Raspberry Pi has announced that its first batch of $35 computers will be finished manufacturing as of February 20th, and they will be airfreighted to the UK immediately after that; they should be available for purchase by the end of the month. It has also gotten Broadcom to make available a datasheet about the ARM peripherals in the Pi’s CPU chip—useful for those who want to port other operating systems to the device, or are just interested in the tech specs. As I’ve said before, this device could be quite useful in education and for Internet access in places...

Amazon’s convenience store package drops aren’t the only new thing it’s testing in Seattle. Reports are surfacing that Seattle area libraries are the first to get to try Amazon’s new Overdrive-based Kindle library lending program. Patrons with Kindles can download time-limited-license e-books in Amazon’s AZW format via WiFi or USB. The books can be checked out from one’s own home via Amazon’s website, but require a library card from the library making the lend. It’s not clear to me that there’s anything particularly special about this program compared to other Overdrive library e-book lending, save that the Kindle and...

I certainly haven’t always agreed with everything Paul Carr has had to say, but a recent column he penned on TechCrunch about how much of a menace e-book piracy isn’t hits just the right tone. Carr looks back on a column he wrote in 2003 predicting that the best way to fight piracy was to make e-books easy for customers to buy at reasonable prices (something that for the most part wasn’t even on the horizon back then, since Amazon was years away from its $9.99 Kindle sales) and reflects with satisfaction that he was right. But e-book piracy...

Digital Book World has a ten minute video interview with Brian Murray, CEO of HarperCollins, where he talks about how the publisher is experimenting with new business models in the digital age. It's worth watching the full interview, but this is what he has to say about HarperCollins' controversial library lending policy: Libraries are a really important channel for HarperCollins. We’ve talked about discovery of books and libraries are where a lot of discovery happens in many communities across the country. So HarperCollins is committed to that library channel. The challenge is that we’re trying to balance the needs of all...

This was announced back in June but the collection has grown significantly since that date. It now includes 45K titles, up from 19K. Here is more from the press release: BiblioLabs, LLC and the British Library have launched their British Library 19th Century Historical Collection App for iPad - now available on the App Store. The App was announced in June with an initial offering of a thousand 19th century books - it now makes some 45,000 titles available to subscribers, expanding to over 60,000 titles by the end of the year. For just £1.99 a month in the UK...

When Amazon promised to introduce its Kindle format to public libraries earlier this year, the company would only say that it would come before the end of 2011. There's still been no official announcement, but now OverDrive's own CEO Steve Potash has dropped a not-too-subtle hint that September is the launch month: Throughout the conference, CEO Steve Potash, looking like a kid with a delicious secret, kept saying "soon" and, "I'm not allowed to announce a date yet." During the final session, he delivered a broad hint, by summarizing the main points of his "Crystal Ball Report" : Streamlining (both downloading...

We've featured several stories about the web-connected print-on-demand Espresso Book Machine (EBM), which can access millions of digital books and create print versions in minutes. Most of those stories, however, are light on actual user reviews, so I was happy to stumble across this detailed summary of "the good, the bad, and the sexy" qualities of the EBM from librarian Rick Anderson at The Scholarly Kitchen. His library at the University of Utah has had an EBM for two years now, and he's put together an insightful list of what works and what still needs work. You should read the full...

The five alert services (all free) discussed are: 1. Track New Book 2. Book Buzzes 3. Any New Books 4. Author Alerts 5. Wowbrary A service many of you are probably familiar with. Wowbrary alerts users to new books at numerous public libraries around the U.S. Like many services on the WWW, the four mentioned in the MakeUseOf article are all (with the exception of Wowbrary) variations on a theme. Since the price is right (free), sampling all of them is easy to find the one(s) that might work best for your info need. Read the Complete MakeUseOf.com Article: "5...

Here are three questions and answers from the complete interview that appears in the July 24, 2011 edition of the Boston Globe: IDEAS: So why not leave it to Google? DARNTON: It became clear, as Google's project evolved, that it would be a commercial enterprise, and in fact an enterprise attached to a gigantic monopoly. A monopoly, perhaps, with the best intentions, but that would not necessarily serve the public good, because of course Google's primary responsibility would be to its shareholders .[Clip] IDEAS: So what would a digital public library be like? What would it do? DARNTON: It doesn't look like everybody's image of...

From an OverDrive blog post: The days of having to dig your library card out when you’re trying to download an eBook at the doctor’s office (or park, or airport terminal, or a bar mitzvah) are over. With the latest update to OverDrive-powered mobile sites, users will have the option for their devices to store their library card numbers. Starting now, when customers check out a title, the device will have a box where they can check “Remember me on this device.” The device will then hold the characters in its memory for 90 days after each use. This is...

Egypt's Library of Alexandria has announced that it's placed 19,000 works from its collection on the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) network, and plans to add another 150,000 Arabic titles soon. The library operates three EBMs, but this also means people around the world can print replicas of the library's titles from their nearest EBM. You can read the press release on On Demand Books' News page. Via INFOdocket...

You forgot to record Monday night's premiere of the new C-SPAN documentary on the Library of Congress, didn't you? Well, you can watch it online for free at C-SPAN's LOC minisite. The 90 minute film takes a holistic approach to its subject, covering everything from the library's founding to its architecture to its vast collection (including a Braille copy of "Mein Kampf"). If you just want to watch the section about how the library uses technology to preserve and study manuscripts, jump to 1:15:45 and watch the part about the Preservation Division. If you're even more impatient, jump straight to 1:20:45, which...