Digital Public Library launches

Digital Public Library launches

I’ve written before (briefly) about the Digital Public Library:

http://dp.la/

This is an ambitious project to make works available for free online. It is funded partially by the US Federal government through the Institute of Museum and Library Services, although there are many private partners as well.

The DPLA went online yesterday; I wanted to wait to write about it until I’d had a chance to try it out some.

When somebody says “library” to me, I still think primarily of a place to borrow books to read. That’s what I expected here: a super-duper Project Gutenberg, where I could go in and get classic (public domain) books to read. I was particularly looking forward to obscurities that I couldn’t get other places on the web.

I have to say, at this point, I’m a little disappointed in how it met that image of mine.

I put “Tom Sawyer” into the search, and I would have expected The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer Abroad, and Tom Sawyer, Detective to pop up in easily downloadable links. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a lot of commentaries as well.

Instead, the first thing that appears is an image of some sort of metal plaque depicting Mark Twain.

Next came The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as text. I clicked on that, and it gave me a link to the file at

http://www.archive.org

Sure, that would still get me the book…but the DPLA is serving more as a search engine in that case than a library.

I looked back at it: the picture of the medal object also took me to another site…the picture wasn’t stored at the DPLA.

Glancing through the first page of the results, none of them were the other books…they were mostly images.

I could filter for text, and I did.

There were reviews, and a reader’s guide, and a picture of a movie theatre from the 1930s (showing a movie about Tom Sawyer)…basically, ephemera rather than the books themselves.

Now, I’m a big fan of ephemera. I love looking at old things like that…playbills, fanzines, posters. It just isn’t what I expected the main focus to be in a library.

I first tried going there on my Kindle Fire with a different book…and what I got was a PDF. It wouldn’t display online on my Fire, and downloading it didn’t seem to work. That was on a different site. The file for that book is also on Archive.org, which would have worked better. I wonder if they are trying to find best links, or what the process is.

There are some cool features, which indicate that the future could be much brighter.

On the home screen, you have links for Exhibitions, Map, Timeline, and Apps.

The Exhibitions are special collections. Right now, we have

• Activism in the U.S.
• America’s Great Depression and Roosevelt’s New Deal
• Boston Sports Temples
• Bread and Roses Strike of 1912: Two Months in Lawrence, Massachusetts, that Changed Labor History
• History of Survivance: Upper Midwest 19th Century Native American Narratives
• Indomitable Spirits: Prohibition in the United States
• This Land Is Your Land: Parks and Public Spaces

I’m guessing it’s not a coincidence that two of the stories have to do with Massachusetts right now, but it might be.

Activism in the U.S. brought a number of sub-topics…and a sub-topic basically got me some text and a slideshow of images. It was a bit like something you would see on many websites, although the images were unusual.

I thought the Map might be fun. Without selecting anything, I was told there were 2,064,314 results. There may be more things in the library which aren’t able to be located geographically in the USA.

I’m in California, and at the initial zoom level, there was a circle (one of 13 total) over California and a bit of Nevada showing 14K (presumably, 14,0000 files). I zoomed in (and panned with my finger), and there were 12K in California, 2K in Nevada. Zooming in didn’t change the numbers, so I tapped the 12K.

As that point, it appeared I could scroll through those 12,000 items. Tapping where it said “California”, then I could see it a bit more manageably…and then umber became 13,254. That’s oddly a mismatch…perhaps the California search includes things about California?

I next used the searchbox for the map, and searched for my town. That gave me 2 results on my Fire…but I couldn’t seem to get them to show up. On my desktop, I got twelve results…and I could see those.

I used the Timeline, and scrolled back to 1939 (an incredible year in pop culture history). They listed 11,221 items. To refine the results, you click the “Show” button (I didn’t find that entirely intuitive).

The order of most results were: image; text; moving image; sound; and physical object. There was a click for more, which added: dataset; collection; software; an interactive resource.

Interactive resource appeared to be the timeline itself, and software told me that there were zero when I got there (but one before I clicked it).

The moving images weren’t actually theatrical movies (there would be ones in the public domain from them), but short subjects, sometimes they might have been from newsreels, sometimes they were more scientific.

Clicking on Federal Theatre at the World’s Fair took me to another site, where it played on my desktop (I didn’t try that one on my Fire).

The Timeline would be a lot more interesting with actual public domain pop culture items in it…I still like it, but I’m a bit geeky about that.

Unfortunately, I have to say that’s generally going to be the appeal here. I was hoping for something that would make a lot more casually consumed media available…books, magazines, movies, radio shows, that sort of thing. Instead, at this point, I’d say this is more of academic interest. That’s still really valuable, and I hope they digitize a lot more. However, it’s a bit like a library that only has a rare books collection, and no popular titles.

I’ve written before about my hope that the Federal government might start digitizing lots of stuff in the public domain (they have tons of copies of that stuff at the Library of Congress and making it available for free in universal formats online. That may still happen…but I’m guessing it was easier to get funding for something that is more of a prestige item like this. I’m still going to hold out hopes for dime novels, though.

I was going to finish there, but I did a

search for “Tarzan”

Eleven results..three were text, and one of those was book review. The original book wasn’t there (easily obtainable legally on line), and there was an image of a Tarzan lunchbox from the Smithsonian! Again, I do think that’s cool…but not what I expected.

Go ahead and check out the DPLA…feel free to tell me and my readers what you think about it by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Personal Reading Consultants

Personal Reading Consultants

It happened again.

I thought I had come up with something new, and it turns out it already exists…although, in this case, in quite a different form (that’s not unusual).

I was thinking the other day about just how many books (and other reading material) are available to people.

Right now, just in the USA Kindle store, there are 1,882,850 results under e-books.

How do you choose?

