David Rothman pointed me to an article in the Wall Street Journal about Openlibrary.org, a new cooperative initiative between the Internet Archive and a number of public and other libraries. They are creating a digital library containing “more than a million scanned public domain books and a catalog of thousands of contemporary e-book titles” that will be available at member libraries. And a couple of libraries are contributing scans of a few hundred older works that are still under copyright—which is what got Google in trouble. For books that are still under copyright, the library will treat a...

While many libraries, both public and academic, have implemented digital resources for their patrons in bits and pieces, I would argue that now is the time for libraries to work on putting together a comprehensive digital branch approach, offering millions of books, millions of newspapers and magazines, and open acess 24/7.   Given the facts of mass digitization of titles, free-to-use API's,  and social sharing of resources, the digital library branch is a reality that can be implemented.  Here's how.... Every library needs a place to start, so our digital branch will be created on a branch of the current library web...

This is worth reprinting in full. From What's New at the Internet Archive: From Open Library: The Internet Archive has been scanning books for some years now, and we’re always looking for more. In addition to 1,000,000+ eBooks available to anyone available through Open Library, we’ve announced the release ofmodern books for the print-disabled community in a special format called DAISY. It’s a brand new collection – one of the largest available online. For too long, print-disabled people have been denied access to the full breadth of contemporary books, and we’d like to assist in tipping that balance back to where it should be, universal access...

From the Open Content Alliance: The Internet Archive just doubled the number of books for the print-disabled from classic books to current novels and educational material. This is done via the relaunched website with “one webpage for every book” http://openlibrary.org. Publicly accessible books are in the open DAISY format. The database and search engines are still catching up but it will have over 1 million volumes for this community (over 500k titles). Included are a large number of modern books that are put in the protected DAISY format the Library of Congress uses to distribute modern books to the blind and dyslexic. The Archive...

The last few e-readers I’ve reviewed have been corporate-, or at least company-created—crafted by teams of developers, with a very smooth and polished look to them and, with the exception of eReader, all relative latecomers to the iPhone platform. It’s time to switch things up and take a look at a much older, largely solo effort: Zachary Bedell’s iPhone/iPad universal application BookShelf (v2.3.2968). If any app could be called the original iPhone e-book reader, BookShelf certainly qualifies. A predecessor, Books 1.0 (not written by Bedell), actually pre-dates Apple’s first iPhone software development kit—it was in one of the unofficial...

The Library of Congress is an important national archive, and has been for hundreds of years. It retains records for posterity—not just books, but other important things, including digital information. And soon those archives will include every public tweet ever posted to Twitter since the service’s inception in 2006. Much as with the Internet Archive’s decision to archive the web, the Library of Congress sees the move to communication on Twitter as an important sea change in the way people communicate—one that should be preserved for the study and understanding of future researchers. ...

Looking for something to read?  Tired of not finding anything or the same old titles you've already read?  You might consider the reworked Open Library, located at http://upstream.openlibrary.org/. If you’ve ever experienced frustration in finding something to read for your device, then this is the site for you!  Don’t jump from app store to app store to publisher’s site and more!  Instead, head on over to the new and improved Open Library and download something today!  With lots of search options and titles galore, you’ll find some great stuff to put on your device. So what about this digital library?  An ongoing...

Like other happy owners of the iPad, I think that the critics should try the machine---ideally with more than a quick hands-on at an Apple Store or Best Buy. No, the LCD isn’t optimal for outdoor reading. But I myself read mostly inside and dislike the text-to-background contrast of the current E Ink. And as for the iPad’s weight of a pound and a half, I’ll survive---given the machine’s many capabilities. If nothing else, I can absorb books better if I don’t have trouble seeing them; and the new Brio eReader app could make the large-screen iPad even...

From the announcement: The Internet Archive is pleased to announce an important manuscript, Homiliary on Gospels from Easter to first Sunday of Advent, as the 2,000,000th free digital text. Internet Archive has been scanning books and making them available for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public for free on archive.org since 2005. “This 1,000 year old book which has only been seen by a select few people, can, with the technology of today, be shared with millions tomorrow,” said Robert Miller, Director of Books of the Internet Archive. “Selecting this title for the 2 millionth text is a...

From Resource Shelf. We echo their congratulations! Ås we’ve said many times we are big fans of all of the work Brewster, Peter, and the rest of the team at the Internet Archive in San Francisco. Last Saturday evening, the Internet Archive received the Project of Social Benefit Award from the Free Software Foundation. IA Founder, Brewster Kahle, was at the presentation and said: “We are trying to follow in the footsteps of the the free software movement and apply these ideas to the cultural materials layer, building organizations that are founded on these principals.” Since the Internet Archive provides access to so much...

CNet has an article about Smartwords, an idea from start-up company Wordnik that sounds terrific but sure seems hard to describe succinctly. As Smartwords’s website puts it: Smartwords is a lightweight, easy-to-use standard for retrieving and publishing real-time, contextually-aware information about words. It took reading through the CNet article a couple of times to figure out that it might better be described as “an integrated dictionary on steroids.” Existing e-book apps with dictionary support (such as eReader) are largely limited to clicking on a single word to get a definition. Wordnik wants...

On the lookout for new and interesting titles for your ebook reader? Me too! I’m always looking for new things to read, but sometimes get tired of stopping at the same old resources or spending more money on titles than I should. With this in mind, I thought it would be a good thing to mention two of my new “old” favorites: The book section of the Internet Archive, and Hathi Trust. You can always find something here…. Internet Archive While we all know the Internet Archive as the home for dusty web pages, user created content and...