up2date

Oxford University & Vatican Libraries digitization project

From INFOdocket & The Guardian :

"The Bodleian Libraries ... and the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) said on Thursday they intended to digitize 1.5 million pages of ancient texts and make them freely available online.

The libraries said the digitized collections will centre on three subject areas: Greek manuscripts, 15th-century printed books and Hebrew manuscripts and early printed books."

Ebooks -- practical questions

Barbara Fister in her Library Babel Fish blog at Inside HigherEd articulates nicely some of the unresolved questions regarding ebook usage, in particular as it regards libraries. I particularly appreciate her antipenultimate paragraph :

"So now book publishers want to level the playing field by licensing packages of digital books to libraries. I have no idea where any of this is going, but the notion of actually curating a collection designed around the needs of students enrolled at a particular institution with a locally-developed curriculum is increasingly seeming a quaint custom, and book that aren’t packaged in electronic bundles may have an even harder time finding a place in libraries. Oh, and interlibrary loan may be a thing of the past, too. Many e-book packages don't allow that."

Discussion : "How Important Are Open eBook Standards to Universities?"

From INFOdocket, news of this recent commentary on the JISC study :

New from UK’s JISC.

For universities and colleges looking to bring their teaching resources online, many are using the new ePub3 standard, which is what underpins Apple’s new iBooks and is become the defacto standard for ebooks. Linking to a JISC report to help universities understand the benefits of ePub3, JISC programme manager Ben Showers speaks to Nicola Yeeles via Skype to explain what universities and colleges can do to help their people use the standard.

Ben Showers discusses the podcast in this blog post.

Direct to Podcast (6:31)

Print archives & the CA digital registry

From INFOdocket :

From a CDFLINFO News Post by Patricia Martin, California Digital Library:

University of California (UC) libraries are running out of space for print journals at the same time that circulation of print journals has declined. In response, print archiving programs like the Western Regional Storage Trust (WEST) are proving that UC libraries can eliminate redundant print copies, reclaim precious shelf space and assure that a print copy is available if it is needed. All ten UC campuses are WEST members.

First, print archiving member libraries analyze which of their print journals are held in common, then the libraries with the longest journal runs are asked if they will agree to retain a print copy for a long period of time. ... The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) entered into a partnership with the California Digital Library (CDL) to create the system that will perform collection analysis and identify likely candidate titles for archiving for the WEST partner libraries. ... the Print Archives Preservation Registry (PAPR). ...

[Clip]

...

The PAPR team has recently produced collection analysis reports for WEST, indicating  which titles are widely held among member libraries so that WEST members can select titles that will offer the greatest benefit in being archived. The collection analysis system is designed to identify widely held titles based on input criteria from an archiving program. Once titles are selected for archiving, PAPR identifies the institution with the longest run in order to make recommendations for archiving. Reports containing the information necessary to make local decisions are  provided to libraries to assist in their archiving workflows. Finally, reports will be produced for member libraries showing which titles can be de-selected based on archiving work done by partner libraries. PAPR was built to allow flexibility so that any archiving program can use its own decision-making criteria to produce reports and assist libraries with archiving and de-selection decisions.

Read the Full Text of Patricia Martin’s Update Post

Learn More About the PAPR Project at the California Digital Library

PAPR will be available in 2012, with additional enhancements planned for 2013. Searches of the database will be openly available through the CRL website.

Learn More About the PAPR Project via Center for Research Libraries

 

Publishing Outlook 2012

Both from the publishers' perspective (8 executives talk about what the future holds, particularly in regard to ebooks), and in terms of "eBooks By the Numbers." 

These are from the Book Business blog.

The codex is dead, long live the codex

Wayne Bivens-Tatum, over at Academic Librarian, writes a cogent explanation/defense of why humanists prefer print to e-books:

http://blogs.princeton.edu/librarian/2011/11/the-codex-is-dead-long-live-the-codex/

Essentially, he argues that working with multiple print texts is currently more efficient than working with multiple e-books, and that this kind of work is central to research in the humanities:

I think this is an exam­ple where breath­less ebook prophets are push­ing a for­mat that for now remains an inad­e­quate tool for human­is­tic schol­arly research, and I sus­pect they’re doing so because they never do any of that type of research, so they either don’t know or don’t care about the inad­e­quate tools. Tech­nol­ogy that doesn’t make work eas­ier is bad tech­nol­ogy, no mat­ter how much some peo­ple might like it for their casual read­ing. When the tools improve, no one will be protest­ing the demise of the codex.

Nothing perhaps that we don't already know, but a useful reminder of the pragmatics of the research process, particularly his description of the mechanics of his own research.

“Academic E-Books: Innovation and Transition”

From INFOdocket :

A new article by Peter Brantley from the Publisher’s Weekly web site.

From the Article:

There is a growing crisis in the academic monograph marketplace. College and university libraries are experiencing budget cuts; there are too many presses publishing too many titles; there’s growing pressure to figure out open access (OA) solutions...

