The video was recorded during the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) Fall 2011 Membership Meeting. Title: “Preservation Status of e-Resources: A Potential Crisis in Electronic Journal Preservation” Direct to Video (59 minutes) Direct to Slides (.ppt) Presenters: Oya Y. Rieger Associate University Librarian Digital Scholarship Services Cornell University Robert Wolven Associate University Librarian Bibliographic Services and Collection Development Columbia University E-journals have replaced the majority of titles formerly produced in paper format. Academic libraries are increasingly dependent on commercially produced, born-digital content that is purchased or licensed. The purpose of this presentation is to share the findings of a 2CUL study that assesses the role of LOCKSS and PORTICO in preserving each institution’s...

I missed this report when it was released back in December, 2011 by COSLA, the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies.  According to a survey of state libraries from the summer of 2011, 39% of public libraries reported offering no downloadable media service – no ebooks, no audiobooks, and no videos. Here is more from the press release: The Chief Officers of State Library agencies recently surveyed their membership to determine the extent to which U.S. public libraries are offering downloadable ebooks, audiobooks and videos for use on portable devices like e-readers and smartphones. The results of the survey, conducted this summer, showed that 39%...

That's the title of an article in The Literary Platform.  Here's a snippet:   2012 marks the bicentenary year of the birth of Charles Dickens, one of the greatest writers of the Victorian age. Thanks to a recent flurry of apps and ebooks, Dickens’ life and work has been thoroughly brought into the digital age; whether you’re looking for a quick-fix of biographical information or want to find out what life was really like on the mean streets of Victorian London. 1. Dickens: History In An Hour If you love your history, you may already be familiar with the History In An Hour ebook...

That's the title of an article in the [e-reads] blog: Despite the gloomy talk about the death of the book it’s pretty clear that printed books serve an essential function in our culture and will always be with us. For those who greet this statement skepticism, we reiterate that there is nothing wrong with printed books – just the way they are distributed. The big difference between the past and the present is that for the first time in history, printed books are optional. The implications of this fact are profound. Until very recently the only mode for publishers to introduce content was...

From the Sourcebooks blog comes this article by Dominique Raccah. There are loads of things that are interesting about ebooks. One of them is that you can fairly easily change the price of an ebook. So how eBooks are priced and why has to be a major aspect of any publisher’s (or author’s) strategy. Pricing (as lots of people have talked about and discovered) is also one way to get your book or author discovered. But there's also been a conversation going on that free doesn’t work any more and there are loads of opinions about why...

From the blurb: A blockbuster box set of five thrilling novels from five best-selling writers, for less than the price of a single Patterson, King, or Grisham novel.ULTIMATE THRILLER BOX SET5 irresistible set-ups: A crime novelist imprisoned in a desert cabin by a villain more sinister than any he has ever written... A detective's race against the clock to find a missing teenager...Twin brothers caught up in a deadly game to settle sins of the past...A lowly security guard struggling to realize his private eye fantasies... The US government conducting secret testing on the most heinous and intriguing of...

From the TOR site: We have collected a few of our favorite stories from 2011 and put them together in a mini free ebook, free for downloading. Of course, you can always read the stories for free right here, whenever you’d like, but for those that like to move about Some of the Best of Tor.com 2011 will be available Feb 14th. Kindle readers can pre-order now, it will be available at other retailers on the 14th. The Table of Contents   Short Stories: “A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel” by Yoon Ha Lee Among the universe’s civilizations, some conceive of the journey between stars as the sailing of...

Public librarians, have you seen Library Journal’s new publication, Patron Profiles?  It’s chock full of data and analysis on public library users.  From the preface: “Patron Profiles focuses on who uses libraries, why they use libraries, and how that use may change. We are interested in their usage of content—especially via the discrete products such as books, videos, and music that libraries buy or lease, lend or distribute.” Here are some nuggets I found from the January issue (28 pages of data and analysis on mobile devices, mobile content, and library apps): Ebook usage continues to increase and patrons who prefer ebooks are,...

New Features Implement the ability to automatically add books to calibre from a specified folder. Conversion: When automatically inserting page breaks, do not put a page break before a or tag if it is immediately preceded by another or tag. Driver for EZReader T730 and Pint-of-View PlayTab Pro Bug Fixes Fix device entry not visible in menubar even when it has been added via Preferences->Toolbars. Fix metadata plugboards not applied when auto sending news by email Fix regression in 0.8.34 that broke recipes that used skip_ad_pages() but not get_browser(). Restore device support on FreeBSD, by using HAL Get books: Show no more than 10 results from the Gandalf store Content server: Fix metadata not...

From a Publisher’s Weekly Article by Andrew Albanese: Never has a price increase been such good news for libraries. At a meeting with ALA leaders this week in New York, Random House officials said the “terms of sale” for Random House e-books to libraries will change, with a price increase coming. But the publisher reiterated its commitment to library e-book lending, saying they would continue to enable e-book lending of their entire list for both adult and children’s titles, backlist and frontlist, without restriction. “No change,” Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum told PW in a briefing this morning, when asked about...

Came across this at SF Signal.  Phoenix Pick is offering a monthly free sci-fi ebook.  This month its The Shape of Silence, by Stephen Leigh.  You will need to go to the site and sign up in order to get an email each moth with the code. The code for this month's book is 9991463.  I see that they have already given away books by James P. Hogan, Nancy Kress, Jack L. Chalker and A.A. Attanasio, among others. Books are in Epub, mobi, pdf, lrf and pdb formats....

From the email: February free e-book selection, Class War? What Americans Really Think about Economic Inequality by Benjamin I. Page and Lawrence R. Jacobs.  ... What do Americans actually believe about economic inequality? Are we sharply divided over the issue? What policies to deal with economic inequality have widespread support? Page and Jacobs carried out a new comprehensive opinion survey that revealed what Americans really think about this urgent issue. “This is a small book with very big aims.… It should be read … as a polemic, as a challenge, as a call to arms.”—Times Higher...