On Monday July 4th, the World Public Library's annual World eBook Fair launches, which will combine works from Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, and other public collections to create a massive 6.5 million title catalog. The collection will include not just ebooks but other media like music and movies, as well as sheet music and dance choreography. EBookNewser points out that there don't seem to be any events scheduled during the fair to increase visibility, which seems too bad. At any rate it runs until August 4th....

Last Saturday, Sue Polanka of No Shelf Required sat down with Rick Lumsden, Britannica's Executive Director for Institutional Sales and Marketing, to find out a little more about the publisher's new ebook platform. The interview is only eight minutes long, but here are some of the key points if you don't have an opportunity to listen: * Ebook platform launch coincides with new Britannica Education Publishing project, which is in partnership with Rosen Publishing and consists of hundreds of nonfiction titles. * Platform offers standard user interactivity features like notes, highlighting. * Britannica's own platform is browser-based, but will offer downloading to external...

In  January of last year, I originally argued the librarian’s dilemma was that of figuring out what course of action libraries should take in the eBook arena.  A year later, it seems there is still no clear answer!  Given the recent Google Books decision (info via the Disruptive Library Technology Jester blog) and the public discussions from both OverDrive and Harper Collins, I don’t think any clear answer is coming soon! So what does a library do?  Remember, the choices they make will ultimtely affect you, the eBook buyer, reader and enthusiast! Ultimately, I think libraries should focus for now on the free...

TeleRead's founder, David Rothman, has an article on today's front page of the Chronicle of Higher Education.  The article,  "It's Time for a National Digital-Library System," is familiar to most TeleRead visitors, describing his concept of a national digital library, as well as the support his idea has received from popular pundits: (William F.) Buckley loved my proposal ("inspiring") and came out in the 1990s with two syndicated columns backing the vision. As a harpsichord-playing Yalie famous for political and cultural conservatism and cherishing archaic words, Buckley was hardly a populist in most respects. But he fervently...

A pair of interesting articles about Google Books came to my attention over the last day or so. First, in The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal looks at how Google has been tweaking and updating its search algorithms to trawl the linkless world of text on paper, where searchers have radically different needs than those who search the web. In the last couple of days, Google has rolled out a new tweak called “Rich Results,” which presents one extra-large search result if Google thinks that you’re searching for a specific book title. Rich Results is the...

From the Announcement: Fotonauts Inc., makers of Fotopedia.com, the first collaborative photo encyclopedia, today announced the launch of Fotopedia Heritage 2.0, a free application for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Created in cooperation with the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, the visually stunning downloadable app provides a virtual passport to the hundreds of World Heritage sites that constitute the world’ s collective cultural and natural human legacy. Fotopedia Heritage now offers more than 25,000 awe-inspiring photos and grows every day, thanks to the contributions of the Fotopedia community – which consists of 30,000 photographers and curators who help enable this endless visual journey. See...

From the Announcement (via Israel Antiquities): As part of the celebrations on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of its establishment, the Israel Antiquities Authority is launching a unique project – The Leon Levy Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Library – to document the entire collection of the Dead Sea Srolls. A major lead gift from the Leon Levy Foundation, with additional major funding from the Arcadia Foundation and the support of Yad Hanadiv Foundation, will enable the Israel Antiquities Authority [IAA] to use the most advanced and innovative technologies available to image the entire collection of 900 manuscripts comprising c. 30,000...

“We left Grafton-Underwood at 1700 hours 26 June 1943 to bomb Villacoublay. After making landfall over France we encountered flak and were attacked by FW-190’s….The whole ship was shaking violently…” Recently released by the National Archives, digitized Escape and Evasion Reports are now available for download in PDF format to your eReader of choice. Detailed firsthand accounts of harrowing escapes and near-captures by Axis occupiers, Allied aircrew no longer remain faceless.  Instead, we learn their names, hometowns and quite possibly a new view of World War II that up until now was not available online. The fastest way of getting to the...

Thanks to BookofJoe for the link. You can find them here....

From the Digital Collections Home Page: National Digital Library Polona presents the most precious and valuable documents from the collection of the National Library. From the Points of Interest Blog from Booklist: …treasures including manuscripts such as Ptolmey’s Cosmographia, the Chopin collection which will eventually include digital versions of all of his manuscripts, the history of Warsaw, archives and periodicals covering World War II in Poland, and a Yiddish literature collection. There are also collections of children’s literature, underground publications from World War II, and serials from the 19th and early 20th century. Historians, musicians, and scholars...

If you're a fan of military history or just like a good historical title for your eReader of choice, then head on over to the Air Force Historical Research Agency or the HyperWar section of ibiblio.  Jam-packed with research data, personal papers, images and more, you will find lots of neat and historical information! With it's origins in World War II and today having over "70,000,000 pages" of information, the Air Force Historical Research Agency is a great place to visit for both aviation and history buffs.  Using both my iPad and my Android phone, the web site scales really well...

From the Original Announcement from the Tennessee Secretary of State The State Library and Archives, which is part of the Tennessee Department of State, has been preserving newspapers on microfilm since 1957. The two-year process of converting those microfilmed documents into digital records will be managed by the University of Tennessee. Eventually, the digital images of Tennessee newspapers will be part of the Chronicling of America [from the Library of Congress] website: http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ Newspapers from 15 other states are already available for use on the site. “We are delighted to be a part of this project,” Secretary of State ...