[Clip]

Libraries, presses, and scholars are pressing forward with several interesting proposals (Clifford Lynch of CNI wrote a prescient overview of the options in 2010). And I just attended an investigatory meeting, held at the Radcliffe Institute, at Harvard for one of the most promising new efforts: the development of a Global Library Constortium (GLC), the brainchild of Frances Pinter, former publisher of Bloomsbury Academic in the UK, and founder of EIFL, an international library consortium of consortia supporting greater access to information.

[Clip]

The GLC proposal would operate on a similar basis, with libraries pooling together into a membership coalition that purchases the rights to titles offered by participating publishers. Those books would then be made available on an open access basis, perhaps with Creative Commons license terms. Libraries would place bids for each offered title into a pool, in a fashion similar to the way Groupon works; if there was sufficient interest to hit the price trigger point, the publisher would release the title into the open access pool with costs apportioned among participating institutions. Once made open access, titles would be publicly readable through a web browser interface, but downloadable PDFs or EPUBs would only be freely available to GLC members.

Learn More by Reading the Complete Article by Peter Brantley

“STM eBooks: Librarian Perspectives on the First 5 Years”

From INFOdocket :

"Via a Springer News Release:

Springer celebrates its 50,000th eBook, available on its online platform SpringerLink.

[Clip]

In addition, as announced in October 2011, Springer will digitize nearly all books it has published since 1842. By adding the Springer Book Archives to SpringerLink by the end of 2012, the total number of titles will increase to well over 100,000 eBooks, including valuable historic research dating back to the 1840s.

[Clip]

Springer launched its eBook collection in 2006. For the fifth anniversary, the publishing house consulted leading librarians across the academic, corporate and government sectors to gain their perspective on the past, present and future of the eBook revolution. Springer collected the best practices about library implementation, business models and the paper-to-electronic transition, and included these insights in a far-reaching white paper. This paper — written for librarian, publisher and aggregator audiences — explores the shared challenges and opportunities that eBooks present to key stakeholders. The white paper is now available and can also be picked up at the Springer booth at the ALA 2012 Midwinter Meeting in Dallas.

Read the Complete Announcement"

Transmedia

A very interesting article in (on?) Publishing Perspectives looking at Transmedia and publishing, a subject that intrigues me at the same time as I struggle to deal with it as a librarian and selector. I can't help but noticing that in the entire article preservation is never mentioned : Transmedia: A New World of Opportunity for Authors and Publishers.

Transmedia: A New World of Opportunity for Authors and Publishers

NZ creates & markets ebooks en masse

From Publishing Perspectives :

"Several New Zealand publishing organizations have collaborated to digitize and sell the country’s books globally under the brand “Great New Zealand E-books.”"

Any chance of libraries being able to buy them??

"What's at Stake in the HathiTrust Lawsuit?"

From EDUCAUSE :

"In this free hour-long session, “What's at Stake in the HathiTrust Lawsuit?,” Marc Hoit, Jonathan Band, and James Grimmelman will discuss the legal questions on which the Authors Guild v. HathiTrust lawsuit will turn, and the potential implications for universities and libraries. The results could significantly influence libraries' digitization and digital distribution practices. Those unable to attend may wish to visit the archives after the event..."

Book Citation Index for Web of Knowledge

I'm intrigued by the prospect, but not too excited without more details. I saw the news about the additions on the ResourceShelf and then read through the press release. I would want to know :

From where come the "25,000 books in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities."? I do not read a diverse list of scholarly publishers (no De Gruyter? PUF? What scholarly books does ProQuest publish?) All languages? Who selects them? On what criteria? How is the chapter-level data for a monograph (e.g., not collected essays or conference proceedings) analysed? I find the information from Thompson rather vague. And how do the "Links from book and book chapter records to full text" work?

The press release touts that the books included "[date] back to 2005." That's only 5 years of books -- a vast time span for the sciences, but not for the humanities & many social sciences. At this rate, the value for most researchers will not fully be demonstrated for many years to come (especially as only 18% of the books will be in the "arts and humanities," which conversely relies most heavily on the print monograph).

Other comments? Opinions?

"Springer to digitize entire eBook archive"

From INFOdocket :

"Via No Shelf Required:

Will we ever have an eBook written by Albert Einstein?  YES!  Springer announced today plans to digitize their entire backlist, approximately 65,000 titles dating back to 1840.

Read the Complete Blog Post and News Release"

UofM Q&A re digitization

From INFOdocket :

"U. of Michigan Publishes Q&A About Digitization Efforts

From the U. of Michigan Public Affairs Office.

Eleven questions and answers about book digitization at the school focusing on orphan works.

Here’s one question and answer.

Q: Has the lawsuit altered the university’s digitization efforts or the Orphan Works Project?
A: No. We continue to digitize the works in our collection, and we continue our effort to identify and share digitized orphan works as described above.

The attention brought to the list of orphan works candidates as a result of the lawsuit has had a salutary effect on the project—rights holders have been identified, and we can now strengthen our pilot process going forward. From the outset we have enlisted the support of authors and publishers, including the Authors Guild, knowing that we would be more likely to succeed with their cooperation and outreach efforts."

more libraries to publish orphan books online

From WiredCampus :

"Several libraries today pledged to follow the University of Michigan’s lead in making available on their campuses digital copies of books whose copyright holders cannot be found to ask for permission. The libraries jumping in today are the University of California Libraries, and libraries at Cornell, Duke, Emory, and the Johns Hopkins Universities. The Universities of Florida and Wisconsin recently did the same. The libraries are all part of the HathiTrust..."

