"A lawsuit brought by a group of Internet archivists against recent congressional actions expanding copyright protections has been dismissed by a federal judge." - CNET.The TeleRead take: Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive plans to appeal the ruling. I myself wish there'd be more efforts on the political front to educate the Bush Administration. The Republican South, lowest in library rankings, is the very region that could benefit most from full-strength digital archives of literature. Gov. Terminator notwithstanding, Hollywood generally hates the GOP.Related: U.S. vows to ...

"A $130,000 grant, the second largest awarded by the Illinois State Library, has been awarded to a cooperative project involving 42 libraries, including the Lanark, Forreston Public and Bertolet District Library-Leaf River libraries." - Prairie Advocate in Savanna, Illinois.The TeleRead take: Libwise, a branch of Fictionwise, is apparently the vendor if you go by the look of one library's "ebranch." More details:The project involves "eBranch service," providing a print alternative by offering ebooks to library patrons 24-7 via their personal PDA's or desktop computers.Each library will receive the eBranch setup and 100 titles and funding to buy about 200...

GEB eBook Librarian now works with the eBookwise-1150, not just older devices from the Gemstar family. Developer Steve Breen is in talks with Fictionwise/eBookwise about an OEM arrangement, in fact. From Steve:I have received the new eBookwise.com/fictionwise 1150 device and now have a version of the GEB eBook Librarian that works with both the older devices and the newer devices (ETI2) alike with no user input or configuration changes. This will be released on my website this week after a thorough regression testing period with the new eBook Technologies USB driver that I received today. That did the trick. I've...

"Buried inside the massive $388 billion spending bill Congress approved last weekend is a program that creates a federal copyright enforcement czar." - Lawmakers OK antipiracy czar, via CNET....

Found via Branko Collin through the TEI mailing list: The 9th ELPUB conference will keep the tradition of the eight previous international conferences on electronic publishing [...], which is to bring together researchers, lecturers, developers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, managers, users and all those interested on issues regarding electronic publishing in widely differing contexts. These include the human, cultural, economic, social, technological, legal, commercial and any other relevant aspects that such an exciting theme encompasses...ELPUB 2005 will focus on challenges for the digital content chain.The call for papers is now open....

Check out the Nokia 7710 Super Widescreen Smartphone. "The preinstalled eBook reader lets users enjoy electronic copies of their favorite titles," says an accompanying news release. "The eBook reader makes it possible to purchase or download eBooks from the retail site eBooks.com." Nokia and eBooks.com have just inked a major deal. It'll be interesting to see what reader is involved and whether it can do both landscape and portrait. A version of Mobipocket--which does work on some Nokias? While hybrid cellphones as e-book devices aren't for everyone, they're a welcome addition to the hardware scene, given the decline in...

A new colleague was baffled why I felt that libraries should give away classics and other public domain books rather than just lend them.Fact is, many people want to build their own personal libraries and not ask for permission from librarians whenever they want to read a book. Oh, you could download books from the Web. But that takes time, especially if you have only a dialup connection.Book switchersHow much better to have the books stored on one's hard drive or memory card--ready to go! Sometimes when I'm in the middle of one book, I'll take a break and...

"Who wants to read old books?" an education lobbyist told me in resisting my suggestion to lobby against the elitist Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Well, at least in the past, it turns out that many plebes did, not just the upper-class. Check out The Classics in the Slums, an essay by Jonathan Rose (pictured here) in City Journal from the conservative Manhattan Institute.A great way for George Bush and fellow Republicans to celebrate his victory would be to repeal Bono and encourage use of the Net to spread around the classics--old and new. If the President wants...

eReader is now using RSS to keep customers up to date on new titles. RSS uses standards. A nice follow-up would be for eReader to consider a carefully phased migration to another standard for its software itself--the OpenReader format. Perhaps the new crew at the company will be more clueful than the earlier people about the damage that the Tower of eBabel is doing to the e-book business, in terms of costs to publishers and inconvenience, costs and confusion for readers. (eReader item found via Michael Gartenberg at Jupiter Research.)...

From Jerry Justianto at Pocket PC eBooks/iPOD Watch:Mobipocket apparently has created one price to get for all versions of Mobipocket Reader Pro, and that is one of the best pricing strategy in the industry. The registration code for the Mobipocket Reader Pro for Pocket PC, I discovered, also works for my Mobipocket Reader Pro for Symbian (Nokia 9500).This fair pricing should be followed by ereader.com for its pro reader version. Currently eReader pro buyers must purchase for every platform the Pro version of the company's readers for Palm, Pocket PC, Mac, and the PC. That does not make sense...

Ohio is the top state in Hennen's American Public Library Ratings this year. And the branch-oriented Cuyahoga County Public Library, encompassing Cleveland suburbs and thriftily headquartered in this plain-looking building, leads the biggest library systems. The Buckeye State's outstanding showing fits a pattern. The Midwest shines in both state ratings and the number of leading libraries on sized-based Top Ten lists from Thomas Henlen, Jr. in Wisconsin.Hip librarians in Babbitt countryWhile I cherish the Sinclair Lewis satires debunking the Midwest, I can't help liking the region, too. Hey, my mother's from Kansas City, and more relevantly from a...

The Net was supposed to drive down the cost of spreading around knowledge--not increase it. Why, then, as reported by Great American Libraries: The 2004 HAPLR Ranks (PDF file), are U.S. public libraries paying more per use for electronic material than paper material?Whatever their sizes--whether serving populations under 1,000 or over 500,000--America's library systems are paying dramatically more per use for electronic items. The average is $1.66 for electronic material compared to just 75 cents for paper.Granted, electronic resources save time for both patrons and librarians, and, granted, they normally are more up to date and more popular with...