Well, although I consider myself an eclectic reader, not all of these books are going to appeal equally to me.

Step one, I could eliminate any book that blocks text-to-speech access…I just don’t buy those. That’s not going to be all that many, though…I’d be surprised if it’s 20,000 altogether.

That would still leave me with more than 1,850,000.

Step two, we could take out books I already own (although I might re-read some sometimes, it’s not common for me). Figuring both paperbooks and e-books, again, that’s probably not more than 20,000. I may have read more than that over my life, but that’s not the same as owning them.

Still not much of a reduction.

There are topics which might not appeal to me, like certain hobbies interesting. I can’t say I wouldn’t find a book on…1930s hockey players or some kind of actuarial formulae interesting, but they wouldn’t be high on my list.

Oh, we could reasonably eliminate books in languages I don’t read! That would help.

As a vegetarian, I’m also not going to be interested in books on preparing meat dishes…although I do see that on TV a lot as we watch cooking competition shows.

Once we got all of those out of the way, there are still going to be much more than a million books to consider.

Let’s say I spend on average ten seconds evaluating the appeal of a book. Hmm…10,000,000 seconds comes out to something like 115 days (non-stop, no sleep), I think. Of course, during that period, more books are being published (we can figure something like a 1,000 a day to the USA Kindle store).

So far, this is all just very broad strokes…it’s eliminating books I wouldn’t want to read, but it isn’t finding books I would find exceptionally good.

That got me thinking about the publishers’ representatives that would come to the brick-and-mortar bookstore I managed.

Somebody would come in, cull out the books that weren’t selling well, and suggest more for us to buy.

It would, of course, be up to me to finally say yay or nay, but the recommendations were quite valuable.

What if there were people who did that for individuals?

You would pay someone to make book recommendations to you on a regular basis.

I think there might be a real opportunity there.

It’s not just about saving a hundred dollars a month on books (after all, you can “return” any Kindle store book within seven days of purchase for a refund, so money isn’t really a risk).

It’s about saving time.

Time is a super valuable commodity.

I remember having a conversation with somebody years ago about how truck commercials had changed.

They had been largely about the utility of the truck, or the sexiness. You’d see the wheels spinning as it towed a dinosaur out of a ditch or something, or the back of the truck would be full of “beautiful people” in swimsuits going to the beach.

Then, it started to be that you would just see the truck parked on top of mountain.

It didn’t even have to move during the commercial.

The owner would, presumably, just be kicked back, doing nothing (maybe reading, but they wouldn’t show you that…”brains” and pickup trucks? Not a classic combination for advertisers).

The suggestion was that owning the truck would give you leisure time away from it all.

I always finish a book I start reading (even though some are a slog). I have people say to me, “Who has time to read bad books?”

Picture this.

You pay a consultant, say, $50 a month. That person Skypes or calls you once a month, and talks with you for maybe five minutes.

They recommend books to you.

You personally.

Based on what they know about you…maybe through surveys first (like a dating site for books), then through getting to know you.

You love almost every book they recommend to you.

Would that be worth it?

If you had a lot of money and your time was really valuable, it certainly might be. Maybe it would be business books for a CEO…or just novels for a busy person.

I do think this could work.

There could also be cut-rate versions, where you met in a group (a Google hangout, perhaps).

That person could also (with permission of clients) announce (and make available for purchase) books that they have recommended. Would people want to read the same books that, say, Beyoncé was reading, or Nate Silver, or Joss Whedon? Yes, I think they might.

I don’t think this would likely be a business that would make you rich, but I think people could make a living at it.

If they were good, or course.

If they weren’t good, the relationship would end in a hot second…or at least, they wouldn’t pay again next month.

That’s one of the things that would make this much better than reviews in magazines. It’s not just that the recommendation is specifically for you…it’s that, if you don’t like the recommendation, it has a direct impact on the person making the recommendation. The money flow depends on being right.

Let’s take a quick look at the economics.

I’m going to say you can do four client contacts an hour, and you do that six and a half hours a day (I’m giving you a lunch and breaks), and you do that four days a week (you need one day just for research).

Twenty-six clients a day, let’s go with 17 days in a month, so that’s 442 clients (with once a month calls).

442*50=$22,100 a month.

Hey, that’s a pretty nice living!

Of course, finding 442 people who would pay you $50 a month would be a huge challenge.

Still, if you find…100 people who pay you $10 a month, that’s $12,000 a year. That could make a decent side salary.

That doesn’t count having a website and making peripheral sales that way.

Do I think I’d be good at this?

Yes, I’d probably be pretty good. Having been a bookstore manager would help…and that’s one group of people that I could see making this work.

I mentioned that when I looked up the term I was going to use (“Personal Reading Consultant”), I found something that was already in use.

It’s used by libraries for librarians that recommend books:

Library Developments article

It’s in place in several libraries. You give them a list of books (or perhaps movies and TV shows, as the article explains) and a librarian recommends books for you.

That’s not really a proof of concept for my idea, since you don’t pay for the service (directly) or buy the books.

Of course, with mine, the books recommended could be free sometimes, although I think the Personal Reading Consultant could work some things where they got referral fees. My Significant Other pointed out that it might also get you press releases and such from publishers, if you were a known, successful…hm, I need a new term.

“Personal Reading Advisor”? Already being used (although it isn’t actually personal, the way I mean it.

“Royal Book Taster”? That one’s not being used, but doesn’t really fit.

I’ll think about that more, but I hope this idea helps some of you out there. If it starts you on a new path, I’d love to hear about it. If you have reasons why this wouldn’t work, feel free to say so. I do think it would be successful for a small minority of people who tried it…like being a tailor, or…a personal chef or something. A lot more people would think they could do it than actually could, and there would certainly be luck involved. Do you think social media can fill this need for most people…at no expense? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Do you need a quiet place to read?

