The story of netLibrary under OCLC has yet to be written. Will the e-collection evolve into a true digital library system on a TeleRead scale? Too, will the new netLibrary indeed become more reader-friendly by, for instance, allowing more than one person at a time within a library system to check out a specific book? OCLC's netLibrary will be a long way from TeleRead if that does not happen. Similarly OCLC would do well to help libraries work out mass purchasing arrangements with vendors--a timely topic now that the TabletPC and similar TeleRead-style machines are on the way in...

InfoSync's review concludes:--"What's positive: WYSIWYG desktop publishing features, doesn't require any knowledge of the underlying markup language, fast and stable--"What's negative: Doesn't import HTML directly, doesn't convert images from the source file, pricey."Actually the word "pricey" might apply only to the $130 commercial version. The personal edition costs all of $30....

"The biggest complaint librarians have about the service is its policy of only allowing one user on a campus to 'check out' an e-book at a time. In other words, if one researcher is using an e-book, no one else on the campus can access that title until the book is put away. netLibrary officials say that the policy was set at the request of publishers, who worry that putting their books on netLibrary will cut the number of multiple copies they sell to libraries. That is something the company is looking at changing, said Mr. Rosy. He said...

"Newspapers are the nation's favourite read, says a new survey. People spend on average two hours a week reading papers, the research published on Monday found. But online browsing takes up a large chunk of the reading day, ahead of magazines and reference books, the Orange Prize for Fiction research found. The survey of 200 couples suggested 40% of people never read a book and that women are more likely to read novels than men." - BBC item of May 27, via NewBreed Librarian....

TeleBlog.org or TeleBlog.com can now take you directly to this TeleBlog, or at least soon will--once the changes are propagated through the Net. Worked fine for me just now, however.With recent version of Netscape and Internet Explorer, you won't even have to type the http://www stuff. The original address of http://www.teleread.com/blog will still work fine.Many thanks to Frank Meli of 1coms.com, my favorite domain registration service--a terrific, nonbureaucratic alternative to VeriSign....

Jenny The Shifted Librarian adds her own take on relations between the press and librarydom. Good stuff. LIke me, she's excited about wireless, and she is also keen on news aggregators, which she thinks will be "the way the next generation of newspaper readers get their news. In a high-speed, always-on, ubiquitous computing, wireless world, it's a natural." As I see it, with readers drawing on so many sources for their news, aggregators are all the more reason for a TeleRead-style approach--to smooth out the technological and business complexities.Too, she correctly wishes that newspapers and libraries would "connect the...

Some Maine educators report a striking reduction in children's disciplinary problems, thanks to the laptops. Students are far more interested in their studies.But a $180-million budget shortfall could jeopardize the state program. So says Wired News. ...

One of the biggest arguments for TeleRead is the need to make certain that even in the meanest urban neighborhood, even in the most remote fishing village in Alaska, people can access thousands of books from their own homes. Many residents of Washington, DC, certainly could use TeleRead. In today's Washington Post, columnist Marc Fisher tells of the miserable condition of the DC library system, especially the branches:"I searched for the kind of books that could open new worlds to young people who lead lives of utter isolation, teenagers who have never been to the Mall, let...

A UPI senior business correspondent named Sam Vaknin, who also writes an informative column for eBookWeb, has just published Parts I and II of an interview with Project Gutenberg Director Michael Hart. Hart holds forth on topics ranging from copyright to the early use of the Internet for the distribution of books. Napster is a daydream for Hollywood compared to what's on the way--for example, the 3D reproduction of objects such as books. And quite convincingly Hart anticipates the 'tude of the copyright gentry toward these new developments. Ban em! Or at least try to keep them in...

Monica E. de Leon, who, along with her husband, Raymundo Pedraza, envisions Mexico adapting the TeleRead idea, write of a contribution from Bill Gates for computerization of libraries there. More details will most likely follow. "Big news yesterday," she says, "was a 30-million dollar donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to computerize Mexican libraries. President Fox was there to receive the money, and he said it's one of his Government's priorities to get people to go to public libraries to read."I don't know exactly how they're going to invest the money, but besides the 30 million from...

That's the headline of Steve Outing's latest column in Editor and Publisher--and also one of the issues that TeleRead could address.Via a mix of private philanthropy and long-range public funding, a TeleRead-style national digital library system could pay for old articles in way that respected freedom of the press. We're not talking necessarily about a Pentagon-sized budget here. If nothing else, keep in mind that newspapers are not making that much from accesses to old articles. And yet, from a civic perspective, what could be more important? Some of the most enthusiastic users of archives are local citizens researching...

Want a handle on libraries and related academic developments around the world? Check out the UNESCO Libraries Portal, which has just added this TeleBlog to its link collection. Furthermore, UNESCO is working with national governments and others to digitize classics and preserve important archives, including those documenting the slave trade. Especially valuable will be digitized books in Arabic, Lithuanian, Polish and other languages. Such efforts are most timely. Nowadays the non-English-language parts of the Net are growing faster than the English regions, which is only fair, given all the catching up needed.Also online is the library manifesto from UNESCO...