This is the era of bits and bytes and multimedia and 3D printing, not just books and other texts. But Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science would still apply today in spirit even after more than eighty years. Educated originally as a mathematician, S.R. Ranganathan was a library-science genius who studied librarianship in Great Britain and worked as the librarian at the University of Madras. Accurately or not, he is said to have beaten out 900 competitors for the job. He peppered his writings with Indian philosophy, dressed Ghandi-simple, and avoided coffee and tea. His laws, spelled out in a 1931 book available from the Hathi Trust in full text, are: 1....

In partnership with a Bloomington, Ind.-based self-publishing organization known as Author Solutions, Penguin Books India made an interesting move today by launching a self-publishing platform specifically for the Indian audience. It's a tactic that may one day soon bring the Subcontinent at least somewhat closer to actualizing the self-publishing revolution that seems to have taken over much of the western world. Partridge Publishing is the name of the new platform, and in a release distributed by Penguin Books India today, the company suggested that it will soon be "opening up opportunities for aspiring writers [in India] who don't have enough means to get their...

Barnes & Noble's Thoughts About Its Future (Mike Shatzkin) If Kids Are Our Future, the Future is eBooks (Forbes) French National Library Privates Public Domain Materials (Techdirt) eBook Popularity on the Rise in India (GoodeReader) Kindle Daily Deals: Pirate Coast by Richard Zacks (and 3 others) ...

From an article in The Hindu: “Retailers should take a relook, rather reinvent themselves to stay in contention,” cautions V.K. Karthika, publisher and chief editor of Harper Collins India. ... “Retail stores have of late become display centres where you see and choose books. Then you go home and order your choices online. That is what everyone does these days,” she said. ... “In the US, 50 per cent of our revenue is from sale of e-books. Here, we are starting it in July-August which will also be available for purchase through online book stores besides e-readers.” Ms. Karthika said there would be a sea change...

Just a month ago we carried a story about e-reading not being popular in India. However, it looks as though that may not be the whole story. According to a report from Indian newspaper The Hindu, e-readers are causing a change in reading habits, especially of the young, in India. The article is a little hard to read, but there are some interesting tidbits. The e-book market in India is giving rise to whole new categories of literature, such as the teen-oriented “metro reads”. Self-help books and those dwelling on emerging market trends have...

From the Hindustan Times: Not only are the eBook sales low here, but many Indian authors are not even releasing their works on this platform. Best-selling author Amish Tripathi was one of the many who decided not to offer his popular Shiva trilogy as eBooks. “It is only a matter of time before India catches up with the rest of the world in the current eBook frenzy. But they aren’t popular yet,” he explains. Price isn’t rightOne of the reasons for this slow pace is the high prices of eReaders and tablets. An iPad 2G tablet will cost you a cool R30,000...

From the press release (blockquotes omitted): International education cloud company AcrossWorld partners with Delhi-based Go-Tech to launch 7” android touchscreen tablet with free access to cloud-based open educational resources and more AcrossWorld Education, the global SaaS company that developed the world’s first cloud-based platform to transform the learning process by enabling K-12 schools, colleges and universities around the world access open educational resources, has now announced that it will launch in India an advanced touch-screen tablet PC, called ATab, for just Rs.5000/- in partnership with Delhi-based Go-Tech. The ATab will be available in India from second week of...

An article made available by Simon Fraser University in British Columbia provides a firsthand report by SFU alumnus Kyle Jackson about a trip he took to India as part of an Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) pilot project. Here’s a small portion of the article: I was in Mizoram as a part of a four-member pilot-project under the Endangered Archives Programme (EAP), a global rescue mission for the world’s most endangered historical documents. Administered by the UK’s British Library and funded by Arcadia, EAP researchers have in the past seven years fanned out across the globe, armed with little more than high-resolution digital cameras and...

Remember that $35 tablet from India? Surprise surprise: it hasn’t been doing so well. ZDNet Asia reports that India’s Union Human Resource Development Ministry is looking into upgrading the specifications for the tablet, and also bumping the price to $50. It turns out that users were less than impressed by the $35 device, finding it too slow, its battery life too short, and its resistive touchscreen too hard to use. DataWind, the company that was manufacturing the device, had been supposed to make over a million units, but only 10,000 have been shipped since October. The company complains that...

From the Press Information Bureau, Government of India: The Minister for Culture and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja has said that digitisation of rare books and other print material is done selectively taking into account copyright and other issues. It is a part of the Annual Action Plan of the National Library, Kolkata. No article from the rare books division of the National Library has been reported to be lost or stolen in the last decade. In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today she said, under the 3rd phase of digitisation project 20,00,000 pages i.e. 6000 books are envisaged to be...

From the press release: Liquid Comics, which owns one of the world’s largest comic book libraries based on Indian characters by Indian creators, announced today the launch of Graphic India, a new digital platform to promote comic books in India and showcase young artists and writers in the country. “In the same way Japanese anime and manga redefined a generation of audiences worldwide, we believe the creativity and rich storytelling potential of India is ready to take the world by storm.” Graphic India intends to be India’s premiere graphic novel platform and community, leveraging Liquid’s large library of high quality content created by Indian...

It looks like the vapor surrounding India’s $35 tablet has congealed directly into a solid. The Aakash tablet is being made by Canadian manufacturer Datawind, and the Indian government is ordering 100,000 of them at at 2,200 rupees per unit ($44.50), though Datawind says that a planned larger order will drop the effective price per unit down closer to $35. In two months, a SIM-slot-equipped version of the device, branded “Ubislate”, will be available to consumers for 2,999 rupees ($60.70). The tablet will have a 366MHz processor, 7” resistive touchscreen, 256Mb RAM, a 32Gb SD card slot, and two...