Want a good illustration of the age gap when it comes to e-books? Check out an example from the Indianpolis Star. Eventually e-books will be as easy to read as ordinary books and even offer flippable pages with the words in e-ink. But that day isn't here yet. Still, old foggies in the library establishment would do well to remember that younger readers are already eager for the new technology, even in its primitive form.p when it comes to e-books? Check out an example from the Indianpolis Star. Eventually e-books will be as easy to read as ordinary books...

Well, my Win XP is falling apart. The news from Dell tech support was grim--somehow my Optiplex GX150 had corrupted a crucial file, ntoskrnl.exe. If I really wanted to be safe, the technician said, I might want to reformat my hard drive, because otherwise I might lose everything. Rightly or wrongly, he said that copying over the file with a fresh one was no sure-fire guarantee, at least not if my keyboard lockups continued. Cheery words, huh? Actually they were and are. Hey, great excuse to banish Microsoft from my main box. What's the point of XP anyway? A...

Project Gutenberg is in the cross hairs of J. Bradford DeLong, a Berkeley professor and Wired Magazine contributor, who accuses PG of failing to "achieve any form of critical mass." I'll get to Gutenberg in time. But first a few words on the DeLong column and then plenty more on his former employer, the Clinton Administration, which in so many ways tried to privatize knowledge--the antithesis of the spirit of Gutenberg and TeleRead.In the February issue of Wired, DeLong isn't calling for the end of Project Gutenberg, but he might as well be. He thinks that its scalability is...

IP Justice: New white hatsGoing by the Verizon case, U.S. courts care more about Draconian copyright protection for Hollywood than privacy for the average American. What an appropriate time for the debut of a new group called IP Justice. Cnet interviewed Executive Director Robin Gross."Are there any countries that have views about intellectual properties that you like, and alternatively, which countries have the 'worst' IP laws in your view?" Cnet asked her."I'll start with who has the worst IP laws," she said, "because that's actually the easiest. It's the United States. When it comes to the traditional balance we've...

...why not suggest the use of public-domain classics from, say, Project Gutenberg? Libraries won't suffer the same lending restrictions that they would on books from commercial sources. In fact, readers can forever keep material downloaded from Gutenberg-type sites. Libraries, moreover, are free to print out public-domain books from the Net, and as noted here earlier, the materials can cost maybe $2 a copy. Great way to fill in gaps in collections.TeleRead, of course, would help by allowing thousands of commercial books to be online for free to libraries and users, with payments to content-providers from a national digital library...

The most famous lobbyist of the music industry is leaving by year's end to devote more time to her children. Touching. Maybe Hilary Rosen can even think about the children of average families and about the taxes she helped bring about on schools and libraries and consumers--in the form of harsher copyright laws. Meanwhile, if nothing else, we know of one household where the use of .MP3s will be very carefully supervised.The TeleRead take: Lobbyists and PR people are disposable. Family responsibilities may even be the main reason for Ms. Rosen's resignation from the Recording Industry Association of America,...

Earlier TomPaine.com caught it from us for merrily publishing Bill Gates Sr.'s arguments for the estate tax--without a reminder that neither father nor son appeared to be opposing copyright extensions, the surest path to a copyright gentry. The commonweal wins some and loses some, eh? Now, however, to its credit, the Paine site has published a piece on the blatant ripoffs that writers are suffering from the Boston Globe, an offshoot of the New York Times' congomerate. Alas, the Massachusetts Superior Courts recently ruled in the Globe's favor. But the freelancers are appealing, and with good reason. Here is...

The old-fashioned library book sale has gone electronic at librarybooksales.org. From the home page: "LibraryBookSales.org matches you with rare, collectible and quality books that have been donated to public libraries. The money you spend goes directly to the library that sells you the book. You benefit because you can find quality books at great prices. Everyone Wins!" More details: "librarybooksales.org (and .com) has become one of the hottest spots on the web. New libraries are joining every day, and books are being uploaded as we speak. The project is open to any library. Public, private, institutional, special collections, educational,...

Try to search "ebooks" in a search engine...Do you think that it will include the singular "ebook" in the results?Nope. "ebooks" is a different noun from "ebook," and the search engine may still treat "ebook" like a name, not a regular noun. So an "ebooks" search will be treated totaly differently from an "ebook" search. So ebook is not the singular form of ebooks.Additional thought from David Rothman: To add to the fun, you want to try "ebook" and "ebooks" both with and without the hyphen....

"The nearly one million citizens of Westchester County will be able to search the library system catalog, the Internet, and more than 30 subscription-based resources with a single query using" Muse software. - EContent, Jan. 21, via Library News Daily.The TeleRead take: Excellent. And here are a few more ideas. How about assuring prominent display of Web links to special local resources--for example, the county's Healthy Heart Program--when search results pop up? Work on this with Muse if the feature isn't already there.Or why not blend in Googlert or the equivalent ("Fill in your email address if you want...

TeleRead would greatly expand the range of library books available in small towns and in urban ghettos and lower the cost of distribution. But it is no substitute for resistance to anti-library budget cuts in the here and now. For an overview, see an ALA news release on the Campaign to Save America's Libraries. Then check Steve Cohen's new Web log, Save Our Libraries.As many librarians would argue, the economic slowdown has increased the need for library services as people upgrade their skills to compete in an increasingly mean economy. But politicians are cutting back. As noted in the...

TeleRead is a plan to aid society, via a well-stocked national digital library system, and would offer new business options for pubishers of all sizes--as opposed to regulating their present activites. What's more, if given a chance, new technologies could help open up the way for all kinds of diversity in media. That said, if today's media biggies have their way, innovation could be killed off before it has a chance. Things have reached the point where even conservative Bill Safire worries about Media Giantism. In today's New York Times he writes:"Take a listen to what's happened to local...