The Library of Congress' Digital Collection and a Plea for Steve Guttenberg's Help

Google Books, Project Gutenberg, and the Library of Congress; all three are scanning collections to be stored digitally. The Library of Congress is up to 700 terabytes of data, though only 200 are available on the internet due to copyright. (A terabyte is still a lot, trust me.)

Do people have the same problems with the LIC scanning as they do with Google? Does Project Gutenburg? Has anyone considered the merits of consolidating all three collections under the LIC or Gutenburg?

I'd say collect it under the Library of Congress, but I'd rather it be held by an international entity, as in, one not tied to the United States. Like maybe the United Nations?

Perhaps most pressing: why isn't Steve Guttenberg attached to Project Gutenberg? Is it the extra T? Can you get rid of that, Steven? Only you can fight Google.

Mister Congeniality

Proof people can be cartoon villains.

Constantine "Connie" Xinos is the president of the home-owners' association in a gated community in the Chicago suburb of Oak Brook. He dislikes being near poor people (he successfully blocked a permit for a senior's home, stating, "I don't want to live next to poor people. I don't want poor people in my town"). He reportedly worked to elect an Oak Brook village council who would shut down the town library, which he also campaigned against. When local kids showed up at town meetings to ask that their library be left open, he is quoted as saying, "I don't care that you guys miss the librarian, and she was nice, and she helped you find books;" and to the library staff to "stop whining."

More here. Notice the lovely skylight in the library; it looks like a beautiful place. Most libraries I see are windowless caves with yellowy fluorescent lighting. I wish I had this library.

Now would be an excellent time for some random acts of kindness via the web to help this library out. Check out all this free publicity.

The Relationship Between Public Libraries and Google

This paper by Vivienne Waller, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Research of the Swinburne University of Technology, explores the relationship between Google and public libraries. It's pretty interesting and raises some good points:

• Google tends to 'perfect technology first' before 'working out how to make money from it'. This could mean ads. Google already insists it be the only search engine allowed to link to the content of the Google Book Project. Some libraries are balking.
• Search engine bias and the idea of relevance to search queries.
• What happens if Google, perish the thought, goes out of business and the archive is inaccessible?
• The motives of Google's project.

She also discusses infogration, described as 'the integration of aspects of the world in to the medium of information into which targeted ads can then be placed'.

To be successful, infogration requires that we live more of our lives on the Web. Hence, Google has been actively encouraging us to live more of our lives in the “Googleverse”. Google wants us to not only use its search engine to search for information, and to read using Google Books but also to use Google products (a shopping site) to buy things, to plan to buy things using Google Shopping List (a Web–based list of intended purchases), to let friends know what we want for our birthday or Christmas using Google WishList (a public list of what we wish we could buy), to find out what is happening using Google News, to share tagged photos using Google Picasa, and to hang out with friends using Orkut (Google’s version of a social networking site, very popular in Asia and India), or connect with people with similar interests using Google Groups. The list continues and expands with each new Google product. Google encourages us to communicate using Gmail, to plan trips using Google Maps, to bring Google along for the ride with Google Maps integrated into our cars and giving us directions, to virtually visit other places using Google StreetView, to describe ourselves in blogs (using Blogger) and be updated with the blogs we are interested in using FeedBurner. Google suggests that we manage our financial information using Google Finance and that we manage our health using Google Health (a repository for all of our medical records and a way of keeping our doctors up–to–date about our health).

That doesn't sound at all creepy!

I think the most important point to remember is 'libraries need to pay attention to that which is concealed by Google’s search results and by digitised information. What is concealed includes vital aspects of human knowledge and culture and it is part of the task of the public library to preserve these things.'

Teen Reader's Advisory

A library in St. Paul, Minnesota, is allowing teenagers to help make some decisions about their local library.

The idea is that because teenage interest in the library has surged in recent years, the libraries would be served well to find out how to serve the demographic better. (Apparently, this means more copies of 'Twilight', which I wasn't going to mention but the reporter did. Twilight gets kids interested in reading; it gets some adults interested, too, and even if the series is drivel, at least there's that. Kind of like the Harry Potter phenomenon, only creepier. In the interest of being fair, I have not read the Twilight books, but what I've heard has been pretty awful. And I saw the movie.)

This is pretty cool. If I'd had this option as a teenager, I might've gone and pitched in, met some other bookish kids, that kind of thing. I would've lobbied for more Terry Pratchett books. What a good idea!

E-Book Readers Are Being Marketed to the Wrong People

Jason Pinter says e-book readers are being marketed to the wrong people. I think he's right - currently, e-book advertisements are aimed at people who already read a lot instead of at reluctant readers. Why not aim it more toward that market? Maybe take a note from the iPod and design them to be a little more fun. I wonder if there could be some way to add in a kind of dictionary function that would help people read - when you don't know a word, you could click it and get an option to look it up in a dictionary on the reader itself.

Ebooks should expand the book buying market, not be used as an alternative for the print edition. Look at the ads for the iPod: they're fun, they're cool, they feature all sorts of (pastel-colored) people who are far funkier than anyone you or I know grooving to the licensed beat. Then consider the ads for the Kindle: the music is straight out of your local elevator. Hesitant readers aren't going to rush out to spend $299 for the reading equivalent of John Tesh. iPods sell the experience. E-readers are selling the gadget. And that's bass-ackwards.

The author of this article gets points from me for his hilarious insertions of pop culture history, like 'Informer'. Except now I want to listen to that song, which is less good and might cost me ninety-nine cents.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-pinter/why-the-digital-revolutio_b_308108.html

That Book Will Cost You $11K, Sir

An article by Jason Boog* informs us the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) revised their 'Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials'. Bloggers reviewing items to disclose whether they got it for free when giving an endorsement. Breaking the new rules can cost a blogger up to $11,000 in fines.


* Sorry about your childhood, man.

Text Markup

So Princeton arranged for fifty students to get free Kindle DXs with their course material for the semester already loaded on 'em. Apparently, most of them don't like 'em.

One point of dissatisfaction was that the texts couldn't be marked up; I'm kind of against marking books permanently, but there are some books I wedge paper bookmarks between the pages of or add sticky labels to. It's just easier. (I will admit to having a couple of books on my shelf used for research with hiliter marks. Gasp.) I didn't even think of this when I thought about having e-textbooks, and it's a big advantage of the physical textbook. There's also a thing I do where I will try to recognize text by sidebars or illustrations; when I'm not sure where the stuff I'm looking for is at and it's not very conveniently in the index, I'll flip through quickly. It also helps when I can see how close to the beginning or end of the book I am. There are visual cues that would be much harder on an e-reader.

Can this be overcome? Probably, though I think I'll never feel as comfortable with an e-textbook as I do with a hard copy. Maybe younger people could do it more easily, though I consider myself fairly young and technologically inclined. Do Kindles allow you to see the text of two books at once or flip between them easily?