Do you need a quiet place to read?

Hats off to Laura Miller at Salon for this post:

Bring back shushing librarians

That’s not because I particularly endorse the admonition in the headline. It’s for catching something which hadn’t stood out to me in the recent

Pew survey on libraries in the digital age

Miller observes, that, in what people value about public libraries

“”Quiet study spaces for adults and children” comes in fourth, and here is where the results go rogue. The percentage of people who consider quiet spaces to be a very important element in any public library is 76, only one percentage point less than the value given to computer and Internet access. A relatively silent place to read is almost exactly as valuable to these people as the Internet!”

That one fascinates me, because it’s the opposite of how I read.

I prefer to be in a noisy environment. I want to read with the TV on in the background, or in a crowded and noisy restaurant.

Now, I know that’s not how most people feel, and the Pew survey demonstrates that to some extent. I say to “some extent” because the question isn’t just about reading, but about study, which could be different.

It’s more important for me to have a data rich environment when I am studying than when I am reading for pleasure (although studying is a pleasure for me…but I digress).

I remember when our kid (now an adult) was first starting to do serious studying for school. My Significant Other said (and I’m paraphrasing): “Should we allow music during the studying?” I said, “How can the kid study without music?”

That concept actually baffled me. I couldn’t imagine studying for school while in the low-tech equivalent of an isolation booth.

I want something else happening…so I don’t get bored with the studying. The studying doesn’t take up my full attention, typically. I’m understanding and remembering it all with only part of my mind. If there isn’t already something going on in the environment, I’ll look for something…and that’s a distraction.

I was explaining this to a class once (of highly educated adults), and somebody said to me, “Is that like attention deficit?” I replied, “No, it’s more like attention surplus.” I have “more attention” available than the work can occupy. It’s not that I can’t keep paying attention to the work…it’s that I want to pay attention to that and to something else.

I want to put up a sign that says, “People are trying to work…please make some noise.”

Now, I’ve heard from people over and over again about how humans can’t really multitask. While I won’t debate the mechanics of what is happening (are successful multitaskers really just very good at switching back and forth rapidly and repeatedly), I’ve found that about fifteen percent of people are good at having two things happening at once.

With that group, if you stop them from being on the internet while you are teaching, they aren’t going to learn it.

The problem arises because a lot more than fifteen percent of people think they are in that group, when they really aren’t.

Not too long ago, they asked us not to use our computers while we were in a recurring team meeting…that lasts basically a whole day. It was nice that they asked if anybody had a problem with that, and I explained that I did. There would be little point in my being in the meeting if I couldn’t be doing something else at the same time, since I wouldn’t absorb any of it. I was the only person to say that, by the way. Oh, and I am perhaps the most participatory person in the meeting in those situations (one of the top three, I’d say), while I’m checking my e-mail.

The solution in that case was for me to take the minutes (and fortunately, I’m good at that). That gives me something else to do, and that certainly helps.

I am not saying that this is superior. I think it’s connected in some ways to my having quite a lengthy process to get to sleep, and to waking up slowly. I am very envious of my Significant Other’s ability to just announce a twenty minute nap, and then be up, active, and refreshed twenty-two minutes later! It takes me that long just to get to sleep (although I now have the process down so it isn’t difficult, it’s still a complicated procedure).

It’s just different.

So, I was curious about you.

I realize some of you would pick all three of these answers: try to do the one that’s true the most often:

I’m also puzzled when people seem to think that having multiple things happening around you at once is a modern development. I’ve never understood that. If you were painstakingly making a stone knife in the Paleolithic Age and weren’t constantly aware of rustles in the tall grass, and movement behind the rocks, you’d never get a chance to use your fancy high-tech artificial fang.

I think we’re likely to have evolved to work on one task while paying attention to what is happening around us.

This “Cone of Silence” idea for studying? That just seems very artificial.

That people rate it nearly as highly as having internet access while in a library is surprising to me. Oh, it’s cool when I’m in a library and it’s all quiet…I think in part because that makes it a different environment than what I normally encounter. I suppose a laser light show might have a similar sense of “altered reality” for me.

For those of you who like the quiet (and again, my guess is that’s the vast majority of people), have you ever gone to the library just to have that around you? Do you ever go in, find a quiet spot, lean back, lace your fingers behind your neck, close your eyes, and just soak it all in? I’m sure people must.

Maybe we should have “quiet booths” on the street, where you could just go in there and shut everything else out. Of course, those would inevitably be used for activities some would consider unsavory.

Say, I do remember that in The Jungle, a sort of giant Habitrail for kids, they did have a quiet room for parents! You’d be there for a birthday party, and two hundred kids were yelling and screaming and getting stuck on a platform because they were afraid to go down a tunnel, and you could just go somewhere else and let the employees deal with it. I do think people read in there…when we were going, we didn’t carry the internet with us.

What do you think? How important is quiet to you when you read? Is it natural to prefer focus and exclusion when studying? Is it a reason why you go to the library? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

Oh, and I do recommend the post I linked at the start of this article…just read it quietly.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Round up #144: Kanada, Amazon pulls an Ursula

Round up #144: Kanada, Amazon pulls an Ursula

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

E, eh?

In this

press release

Amazon announced yesterday much greater Kindle integration in Canada. Canadian customers have been able to buy books from Amazon.com in the past, but this sets up a solid localized presence, such as we see in some other global locations. The Paperwhite and Mindle (my name for the “entry level” Kindle) are now available directly to Canadians, they can now access a Canadian Kindle store from their devices (as opposed to buying from Amazon.com), and Kindle Direct Publishing expands as well.

