Digitisation 

Digitisation: do we have a strategy? by David Pearson

The notion that we are living through times of great change in the communication of information and the transmission of texts is a truism which will bring a weary look to most professionals with any kind of involvement in the area. The digital age, the information age, the electronic age ñ weíve all heard these terms so many times and have sat through innumerable discussions, and seen even more documents, trying to sort out what it all means. There are almost as many views on the likely pace of change and the shape of the landscape 10 or 20 years from now as there are librarians to hold forth on the subject. Perhaps this helps to explain why the library community as a whole seems to be in such a rudderless state regarding the creation of digital content; no shortage of action, but no overall sense of direction. I am talking here about digitization of our documentary heritage, that vast mass of books, archives and other media which fill our library shelves today. [read more]

Do it yourself 

Cornell Professor Offers a Guide to Producing Handsome Books on Home Computers Scott Carlson interviews Douglas Holleley

Douglas Holleley, an educator and photographer, is the author of Digital Book Design and Publishing, recently released by the Cary Graphic Arts Press of the Rochester Institute of Technology and Mr. Holleley's own press, Clarellen. Mr. Holleley's manual details the ways that modern technologies and software can help aspiring authors or artists produce their own books at home, taking the power that has belonged to publishers for centuries and putting it instead in the hands of the people. Mr. Holleley is currently a visiting professor of art at Cornell University. [read more]

Digital Book Design and Publishing by Dr. Douglas Holleley

If you are thinking of self-publishing, please consider Acme for you short run printing and binding.

But, how many are out there? 

London Bookseller Pays $14,000 for Harry Potter Book

According to Reuters, a first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone sold for almost $14000 at London action house Bonhams Tuesday. Purchaser Adrian Harrington, who dubbed the book "probably the most important children's book since The Lord of the Rings," said he will offer the volume for sale at his London bookstore.

What if they won? 

Company says it owns hyperlinks patent

A British company claimed in federal court Monday that it owns the patent on hyperlinks -- the single-click conveniences that take a Web surfer from one Internet page to another -- and should get paid for their daily use by millions of people.

But a federal judge with a laptop on her desk warned that it may be difficult to prove that a patent filed in 1976, more than a decade before the World Wide Web was created, applies to modern computers. [read more]

What might be taken for granted here, is good news 

For Women in Kabul, This Test Is Welcome by John F. Burns

Afghanistan since the collapse of the Taliban has made many an ordinary event seem extraordinary, and few more so than the task that had Dr. Aziz Ahmad Rahmand, a professor of contemporary Afghan history, bursting with pride, joy and not a little gloating as he hurried about Kabul University on Wednesday.

Dr. Rahmand, 45, was supervising entry examinations, the kind of duty senior professors in most other countries might shun. But not in Afghanistan, where the source of the professor's bliss lay in the fact that row upon row of women were taking the exam beside men in the library and in many another unheated hall across the bitingly cold campus. ...

... Books, too, are in short supply. Years of no acquisitions, along with theft and book burning -- and that novelty of Taliban literary criticism, book shooting -- have left many shelves in the library empty.

The chief librarian, Muhammad Sadiq Wadid, 40, came running after the visitors to make a special request. "We say hello to the educated people in the Western countries," he said, "and we ask them, kindly, if you have any books about the technical and scientific world, engineering, literature -- anything! -- please send them to us.

"The Afghan people are in darkness, and we ask the Western countries to help us shine some light," he said. [read more]

For many US libraries, the disposition of duplicates is a major problem. Maybe some of them could be sent to Kabul?