The Distant Librarian

Putting your money where your mouth is

Last week I wrote about indie publishing innovator MCM's challenge to TV viewers in the US to watch the US premiere of his cartoon, Rollbots.  Well the results are in, and it looks like he'll be donating nearly $10,000 to the EFF!!! In addition, and perhaps even more significant, he'll be relinquishing all copyright claims on his next book, Typhoon, by releasing it under a Creative Commons 0 license, which I hadn't heard of until this challenge.

CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright-protected content to waive copyright interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright.

In contrast to CC's licenses that allow copyright holders to choose from a range of permissions while retaining their copyright, CC0 empowers yet another choice altogether – the choice to opt out of copyright and the exclusive rights it automatically grants to creators – the "no rights reserved" alternative to our licenses.

This is from a small-time guy who makes almost all his income from his writing projects.  If that's not putting your money where your mouth is, I don't know what is.  I know I'll be buying Typhoon (The Vector was excellent!)

Support a publishing innovator by watching TV

I've mentioned MCM before.  He's the author of The Pig and the Box, and a true innovator in the world of independent publishing.  I've been fascinated reading his blog posts over the past year as he explores one interesting idea after another for publishing via crowd sourcing, PDF, print, epub, donations, sponsorship, releasing work under Creative Commons, etc.

And now's he's back for season two of his excellent cartoon, Rollbots.  Rollbots has been available in Canada for about a year (viewing season), and now it's about to debut in the US on Saturdays at 8 AM on CW4Kids.

So what?  You don't watch cartoons?  But check out what will happen if you do!  If enough of you watch it, MCM will donate nearly $10,000 to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.  Go read the post, and watch the cartoon on Saturday, it's for a good cause!

BTW, this is not a sponsored post; I love the guy's work, and really enjoy the cartoon too!

Tune In September 2: The Google Book Scanning Project--Issues and Updates

Educause Live presents:
Topic: The Google Book Scanning Project—Issues and Updates
Date: September 2, 2009
Time: 1:00 p.m. EDT (12:00 p.m. CDT, 11:00 a.m. MDT, 10:00 a.m. PDT). International participants: You may wish to visit this external time-conversion website to calculate the start time in your time zone.
Duration: 1 hour

For about five years, Google has been scanning and indexing millions of volumes drawn from academic libraries and other sources worldwide. The project has been greeted with high praise but also with lawsuits. In the latter category, a judge will shortly decide whether to approve a settlement reached last year by Google and several organizations representing authors and publishers. The issues swirling around the settlement include the treatment of absent rightsholders, user privacy, and competition. This session will offer a status report on the project and explore both sides of these questions.

The event is free, but registration is required and virtual seating is limited. REGISTER NOW.

Participants:
Jonathan Band, Counsel, Library Copyright Alliance
Dan Clancy, Engineering Director, Google Book Search

Post-holiday link dump

Some miscellaneous links you may find of interest:

• Co-Browsing Tools: Guide To The Best Online Services
• Five Best Video-Sharing Sites
• Newswire Opinion: Libraries Clash with Harvard Business Publishing on Deep-Linking
• The undiscussed danger to libraries in the Google Books Settlement: A warning from library law expert Peter Hirtle
• Sony to link Readers with libraries, allow e-book borrowing
• Facebook Privacy Update: Here’s What’s Changing

iPhone apps for textbooks and another library catalogue

Yesterday brought two interesting iPhone apps to my attention.  The first is iUSask, the University of Saskatchewan iPhone application, which includes a category for searching the OPAC.  This is touted as "the first iPhone application of its kind in Canada for University Students."  I played with is a bit yesterday and unfortunately wasn't very impressed.  The campus map was VERY slow to resize, and I couldn't tell if my iPhone had frozen, or if it was still just chugging away.  Of course it's the OPAC we really care about, and while it worked just fine, it was very difficult to read; small white text on a black background (unlike what's shown in the demo on the site).  Hopefully this is just a starting point for them.

The second is CourseSmart, an application for reading textbooks on the iPhone/iPod Touch.  Here's some background on the provenance of the product: CourseSmart takes on Kindle, puts textbooks on iPhone. I signed up for a student account and looked around a bit.  You'll have the choice to buy an Online Version OR a Downloadable Version; I believe you must choose the Online Version in order to be able to access the content from the iPhone application.  They do offer a pop-up explaining most of the differences between the two options.