While generally a big positive, this may have some people seeing takeaways also (which seems to be always the case). It may be necessary now to have the appropriate credentials (a Canadian address and payment method) to get some e-books and other media. Canadians living  in the USA may see books they would like to purchase, but not be able to do so because of their now American credentials.

On the other hand, this may bring more contemporary books in French and on topics of more interest to Canadians into the USA store as well…if they are produced for the Canadian market and Canadian Kindle store, they can also be sold in the USA (if they have the rights).

I haven’t heard yet, but my guess is that KDP authors’ books will automatically be made available in Canada if you have stated global rights, but I’m sure we’ll hear shortly. Yep! I just checked and my latest book, The Mind Boggles: A Unique Book of Quotations, is available in the Canadian store, and priced at CDN $0.99.

This also, by the way, goes right after Kobo, which is headquartered in Canada (but owned by a Japanese company).

Amazon buys Ivona text-to-speech

As regular readers know, I use text-to-speech for typically hours a week in the car. I love that driving is no longer “wasted non-reading time”. I do drive quite a bit, and it lets me enjoy that much more than I did with music or talk radio.

I’ve been using TTS on my Kindles since my Kindle 2, and I’ve written about how I find Ivona, the TTS on my Kindle HDs, to be much better than the RealSpeak, Vocalizer, or Pico (which we have had on other devices with the Kindle name).

In this

press release

(and a private e-mail), Amazon announced that they have acquired Ivona (“I liked it so much, I bought the company”).

It’s interesting that the press release notes that

“IVONA offers voice and language portfolios with 44 voices in 17 languages and more in development.”

Does that suggest that we may be getting additional voice options for our Kindle devices?

Well, not necessarily, although I think it increases the likelihood. When Amazon buys a company, they don’t buy it just for their own use, but for its position in the market. Ivona will undoubtedly continue to sell  licensing to other companies, and perhaps even direct competitors to Amazon.

The ability to have a different voice on your machine is important, though. It’s not just that it sounds different, but that it can do a different language. The way text-to-speech works is that it doesn’t just sound out every letter, but makes use of phrases and sentences. If it had to sound everything out, it would be pretty incomprehensible (“campaign” might pronounce the “g”, for example). For TTS to do good French, or Russian, it needs to have been initially created in those languages.

TTS takes up memory, so I don’t think you will suddenly get the choice of 44 languages on your Kindle Fire HD. I do think you may be able to download different voices from the Amazon Appstore in the future (and they might or might not be free).

I think this also means that we might get Ivona on our Kindle Fire generation 1s, but I’m not sure about that.

One more thing: Amazon’s vast resources, and willingness to invest in the future with a present loss, suggests to me that they might do celebrity voices. Recording the voice for TTS (which is then reassembled as needed by the software) is labor intensive. However, can’t you see them paying for Samuel L. Jackson or Jane Lynch to become a voice option? Sure, I could have picked some other people, but have you heard Samuel L. Jackson doing Taylor Swift? (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&cad=rja&ved=0CEIQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fallthingsd.com%2F20130121%2Fviral-video-samuel-l-jackson-channels-taylor-swift-oh-goody%2F&ei=llYBUc_mNtHZigLcvoCwDQ&usg=AFQjCNF2EYKFHNK0PYG3OQpzM3c3iJr_9g&bvm=bv.41524429,d.cGE)?

There’s a lot of investment in having a star do this, but that could be an Amazon exclusive while Ivona continued to serve its other commercial uses.

Pew Internet: “Library Services in the Digital Age”

Major research firm Pew has placed on line this

summary

of a recent survey they did on library usage.

I know that I have readers that are passionate about public libraries and their current and future role in society, and I strongly recommend reading this piece.

They asked patrons and employees about current use and possible future use, and provide some very interesting statistics.

I don’t want to take too much away from them, so I’ll just cite a couple of things:

• More than half of the respondents thought that public libraries should “definitely” or “maybe” move some printed books “…out of public locations to free up space for tech centers, reading rooms, meeting rooms, and cultural events”
• I was fascinated by the apparent lack of impact of the Kindle on library goes. They asked how public library usage had changed in the past five years (the Kindle is a bit over five years old). 52% said it hadn’t changed. 26% said it had increased…and 22% said it had decreased. That’s not that big of a net change (although the change is positive). I would have expected something which revolutionized the way serious American readers read books to have more of an impact. I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was a positive impact: I’ve borrowed public library books on my Kindle much more recently than I’ve borrowed a public library p-book (paperbook). Perhaps restrictive publisher policies on public libraries and e-books has dampened the impact?

The Guardian: “WH Smith plans to open more stores after Christmas boost”

Guardian article

W.H. Smith is a very well-known and influential UK bookstore chain (although they do much more than that, and in more places…I’m sure I’ve bought something in a W.H. Smith store in the USA, probably in an airport). They were influential in the creation of the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) system that we will use.

So, it’s interesting that they plan to open more brick-and-mortar stores in the future.

Barnes & Noble shouldn’t see that as too much of a ray of hope, though, and it’s certainly not all about paperbooks. Just as B&N has done, Smith’s has expanded other product categories in the stores, including stationery. They have invested online, which can provide support to the brick-and-mortars.

They had one the Guardian calls a loss in “underlying sales”.

Still, I”m impressed that anybody is opening more brick and mortar stores that carry the same products you can get online.

What do you think? If you are a Canadian, are you seeing any impact on what’s available to you? If you have both US and Canadian credentials, how will you decide which store to use (or will you have two accounts?)? Does it concern you that Amazon bought Ivona, or is that a good thing? Oh, and did you get the reference to Ursula? That’s the sea witch in Disney’s The Little Mermaid that “bought” Ariel’s voice. It wasn’t stolen, and you might commonly hear…it was a bargain (although Ursula certainly used underhanded methods…er, “undertentacled?). Whose voice would you pay to have reading you your books? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Round up #142: Stanislaw Lem bargain, college system doomed?

