Backward or forward? 

From Gary Frost, ebooks taking off in various directions, again

Find out why librarians and libraries are so backward and so forward at the Electronic Book Web For backward libraries see Internet & Libraries and for forward libraries (by the same author) see Future of ePublishing. What is difficult to believe is not the confusion itself, but the lack of understanding that the screen read book industry must be established in a reading mode other than the print reading mode.

See Gary's chart, Reading Matrix.

Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) 

Time to rewrite the DMCA by Rick Boucher

The American public has traditionally enjoyed the ability to make convenient and incidental copies of copyrighted works without obtaining the prior consent of copyright owners. These traditional "fair use" rights are at the foundation of the receipt and use of information by the American people.

Unfortunately, those rights are now under attack.

In 1997, motion picture studios, record producers, book publishers and other content owners came to Congress with a simple proposition: Give us a law that will stop pirates from circumventing technical protection measures used to safeguard copyrighted works, and we will release all sorts of exciting new content in digital formats

At the time, libraries, universities, consumer electronics manufacturers, Internet portals and others warned that enactment of the broadly worded legislation would stifle new technology, would threaten access to information, and would move us inexorably towards a "pay per use" society. That day is now close at hand. [read more]

History of the Book 

Research Centre in the History of the Book

Aspects of the Victorian Book

This introduction to the Victorian book, prepared to mark the centenary of Queen Victoria's death in 1901, draws on the British Library's extensive nineteenth-century collections. [read and see more]

Guide to Bookbindings in the British Library

Digital Copyright 

Electronic Mailing List: digital-copyright

DIGITAL-COPYRIGHT is a discussion group that provides a forum for the analysis of topics such as copyright law and policy, technologies, and federal information law and policies that impact higher education, particularly digital distance education. In addition to ongoing discussions of critical and theoretical issues, the list will contain: Ý

• postings on upcoming conferences
• calls for papers
• legislative news announcements
• and many other matters which should be of interest

This listserv aims to be a space for educators, policy makers, librarians, lawyers, and all who have a vested interest in digital copyright and other intellectual property matters of importance to the higher education community. The list encourages all levels of discourse, as well as relevant political, historical, cultural, and philosophical approaches to the problem of applying copyright to the digital arena.

What is he thinking? 

Reading the library its last rites? by Autumn Koepp

If Gov. Gary Locke succeeds in closing the Washington State Library to help balance the budget, he'll face a host of questions, not the least of which will be: Who'll take over the library's services, and what will happen to its 3 1é2 million books and other archival materials?

"It's like Humpty Dumpty," argues state librarian Nancy Zussy. "If the state library is eliminated or broken up, you cannot reassemble it again. It is unrealistic."

The library, with $9 million a year in state money, has become one of the focal points in Locke's efforts to close a shortfall in the biennial budget of more than $1.2 billion.

Laboring under a recession and initiatives that have raised spending and cut taxes, the governor has proposed more than $500 million in spending cuts and an assortment of new revenue, including tax increases, a new lottery game and spending from state reserves.

The library, until recently a low-profile institution, has come out fighting for its very existence. [read more]

Issues in the Digital Age 

A review of Lawrence Lessig's the Future of Ideas, The excess of control by Felix Stalder

In The Future of Ideas Lawrence Lessig, a professor at the Stanford Law School, conveys a bleak message: We are destroying the conditions of freedom and creativity on the Internet. Right at the moment when the Internet has begun to show its full potential for increasing growth and innovation globally, a counterrevolution is threatening, if not already succeeding, to undermine this potential. [read more]

E-Books 

Consortium of 12 Universities Begins Project to Deliver Academic E-Books by Jeffrey R. Young

Academic libraries and university presses at Big Ten universities and the University of Chicago have teamed up in an e-publishing venture that aims to put hundreds of scholarly books in electronic form.

Last month, leaders of the 12 universities committed from $50,000 to $100,000 to develop a prototype for the joint e-publishing venture, says Tom Peters, director of the consortium's center for library initiatives. The institutions have worked together for decades as part of a group called the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. [read more]

A New Museum for Books 

The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art

Where do you buy your books? 

Amazon.com Posts First-Ever Profit by Allison Linn

Amazon.com, the pioneering Internet retailer that has symbolized for many the potential and the pitfalls of dot-com commerce, posted its first net profit ever in the fourth quarter, beating its own forecasts and Wall Street's expectations.

For the quarter ended Dec. 31, the world's largest Internet retailer said it earned $5 million, or 1 cent a share, compared with a net loss of $545 million, or $1.53 per share, in the year-ago period.

The results were helped by lowered prices and companywide penny-pinching. [read more]

In New York, A Bookstore's Last Chapter by Lynne Duke

A "lost our lease" sign screams from the display windows wrapped around the northwest corner of busy West 57th Street and Broadway, anchored for nearly three decades by Coliseum Books. It was a special place, a New York niche, all about the mind and its passions, not just the mass-market book boom of the moment. You'd find no cappuccino machines inside Coliseum, no comfy couches. It was a bookstore both populist and purist. If it was in print, no matter how obscure or rarefied, you could find it on these shelves. Now, that's all over.

Next week the doors will close for good. George Leibson, 57, the owner, and the man who feels this is partly his fault, might try to go beyond Sunday, a couple more days of his book-selling life. In lieu of wife and children, Coliseum was his family. He is sad -- and embarrassed -- that it has come to this. [read more]

Suggestion: If you need or want to purchase a book, try a locally owned, independent bookstore in your town or neighborhood first.