whattya think? About the speed, relevancy, accuracy, or in general? The University of Calgary is also a beta partner with this product; we've recently had our MARC records loaded, and are awaiting the inclusion of metadata from some of our other local collections before opening it more widely to our clientele.

The New York Times is reporting that Google plans to begin selling ebooks by the end of 2009. "In discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend, Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device."
TeleRead has a couple of posts around this announcement as well.
I'm betting it will be USA-only.
I finally got around to reading a couple of posts I'd squirreled away, and they turn out to be somewhat related.
Brian Mathews posts about 5 next-gen library catalogs and 5 students: their initial impressions. Important to us here at the UofC as we continue to beta test Summon. While admittedly not scientific, there are definitely things to note here.
And Sol at the Federated Search Blog posts What do you call that thing? Wondering if there's a solid mostly-universal term for those "things" we search that hold content. Research Databases? Sources? E-resources? Doesn't seem to be a consensus out there, unfortunately. Last summer during a site redesign I changed the tab on our library site from "Research Databases" to "Online Resources", and the single biggest complaint over the first month was that folks couldn't find what they were looking for because the new terminology somehow didn't mean what the old terminology meant to them.
Yesterday I blogged about the new Shortcovers service.
Last night I read a short story and have the following observations. I like how I can browse the website from my desktop, bookmark titles, and then have them appear on my iPhone for reading. (I can also, of course, browse and bookmark from the iPhone).
I don't like having to scroll down to read, then click next page, then repeat. I'd much prefer something that would present a screen at a time, and advance each time I tap the screen, or something that would scroll the text at a pre-set speed or something.
And finally, I really hate the overlay of bars at the top and bottom of the screen - those just have to be hidden while I'm reading. Still got some potential here though, so far so good.

I've only just started to play with it myself, but early today, Shortcovers.com opened for business. Run by Canada's Chapters/Indigo book chain (though oddly not mentioned on their homepage), Shortcovers is the first solution for buying e-books on the go outside of the Kindle platform. They have apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry, with Android in the works, and you can also read on their website.
The idea is to be able to buy either entire books to download to your mobile device, or in some cases a chapter at a time. The first chapter is always free.
You can upload content as well, though I haven't explored how that all works, or whether you can set the content to be free or charge whatever you want.
I'm puzzled as to why books seem more expensive through Shortcovers than through traditional channels. Outliers, for example, costs $17.04 on the Chapters/Indigo website, but $19.09 on Shortcovers (though only $15.50 on Amazon.ca, sigh). I guess I'm paying for the convenience of getting it right now (though I don't know how long the book would take to download, or if I'd want to pay for it to arrive over the air as opposed to wifi). I dunno, I think I would've launched with some sort of deep discount, or subscription plan maybe.
They have options for subscribing to all content by a certain author, and lots of social networking sharing options, so it seems as though they're trying hard to build community around the product. They've got a blog, and they tweet; doing all the Web 2.0 stuff right, but I don't like that overpricing...
My virtual buddy MCM has just posted his thoughts from the small author's point of view.
So I'll keep playing with it and let you know if it really grabs me. I sure like the idea though! If you're in the States, and if they're charging Cdn dollars, as it appears, it's gonna be a great deal for you folks in the US, so try it out from there, eh!
Not sure yet what, if any, implications there are for libraries yet, but if the booksellers can adapt to the mobile platform, surely we can too! Maybe offer a digitization program where the content is optimized for mobile devices on the fly?
Anyhoo, check it out.
Earlier this week, Safari Books Online launched a mobile interface to their product at http://m.safaribooksonline.com. The University of Calgary has an institutional subscription to Safari Books Online via ProQuest, and I naively assumed after we threw this new URL into our ezproxy configuration I'd be able to access the new site via my iPhone.
Nope. When I get to the site I'm asked for a login and password. I contacted ProQuest Technical Support and was told "The Mobile version of Safari Online is not available with an institutional account. I can send this on to the Product Manager as an enhancement but would not be able to give a time frame for when or even if it would be implemented." Sigh.
So I've also sent a request to platformfeedback@proquest.com and to safarimobile@safaribooksonline.com. This is something I'd like to use to promote the innovation that's going on in the library world to our techie users. In fact I'm already on the agenda to present about this to our campus Information Technology Advisory Group (see naively assumed above). Don't you think ProQuest would like to be able to advertise they're the first to offer a major database specifically formatted for the mobile platform? Or maybe they're not - are you aware of any others?
C'mon ProQuest, take the lead on this one! (my presentation is scheduled for April 17th - can you let me know before then please?)
Lifehacker points to a service called Wowbrary, which,
regularly informs you by email and/or RSS about your chosen publicIt's free to the end user, but not to libraries, which must sponsor Wowbrary. Only available in the US, and geared towards Public Libraries. Are any of you using this?
library’s newest books, movies and music. We make it easy for you to
browse through the latest additions and place a hold on a new title.
This is a free user service supported by grants, donations,
sponsorships, book sale commissions and volunteers.