Round up #142: Stanislaw Lem bargain, college system doomed?

The ILMK Round ups are short pieces which may or may not be expanded later.

Cory Doctorow on why authors get paid what they get paid

This

O’Reilly Tools of Change column

by Cory Doctorow is one of the best insights into publishing I have ever read.

Doctorow and I don’t agree on everything, and I know that there are people who follow Cory’s ideas with a passion.

This column explains the pricing pressures that affect how much authors get paid, why mega-mergers in publishing will have a negative impact on that…and the effect of piracy (the last one is one we tend to approach differently).

I strongly recommend it.

Kindle Review: “An Author’s Story of Walking Away from His Publisher”

I’ve written several times about why authors might stay with their traditional publishers. This

guest post in Abhi’s iReaderReview

by Ed Ditto gives a great, personal, detailed, insider story of why an author might leave one.

Not surprisingly, e-books are a large part of the tale: both in the lack of attention paid to them by the publisher, and in the way they provide the author with an alternative, potentially more lucrative, to traditional publishing.

Any tradpub that wants to survive in an evolving world should read this one.

Coincidentally, my rotating column in The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing this week was

What do tradpubs do…and can you do it?
TechCrunch: “How California’s Online Education Pilot Will End College As We Know It”

Gregory Ferenstein has an interesting opinion piece in this

TechCrunch article

California, which you may remember mandating e-textbooks for some high school classes years ago, is a piloting an online college class program which the article author says will change college (and the story offers a timeline of how).

I don’t think anybody thinks college education has been a model of consumer efficiency (and we could debate about whether or not it should be).

This is, in my opinion, a brave line:

“As someone who has taught large courses at a University of California, I can assure readers that my job could have easily been automated.”

I love the interaction I have with my students, but my situation is very different. I don’t have two hundred people in a lecture hall. Most often, I have fewer than ten. I’ve taught in situations where there were more, certainly, but the feel of a class is very different if Waldo could be hidden in the crowd.

It’s an intriguing perspective, although I think many of you will find it a tad hyperbolic.

By the way, the picture used to illustrate it is of John Belushi in Animal House, and I don’t think I’ve ever told this story here.

Many, many years ago, I had a director who was a big fan of Belushi’s (I wasn’t really a Saturday Night Live watcher, didn’t know much about the show). There was a “Stars of Saturday Night Live” tour coming to town, and the director wanted somebody to go and give John Belushi a gift.

Well, I went, and the show was terrible. It was Belushi and a couple of the writers, as I recall. People expected Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner, but there were some clips and such and Belushi. The star was aggressive with the college audience, and it wasn’t going well. In fact, the college later would offer anyone who wanted it their money back.

One of Belushi’s taunts was to say, “Do you want to come up here?”

I had informed a Security Guard about this gift (it was a gag thing…not important to the story). When Belushi ended up saying to me connected to the giving of the gift, “Do you want to come up here?” (remember, that was a putdown, the way it was delivered), I said, “Sure,” and hopped up on the stage.

I spoke for a minute, and Belushi was making funny faces or something behind me.

Belushi said, “You’re a real professional, you know?”

I replied, “Well, one of us has to be.”

There was a big “oohing” sound up through the first several rows of the audience.

Belushi went backstage, got a chainsaw, and chopped up the lectern (which may have been designed to do that). A piece of the lectern, though, stuck in the giant screen they had been using for projection…that had to have been expensive!

My little ad ib actually got into the local newspaper, where I was described as “one nervy spectator”.

After that, I wouldn’t watch anything with Belushi in it, because I didn’t want the actor/comic to benefit from it.

Of course, after Belushi’s death, I realized there might have been a lot of factors in the nasty, unfunny performance. Nowadays, I would have been more forgiving (although I might have still said the line…it was funny), but I think you can learn more tolerance for “bad behavior” over time: I have.

GigaOm: “Google Books and the librarian backlash”

GigaOm has an

excerpt

from Jeff John Roberts’

The Battle for the Books: Inside Google’s Gambit to Create the World’s Biggest Library

which is only $2.99 (the print length is listed at 55 pages).

I’ve sent myself a sample, and will probably listen to it driving to work today.

I’m sure many libraries saw it (and perhaps still see it) as a great thing when Google used their (literally) patented technology to scan books in their collections.

I’d love it if somebody could do that with my books, without damaging them, of course.

Well, it created a big hullabaloo of a legal situation (which still isn’t over).

Today’s Kindle Daily Deal: Lem and Block

There are a couple of well-known authors in today’s

Kindle Daily Deal

Remember to always check the price before you click that Buy button: this deal may not apply in your country, for example.

Stanislaw Lem was a Polish science fiction writer, but the works were much more concerned with communication than technology. I think that’s made them particularly difficult to translate well: Lem played with specific language, and you can’t always translate a pun on an idiom very effectively. However, these are books that can make you think about yourself (and humanity generally). When you read a book about FTL (Faster Than Light) travel, well, you just aren’t likely to experience that. If the point of the book is in how you exchange feelings and ideas with someone (or something) else, if it’s about understanding another perspective, that’s something you do every day.

Eden (Helen & Kurt Wolff Book)

is not Lem’s best known book (that would arguably be Solaris), and I haven’t read it…but I did buy it at $1.99.

The other one that stood out to me today was Lawrence Block’s

A Drop of the Hard Stuff (Matthew Scudder)

I’m going to venture that this might be a bit less complex than Lem’s Eden but it’s a well-reviewed book in the series, and I understand that you could start with this one. I always like to go from the beginning, but not all series require that.

