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E-Book Library Lending Rises, Publishing Industry Grapples With Change | Digital Book World - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "The disconnect between these two worlds—one in which physically distant actors can have a very substantial impact (good or bad) upon you or your property, and one in which it is difficult to bring law to bear upon those very actors—is at the heart of the problem that SOPA is trying to solve. It’s a profoundly difficult problem.  Some of us saw it coming, twenty years ago or so.  An enormous amount of creative and innovative thinking is going to be required if we are to solve it in a sensible way. SOPA does reflect some creative and innovative thinking; indeed, it embodies a radical new plan for the way that law enforcement will proceed on the Net.  But the new plan is deeply flawed, and would set us on precisely the wrong course for dealing with this difficult challenge." - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "Stack Map, our newest LibraryThing for Libraries enhancement, lets you see exactly where a book is physically located in the library. