Netherlands: Government Report Says Dutch Libraries Can't Lend Ebooks (Info Docket) Avoiding Ebook Casualties: The Importance of Quality Assurance (Digital Book World) Bug in Kindle Update for iOS Deletes Users' Entire Library (TechCrunch) Why B&N Should Abandon Hardware (Tools of Change) The Trouble With Finding Books Online - And a Few Solutions (Forbes) Kindle Daily Deals: Guilt By Degrees by Marcia Clark (and 3 others)...

* * * I've lived in Philadelphia for about five years now, and I don't plan on leaving anytime soon. But like most people, I've got a short wishlist of cities I'd like to live in, assuming I ever do decide to relocate. There's New York City, of course; I'm a writer, so that one's pretty obvious. There's also the Bay Area; most of my family is spread out around Northern California, and I think about returning from time to time. But now I've got an international city to add to my list: Spijkenisse, Netherlands. Why? Well, because that's the location of Book Mountain,...

From epsiPlatform Blog: In an opinion piece, Martin Berendse, National Archivist of the Netherlands (andpresident of the ICA, international council of archives), says Open Data is of key interest and a focal pointto the Dutch National Archives. The Nationaal Archief (NA) sees it as a key activity to open up public data and make it available for re-use. “With Open Data those who monitor our democracy, researchers, journalists en individual re-users, will have an enormous wealth of sources available to them”, Berendse writes, adding “Only if it is possible to easily find things, will something being public equate being accessible. That is why the...

From a Google translation of an article on the Dutch site Ereaders: The American bookstore chain Barnes & Noble (B & N) plans to deploy a Dutch ebook store to open and start selling on the Nook-ereader. B & N is in discussion with Central Book House on a link for Dutch digital books to sell. Also state B & N recently registered with the Chamber of Commerce. According to Mathijs Suidman, Manager of Product Management of the Central Book House, B & N as well as other parties such as Apple and Kobo be connected to the Central Book House...

From a Radio Netherlands Report: The YouTube generation has gained an ally in the worldwide “copyright wars.” The Dutch government wants to change copyright law so new media users can continue to do “creative remixes” of protected content. The Hague will no longer wait for the European Commission to find a compromise. [Clip] [Bent] Hugenholtz, copyright law professor at the University of Amsterdam [and member of the Dutch state committee on copyright law] , discussed his views last Friday with representatives of European governments, the entertainment industry, internet entrepreneurs, legal experts, journalists and librarians. They were gathered in The Hague for “Towards Flexible Copyright,”...

Another ruling from a European court on the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuits over the Galaxy Tab’s design has come in, and it doesn’t bode well for Apple. An appeals court in The Hague, Netherlands dismissed Apple’s patent-infringement attempt to get the Galaxy Tab banned from sale in the country, following up on Apple’s appeal after a lower court’s similar decision in August. The court made its decision based on at least two pieces of prior art for each of Apple’s claims, determining that Apple’s claims were therefore narrow enough that they had not been infringed. Next week, a German...

From the Good E-Reader blog: Bas Group features one of the best online precenses in The Netherlands and controls the chains Dixons, PC World and Dynabyte. It is obvious the company is leading the charge of retail and online technology and gadgets in that country. The acquisition of Bebook and Endless Ideas will bolster their portfolio and allow them a higher profit margin at selling the e-readers in their retail locations. According to Steven Baker, CEO of BAS Group, “we are proud to be a Dutch brand with an excellent reputation in the e-reader market to our business portfolio to add....

From the Dutch eReaders site, here is a Google translation of the article: Endless Ideas, the Dutch manufacturer of the BeBook eReader and tablet, is bankrupt. The company came in 2008 on the market with a 6 "eInk reader called BeBook. Later the company introduced with WiFi connectivity and also ereaders BeBook live, a tablet that went on sale in early 2011.Utrecht The company was experiencing rapid development, not only in Netherlands but also across the borders. This was partly due to collaborations with bookshops and electronics chains and largemarketing campaigns.The first BeBook, later as the 'One' went through life, was...

The Bookseller reports that Secretary Halbe Zjilstra from the Netherlands’ Department of Culture has announced there will be no fixed price for e-books in the Netherlands. The Netherlands (like much of Europe) has fixed prices on paper books, meant to secure wide availability of titles. However, e-books still have less than 1% of market share in the Netherlands. A study commissioned by the Netherlands government determined that even though the rise of e-books might harm bookstores, slapping a fixed price on them will not help bookstores and will harm the overall e-book market by diminishing innovation. I have...

From the National Library of the Netherlands (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) On 14 July 2010 the KB and Google signed a contract for the digitization of 160.000 books from the collection of the KB that are free of copyright. Both parties made this widely known by means of their websites and via the press, and have consistently replied to questions about the content of the cooperative agreement. Following a request in the United Kingdom, which was granted, to make the details of the contract between the British Library and Google public on the grounds of the Freedom of...

We reported on thelauch of eLinea earlier.  Now it looks as if they are going global.  From their blog: Fleur Stigter writes about new online publishing initiatives and critically examined eLinea in an extensive article. Stigter: “since February the Dutch have access to a unique news service [...] and important Dutch publishers are very willing to participate.” She wonders: will eLinea sweep international news organisations off their feet? In her article Fleur gives a detailled overview of the development of eLinea and how the service works. What does eLinea offer to participating publishers and what does the subscription model look like? And what...

From the Google Translation of the site's front page: Publishing your own book: easy, quick and free! Start met je boek Start your book ...