One interesting thing: lately, the ad on my Kindle Fire has sometimes been for the book of the day, and it’s produced like a fine print ad. You actually see the book in the ad, meaning they are at least customized for this one-day deal (if not constructed from scratch for them each time). That’s nice…I like that the ads are often for books. They also use ads for current media (not available on the Fire) quite a bit…I was getting a bit tired of that House of Lies ad with Dan Cheadle’s pants on fire.

KHOU.com: “‘BiblioTech’ paperless library will be first of its kind in S.A. and nation”

Thanks to Chris Baker who tweeted me about this

KHOU.com article

It’s about, yes, San Antonio, Texas, opening a paperless public library later this year.

I wrote about the idea of public libraries going paperless back in 2010, and I’m curious to see how this works out for them.

Update: longer article on the library:

NPR article

By the way, seeing this tweet this way reinforced for me my decision not to be on Facebook. I see my Twitter feed in my morning Flipboard read, but I rarely go to the site. I wouldn’t have seen this question if it hadn’t been in Flipboard. I feel a bit bad about that: I know some people expect Twitter to be an active two-way communication tool, but I just don’t have the social capital to use it that way. I’d be terrible at maintaining a Facebook page with everything else I do, so I think it’s better that I just don’t do it.

What do you think? Will people taking classes online affect brick-and-mortar college viability? What could tradpubs (even small ones) do to keep their authors from leaving and publishing independently? Is piracy good for authors? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

Thanks to my reader Riva for helping to make this post more accurate.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

What should the role of public libraries be?

What should the role of public libraries be?

What do you think about when you envision a public library?

I think I still first go to being there as a kid. Walking through narrow aisles, looking up at all the books. I knew the Dewey Decimal system early, and I was often heading for non-fiction. There might be only a few books on a particular topic.

I did check out books, but I also read them right there in the library.

I also think of them for their reference desks. They would have huge, expensive, non-circulating titles. I would use those to research something (this would have been when I was older).

I was aware of them having a rare book collection, which they were really preserving, rather than sharing.

I’ve looked up newspaper articles in microfilm.

I also used to wander through the magazine aisles…those were often micro-market titles that were fascinating.

I have used them for internet access when it wasn’t handy (when I was on a jury, for example, and we’d get a lunch break…there was a public library right nearby). Now, of course, I would bring the internet with me.

The time has come for us to seriously think about what the role of a public library should be.

There are disagreements between public libraries and tradpubs (traditional publishers), and I can see a rational on the side of publishers (although I’d prefer that they make the books much more available to public libraries).

Here’s the question:

Should public libraries circulate current, popular, in-copyright books to people who can otherwise afford them?

Sure, it’s great to go a library and borrow a current bestseller (even though you might have to wait for it).

Is that an appropriate role, though?

I know, you figure you paid your taxes for the library, you should have access to everything in it. However, if you paid your taxes for a place with a food program for the disadvantaged, do you feel like you should be able to have lunch there when you are making a good living?

I think we need to break this down a bit.

First, let’s talk about the content…to keep this simple, I’m going to keep it on books.

There are books that are in copyright and books that aren’t. The latter are in the “public domain”…the public owns them. I think it’s a great use of the libraries to make public domain works available…I wish they were doing a lot more of that.

Project Gutenberg is one of the greatest public good works in history.

http://www.gutenberg.org/

There has been tremendous, selfless work done by this private organization to preserve and make available public domain works at no cost to users.

While I definitely recognize and admire the work they have done, the government should be doing it.

There should be professionals using high-quality scanning equipment digitizing and reviewing every public domain book possible, and making it available to the public just for the taxes.

That seems to me like a great function for the government, and we do already have the Library of Congress. The books should be preserved regardless of their perceived value, although I know that priorities would have to be used. I have some books in my own collection that I would love to have available to other people, and that will not be high on the government preservation list.

So, I’d like to see public libraries doing much more with public domain.

What about in-copyright books?

I don’t know that I see that as part of a public library’s role any more, when we are talking about the general population.

I’m not quite seeing the clear public good in the latest New York Times bestseller being available through your local public library.

Emotionally, there is a difference for me if it is an expensive work which is harder for people to access. I don’t think that’s logical, though: either public libraries compete with booksellers on in-copyright works, or they don’t.

Now, it’s very different for me for people who are disadvantaged…that’s the second element. I would say we needs-test people, and if they can’t afford the books, that’s where the public library comes into play. The public library should also make EBRs (E-Book Readers) available to the disadvantaged.

I think that’s very important: it shouldn’t be that a $100 book is only available to the upper classes…but it also doesn’t mean we should make it available for free to those who can afford it, in my opinion.

In terms of being preservatories of paperbooks, yes, that’s a very important thing. Those “ephemeral” titles I have, the ones that wouldn’t generally be seen as having lasting value, should be preserved and shouldn’t count on me to do it.

I’d also to see much more universal availability in digital collections. It seems strange to me that somebody in one town doesn’t have access to a public domain title that someone in another town can get.

These are the things I see as the appropriate functions of public libraries in the future:

• Preservation of paper materials
• Digitization and circulation of public domain materials to anyone
• Circulation of in-copyright materials on a needs-tested basis, including the necessary equipment on which to access it

Would that be a radical change? Yes. I see the three of those as absolutely serving the public good, though. I think tradpubs would be more likely to support those ideas.

What do you think? Would taking out the bestsellers make it less likely for the average person to support a library, since it has less value to them? At what level of government could this all happen (city, county, state, federal), and how much of a problem would that be? Should pubic libraries simply go away, and be replaced by private efforts, like Project Gutenberg? Would people be less likely to be attracted to going into the library profession, if it didn’t involve current titles? Feel free to let me and my readers know what you think by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Overdrive public library app comes to Kindle Fire through Amazon Appstore

Overdrive public library app comes to Kindle Fire through Amazon Appstore

This is big news!