"Wellcome Library and ProQuest...to Digitize 15,000 Rare Books"

From INFODocket (to whom I am much beholden) :

From The Wellcome Library Blog:

...They will be made available through ProQuest’s new Early European Books (EEB) database...

We’ll be contributing our entire collection of pre-1700 non-English printed books – including many rare or obscure texts on subjects ranging from alchemy to zoology, as well as some of the most spectacularly illustrated books of the period. Landmark works include the first edition of anatomist Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (1543), the complete works of surgeon Ambroise Paré (c.1510-1590), Rabanus Maurus’s encyclopedia De sermonum proprietate (1467) (the medical section of which is sometimes called the first printed medical book) and a beautiful colored copy of Hartmann Schedel’s Liber chronicarum (‘The Nuremberg Chronicle’, 1493), formerly owned by the artist William Morris (1834-1896). In addition, the project will also provide access to important continental editions of works by famous English medical authors, such as William Harvey’s seminal work on the circulation of the blood, De motu cordis (1628), which was first published in Germany.

...

ten percent of the collection – about 1,500 books – will be selected by the Wellcome Library to be made freely available to any user worldwide via the Wellcome Digital Library portal.

Read the Complete Blog Post

ebooks in Libraries affecting academic pbrs

From the InfoViews blog :

"The following post is the fourth in a series from Leslie Lees, VP of Content Development from ebrary.  Academic E-books – The Shifting Landscape discusses changes that are occurring with ebooks and implications for libraries and their users.  –Mike

... We discussed the irony that his book, which is about the futility of attempts by publishers to artificially recreate the restrictions from printed books in the new digital world, has not yet been made available as a library e-book due to an embargo to allow for individual purchases.

That scholarly publishers are, in fact, very aware of this irony, and of the challenges posed by this new digital culture, is made clear in the AAUP-sponsored report, Sustaining Scholarly Publishing: New Business Models for University Presses.  The report is an attempt to find ways out of the impasse in which publishers find themselves, wherein the shift from the scarcity of access in the print world which dictated the way that books were written, published, and sold, to a situation of hyper-abundance that seriously challenges their traditional business models.

..."

Notre Dame Joins HathiTrust

From INFODocket :

From a Notre Dame News Release:

The University of Notre Dame has become the newest member of HathiTrust, a partnership of major academic and research libraries collaborating in compiling a massive digital library. Notre Dame’s Hesburgh Libraries is a sustaining member and will work toward digitizing its unique collections.

...

Read the Complete Announcement

GoogleBooks includes full-color scans from 16th- & 17th-century titles

From the Google Books blog :

"Books from 16th and 17th centuries now in full-color view

Google has formed partnerships with many of the great libraries of Europe, including the Czech National Library, the National Library of the Netherlands, the Austrian National Library, the National Libraries of Florence and Rome, the Municipal Library of Lyon, Ghent University, the Bavarian State Library, the National Library of Catalonia, the University Complutense of Madrid, the University Library of Lausanne and the Oxford University Library.

To date, we’ve scanned about 150,000 books worldwide from the 16th and 17th centuries, and another 450,000 from the 18th century. With our growing list of partners, we expect to scan many hundreds of thousands more pre-1800 titles.

In digitizing books from any century, we try to create clean images with black text and color illustrations on white backgrounds. This helps enhance readability, save storage spaces and serve illustrated pages faster to readers. However, partners, researchers and other readers have frequently asked us to show the older books as they actually appear, for a couple of reasons: First, these books are interesting artifacts. They have changed their appearance over the centuries, and there is a cultural value in viewing them. Second, because of aging and bleed-through, it can be very difficult to display the images as clean text over a white background; in many cases it’s actually easier to read the text from the original (what we call "full-color") images.

Printing was introduced in the 15th century, but a great flowering of experimentation in typography took place in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Secunda centuria, das ist das ander Hundert der Evangelischen Wahrheit
Johann Nass, 1568


Thargum, hoc est, Paraphrasis Onkeli Chaldaica in sacra Biblia : ex Chaldaeo
Paul Fagius, 1546

Some have great historical significance. Others have interesting typography and wood block illustrations. The links open thumbnail versions of each book (icons with 4 little squares). You get other views by clicking on nearby icons; from the thumbnail view, you can click on a page to expand it."

Neotake.com (search engine for e-books in 20ish languges)

From the enssib blog :

Neotake.com : 4 400 000 ebooks référencés

Par Anne-Laurence Margérard, le 13 avril 2011

Neotake.com ...  est un moteur de recherche dédié aux livres numériques. Il compte actuellement 4 400 000 références dans une vingtaine de langues ...

Le mode de recherche se révèle très simple et propose des filtres tels que livres payants/gratuits, formats recherchés, langue, catégorie. La présentation des résultats intègre nombre de données : formats, DRM, prix, métadonnées....Un lien mène directement sur la page de téléchargement du libraire. ...