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Kohjinsa SK3: magnífico símbolo de la decadencia de la tinta-e de microsoft
Posted by E-Reads on July 4th, 2009Kirtas scanning initiative - invest in a book
Posted by Paul Biba on July 3rd, 2009Picked this up from the Librarian’s News Wire. It certainly is a very clever idea. Anything that helps get books digitized is great. However they have an extremely confusing website which doesn’t work very well with Firefox. More work needed.
Invest in Knowledge is a new, innovative—patent pending—initiative introduced by Kirtas in conjunction with the company’s Digitize on Demand program and retail Web site, www.kirtasbooks.com. The program allows anyone to subsidize the digitization of the world’s knowledge one book at a time.
Anyone who purchases a book to be digitized, through the Invest in Knowledge initiative, from Kirtasbooks.com will receive a reprint of that book, as well as 5% of all future sales of that book through that web site. Consumers can invest in as many books as they would like.
“This is such a tremendous opportunity for the average consumer to help support and fund the digitization of some amazing collections of books,” noted Tom DeMay, vice president, business development. “So not only are consumers doing the right thing, but if they want to ask ‘what’s in it for me?’ We can give you a great answer. Several titles or one popular book could provide a nice return on investment over time, creating a true lifelong investment in knowledge.”
“This is the first mass digitization program that will make unique collections available to the public in a way that increases access, achieves preservation, and benefits at the same time the library, its patrons and the general consumer,” said Kirtas Founder and CEO Lotfi Belkhir. “And it does so without compromising quality or the ownership rights of the libraries to their digitized content.” To learn more about Invest in Knowledge, invest in a book or set up an account, visit www.kirtasbooks.com.
British Library to help set digitization standards
Posted by Paul Biba on July 3rd, 2009This is from their press release, and thanks to Gary Price for the heads up.
Mass digitisation has become one of the most prominent issues in the library world over the last 5 years, with a number of experienced libraries in Europe already scanning millions of pages each year. To help establish some standardisation over the course of the project, the British Library’s team will lead work on a set of ‘Decision Support Tools’ in an effort to focus on practical implementation support, providing guidance on digitisation workflow, the capturing of material and the organisation of metadata based on the real world experiences of project partners. These measures, announced at the first IMPACT conference in April will help ensure new material can be digitised successfully and feed into existing workflows.
Aly Conteh, e Strategy & Information Systems, Programme Manager, British Library said: “It is absolutely vital institutions like the British Library, the National Library of the Netherlands and technical experts like the University of Salford work together, sharing our experiences and resolving the challenges we face in digitising historic texts. To ensure that ;we deliver the digital resources that are sustainable and meet the expectations of the 21st century researcher.”
Interesting facts from the release: the Library is over 250 years old and exceeds 150 million separate items.
Image CC licensed, stevecadman
Faber Finds goes into ebooks
Posted by Paul Biba on July 3rd, 2009This is from the Guardian’s book blog, which has some of the best coverage of any of the papers I look at.
A year ago, Faber launched a print on demand imprint, Faber Finds, which was intended to make forgotten classics available to a modern readership. Kicking off with 100 titles, by authors from children’s writer Nina Bawden to literary critic FR Leavis – suggestions were gathered from literary figures including PD James, David Mitchell and Julian Barnes – Faber’s ambitions were grand: “If you’re going to do something like this, it has to be at the heart of the literary and bibliophile world,” said chief executive Stephen Page at the time.
Twelve months on, Faber says it’s working well. The list is now 450 titles strong, with rights secured to publish 550 more by the end of 2009. …
Page says that “developing the list over the coming years is going to be a central part of Faber’s identity and business”, and that the move into ebooks is only the first of its planned innovations.
I must admit that I didn’t know about this company, but looking through their site is fascinating. I’m going to spend some time poking around.
Image CC licensed, share.triangle.com
NPR talks with Travis Alber of BookGlutton: ‘Chat while reading: The future of books?’
Posted by David Rothman on July 3rd, 2009
I’ve been pestering the IDPF to do shared annotations or at least pick up others’ standards in this area.
And if there can be instant chat, then so much the better.
Well, even if the standards group isn’t paying sufficient attention to the importance of interactivity, others are starting to—notably, National Public Radio.
NPR’s Laura Sydell interviewed Travis Alber of BookGlutton. An excerpt from the text version:
Reading a book evokes solitary images of lying in bed late at night or sitting beneath a beach umbrella lost in a fantasy. But BookGllutton,, a Web site that permits readers to chat about books as they read, may be transforming a lone activity into a communal one.
The site was born out of co-founder Travis Alber’s desire to talk about books with friends who had moved away. Her solution? A Web site that allows multiple users to write in the margins of an online book.
"You can chat inside any chapter of the book, or you can click on any paragraph and attach a comment to it, and someone else can come past that point in the book later and respond," she says.
The site has been getting a lot of interest from teachers, including New York University English professor Jessamyn Hatcher, who asked her class to use BookGlutton to read King Lear...
BookGlutton is still a fairly small site, with about 1,500 public domain books and 120,000 readers a month. But the site’s founders are already having conversations with publishers that would expand their online library to include newly released books.
Congrats, Travis, on the well-deserved fame. And don’t forget that we knew you way back when.
Related: BookGlutton teams with Random House for promotion, in Publisher’s Weekly, as well as Kat Meyer’s interview with Travis.
Double Flip
Posted by hguillaud on July 3rd, 2009Sur le principe des flipbooks, il suffit de rogner un peu plus une page sur deux, pour donner naissance à cet élégant procédé. Un livre dans le livre ? Deux livres en un ?…
TOC à Francfort
Posted by hguillaud on July 3rd, 2009Le 13 octobre si vous passez par Francfort, sachez que Tools of Change, la conférence d’Oreilly sur l’avenir de l’édition, viendra tenir un jour de session à l’occasion du salon du livre (en la présence de Tim O’Reilly, Cory Doctorow ou Sarah Lloyd notamment - mais aussi Virginie Clayssen). Et n’oubliez pas qu’ils cherchent aussi des intervenants. Via TOC.