You can now get

OverDrive Media Console: Library eBooks & Audiobooks

directly from the Amazon Appstore for your Kindle Fire (that includes the Kindle Fire HD and the Kindle Fire First Generation).

This means you can borrow e-books (including EPUB books with DRM…Digital Rights Management) and audiobooks from your public library, and use them on your Fire!

I’ve written before about having sideloaded the Overdrive app to my first generation Kindle Fire, but this is much easier.

Offhand, I don’t see any reason not to do this (the app is free), particularly if you already have a library card.

I won’t get to test it until later in the day, but if you check it out and want to let people know now you feel, feel free to comment on this post.

Update: I’ve now downloaded it and tested it on my Kindle Fire HD.

It worked.

I want to point out a few things.

I downloaded it from the Amazon Appstore directly to my KFHD. I used the KFHD to do the download, going to Apps then Store.

It didn’t take long: the app is 5.04MB installed.

I tapped the icon with the book with the plus on it, which let me add a library. I added my local library, by searching using a zipcode.

I logged into the library (that’s going to vary) by using my library card number and my name.

I then used the search and found something. I downloaded the EPUB (not the Kindle) edition. It asked me for my Adobe account to authorize the device. I had previously created one for my Kindle Fire 1st Generation.

Once I had that in there, I could download it.

It does not show up where you normally find your books or docs. It’s in your Bookshelf in the Overdrive app. They use the new style of Menu that I seen on my KFHD (it might be different on the KF1): three squares stacked on top of each other.

The only negative I’ve seen so far is that it seemed to jump ahead in the chapter when I started reading. I have to look at the settings.

You can adjust things generally by tapping towards the top middle of the page, and you’ll see three “sliders”. That has settings like the brightness and color scheme. When you are on the bookshelf and click tap that menu, then you’ll get thing like “Sort By…”

My guess is that the Kindle format won’t work on the Kindle Fire from within the Overdrive format…that you’ll want to use the EPUB version, and that means setting up an Adobe account.

That’s all I’ve tested on this one so far.

Update: I did get a Kindle format book, and it did work (although you go through a few steps). In that case, it did show up on my Carousel and the Books tab.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

ALA & AAP: the relationship between public libraries and publishers

ALA & AAP: the relationship between public libraries and publishers

I recently reported about an open letter from the American Library Association’s President, Maureen Sullivan to American publishers.

The AAP (Association of American Publishers) has responded, as reported by Publishers Weekly:

PW article

The ALA letter did have some emotionally charged language:

• “refused”
• “no good”
• “denying”
• “not”
• “cannot”
• “lock out”
• “doesn’t add up”
• “discriminatory”

Interestingly, the AAP letter (which is shorter), does appear to be trying to play the “grown up”. They say:

“At a time when individual publishing houses are more actively engaged than ever in exploring viable solutions to e-lending, we are disappointed that the new leadership at ALA chose this path, with this particular timing, to criticize those efforts…”

When you hear that language, “I’m disappointed in you,” it usually comes from an authority figure: a parent, a teacher, a boss. It’s not something you usually hear peer to peer…does your Significant Other say, “I’m disappointed you didn’t call” or just say, “Why didn’t you call me?”

From the business perspective, libraries and publishers are currently negotiating new contracts. There’s an obvious question here: why did President Sullivan make this an open letter, which by definition is seen by the public?

Clearly, it’s to involve the public in some way. Either it’s to have them impact this negotiation, or to affect other interactions with the public. In either case, it suggests to me that the librarians do not think they are in a position of strength.  If you are having a disagreement at a restaurant table with your partner, and you are sure you are going to win, do you turn the room and say, “Am I right?” You don’t, because you are already doing okay…you don’t want to complicate the situation. If it does look like it is going your way, you look like a jerk by airing it publicly. If you think you are going to lose, then you might “rally the troops”, call for the cavalry.

It’s entirely possible that librarians (who I think are generally perceived by the public as a force for good) can bring pressure on the publishers (who, in recent years, have been painted as being greedy, corporate, and draconian by many) by customers to bring about a change.

However, it’s unclear that has worked in the past. Lots of people didn’t like the Agency Model, but it took legal action (not popular opinion) to get a change. There were actual public protests over the blocking of text-to-speech access, and that has changed somewhat, but some publishers seemed comfortable having the policy of blocking.

When the publishers controlled the pricing under the Agency Model, they didn’t seem to hesitate to raise prices for popular bestsellers past the $9.99 magic number, despite thousands of forum posts protesting that four digit price.

This may be different. I think that it may be that the vast section of the public which is not made up of serious readers will side with the librarians, bringing additional market pressure. It might parallel a bit with the recent lock out of refs in the NFL (National Football League). The anger over the substitute refs appeared to spread way beyond the group of people who actually watch the games, and a change happened.

So, while I would guess that the librarians’ letter genuinely reflects how the organization feels, making it public was a business move.

What’s the basic issue here?

Some publishers are not licensing e-books to libraries at all, and others have either restricted lending or raised the licensing fee.

When a library gets a book (e-book or p-book…paperbook), it doesn’t pay what you pay for it. There are different agreements involved…that’s one reason why, when you donate a book, you don’t see it on the shelf: it goes into a library sale, commonly.

The publishers are clear: the rules on e-books have to be different from those on p-books.

Why?

Well, for one thing, e-books never wear out. P-books do, and have to be replaced.

I also wonder if the publishers think the cycle of  ”discover” and “purchase” is different for e-books. Are people less likely to read an e-book and then want to purchase it for themselves? I do think that’s possible. Having held a physical object in your hands can change your perception of its value. Some people don’t like to give a gift card for something…they prefer to give the item itself. I think part of that is this tangibility impact.

President Sullivan said:

“…recent research from the Pew Internet Project tells us that library users are more than twice as likely to have bought their most recent book as to have borrowed it from a library.”

That doesn’t really tell us what the publishers would want to know. The question is, does having borrowed an e-book from the library make it more or less likely that the person would purchase the book…and how does that compare to p-books?

I think the initial publisher reaction may have been out of fear. If there is a flood, and a wall of water is coming towards your house, you look around quickly and grab things that have personal meaning and/or that seem irreplaceable.

I think the “digital deluge” meant that publishers grabbed what they considered valuable, and held it tight.

They grabbed audio, they grabbed the ability to lend to friends, they grabbed public library lending. They clutched them to their chests, uncertain what was going to happen next.

I don’t have the data to say whether publishers are right or not, in terms of the economics, to encourage library borrowing…but neither did they when they made the decision.

My intuition is that publishers allowing their books to be borrowed in public libraries would be a net positive for them, and certainly, I want books to be available to as many people as easily as possible. However, I also recognize the creative and production side: I’m a big supporter of copyright, and I see the legitimate role of publishers.

Outside of this business negotiation, there is a basic societal question: what is the role of the public library?

The public pays taxes to support libraries: should the books be available to everyone? Alternatively, are they there to make books available to people who otherwise couldn’t afford them? If it’s the latter, I do think we could see publishers loan e-books on a need-tested basis; if you could legitimately afford to buy them yourself, you don’t get them for free. In that scenario, it could be supported by tax incentives, rather than by taxpayers directly.

What do you think? If a publisher doesn’t support library borrowing, does that affect your decision to buy from them? Are you less likely to buy an e-book you’ve already read than a p-book you’ve already read?  Do you think President Sullivan’s letter was inflammatory…and will that work? Feel free to let me and my readers know by commenting on this post.

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Penguin drops relationship with Overdrive.com

Penguin drops relationship with Overdrive.com

Back in November, I wrote about the publisher Penguin pulling some e-books from public library lending, then restoring them.

Well, as of February 10, 2012, they are severing their relationship with Overdrive.com, which effectively cuts off most public library loans. There does seem to be ongoing negotiations, but this is definitely a change.

They may work out some sort of continuance program meaning that for now, books that are already in library e-book collections from Penguin will be available. However, they also are prohibiting wireless lending of Kindle editions.

We have to be a bit careful about this. Penguin is not saying that they don’t want their e-books available through public libraries period…just through Overdrive. However, since Overdrive is so dominant, that’s a bit like saying you can use your boat anywhere except the water.

Macmillan and Simon & Schuster (and I believe Hachette) already don’t license e-books to public libraries, and HarperCollins limits them.

Needless to say, there is and will be backlash about this Penguin decision.  This

Media Bistro article

reproduces a sign that libraries can get from Google Docs to explain the situation to patrons.

Let’s make this simple: I think restricting library lending is bad for the public, bad for the publisher. I do think an alternative could be found…I’ve mentioned before that I could see the publishers do direct lending on a needs-tested  basis, for example.

In the short run, though, this is just not a good thing.

By the way, I wrote recently about how to install the Overdrive app on your Kindle Fire…you could get EPUB books from public libraries wirelessly that way…

Feel free to comment on this…and to let Penguin USA know what you think:

 ecommerce@us.penguingroup.com

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.

Random House continues its commitment to unrestricted public library lending

Random House continues its commitment to unrestricted public library lending

Outside of one truly significant exception*, I think of Random House as one of the…wisest of the Big Six trade publisher in the USA.

Even when I was a bookstore manager, I looked forward to specifically what Random House and its imprints were going to release.

According to this

Publishers Weekly article

Random House has recently reaffirmed its commitment to making its books available to public libraries.

Your immediate thought might be, “Doesn’t everybody?”

Unfortunately, no.

As they liist n the article, Random House isn’t

“…limiting lends (such as HarperCollins) or title availability (such as Penguin, Hachette) or not lending at all (Macmillan and Simon & Schuster).”

To repeat that, Macmillan and Simon & Schuster do not license their e-books to public libraries at all.

There was some fear that Random House was going to put some big restriction in place. They stayed out of the Agency Model for almost a year, but then joined it in March of 2011. ..some were concerned that a similar about face was about imminent.

According to the PW article, they are not joining forces with the restrictors.

They are going to raise licensing fees, but people don’t seem particularly concerned about that. That sort of thing happens in the normal course of business, and e-books are a new enough mass market that people expect their to be a certain fluidity at this point.

Kudos to Random House for continuing this open policy.

I still think that what may happen in the future is that all of the publishers may allow e-book lending…and a needs-tested basis. In other words, for people who are “certified poor” in some way (one possibility would be proof of enrollment in some appropriate government program, such as food stamps), the publishers would allow them to borrow e-books for free.

Publishers could do that directly, or might do it through a public library system or even through retailers like Amazon.

Publishers have always donated books (and gotten write-offs for it), and I think they would participate in a program like that.

I do understand it would take some infrastructure, of course.

What do you think? Are you please with Random House for this? Worried about the rising prices for your library system? Angry at restrictors? Curious about why publishers would (or would not) restrict? Feel free to make a comment or ask a question.

* Random House led the way in blocking text-to-speech access in Kindle store books. I was very disappointed in them for that atypical behavior. I didn’t buy any of their products (e-books, paper, or otherwise) for some time because of that. Later, when they had removed the statement that they were blocking access in all of their e-books and I started noticing some that were not blocked, I changed that to not buy any books with the access blocked (from any publisher, of course).

This post by Bufo Calvin originally appeared in the I Love My Kindle blog.