Interesting model in that you don't get to own the textbook; they all have a subscription model for either a 180 day subscription (most common) or a 360 day subscription.  There are a few sample textbooks available when you download the app, and I don't think I like them.  On the one hand, it's nice to be able to see the same pages you'd see in the print version, with sidebars and images and such, but on the other hand, there's so little real estate on the screen these extras make the text much harder to read.  Another minor problem is that you can't purchase textbooks from the app; you have to do that from the website.  Pretty minor as students would likely buy a few at the beginning of the year and be done with that, but still.

They've covered themselves in their TOS with what I'm dubbing "The Kindle clause":

From time to time CourseSmart may move, delete or update material on the CourseSmart Site and you agree to periodically check that your links and any Licensed Material are current and promptly remove or update any link that is broken or incorrect or any Licensed Material that has been deleted or is out of date. CourseSmart reserves the right in its sole discretion to revoke these licenses at any time for any reason, and if you are so notified, you agree to immediately remove all links to the CourseSmart Site and all Licensed Material from the Instructor Website. You agree not to not use or display the links or the Licensed Material with any other material that could be viewed as disparaging the CourseSmart eTextbook or its author or publisher or otherwise casting the CourseSmart eTextbook or its author or publisher in a negative light.

So a couple of starts, with room for improvement.  Speaking of which, I'm now off to revisit SafariBooksOnline to see if there's been any improvement there from the library POV.

RenewBot vs Library Elf

Fight!  (I looked, but couldn't find a picture of a robot fighting an elf)  I just discovered RenewBot, which will automatically renew your library books X # of days before they come due, where X is set by you.  First two months are free, then if you want to continue it'll cost $2.99 per year for each library card you run through the system.  How many days would your book have to be overdue to pay for that?!?  I was impressed at how quickly they added Calgary Public Library and the University of Calgary to their system after I requested those additions (less than 24 hours).  Turns out RenewBot also does pretty much everything my longtime fav Library Elf does too; after logging in you can see which books are checked out on that card, and which holds are still in the queue.  Here's the RenewBot privacy policy, and here's the policy for Library Elf.

Many libraries are lending Kindles

While we wait to see if BYU will reinstate their Kindle lending program, take a look at the list of libraries that are still lending them put together by iReaderreview.  I's not just a list; there's a fair bit of supporting content in the post.

Kindle, Libraries

BYU suspends Kindle program over legal concerns

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!

Ready to try Summon? Go ahead!

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.

Summon, Discovery

Brigham Young Library Tests Kindle as ILL Alternative

Gerrit van Dyk, Document Delivery Services Manager at Brigham Young University, blogs about their new initiative to loan Kindles to faculty members instead of trying to obtain new material via ILL.  You can also read a brief article about this at Library Journal.

Kindle, ILL, BYU

Simon & Schuster to Sell Digital Books on Scribd.com

I looked at Scribd.com when it first came out and dismissed it as lawyer-bait because it appeared to be so easy to upload pirated content.  Just did some searches and found lots of links to questionable content, but after clicking through, every one had been removed, so apparently they're doing a good job policing that.  Such a good job, in fact, that the New York Times is reporting that Simon & Schuster have just signed a deal to sell digital books on the site.  "Scribd, a start-up based in San Francisco, also says it is working on a reading application for the iPhone, which should be ready in a few weeks."

Do you love books or do you love reading?

Ann Kirschner has a thought-provoking piece in the Chronicle describing how she read a 1,000 page novel across four different formats; paperback, audiobook, iPhone and Kindle.  You might be surprised at what she decided was the best format, at least for her.  As an aside, I'm now reading my fourth book in the Stanza iPhone application. I love the fact that it's always with me, and I can change the font and lighting depending on my situation.

This time we mean it! - Google to sell e-books

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.

More on Libraries and eBooks

Following up on my earlier post about licensing issues around ebooks and libraries, Sue at No Shelf Required discusses the same Teleread post: Is it possible to donate an eBook to the library?  In the  comments,  Dan D'Agostino mentions he's got a new blog on his (collection development librarian) perspective of eBook reader technology at e-Book Reader News (on e-book readers, mobile devices, and the ebook publishing world).  Subscribed.

First Impressions

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.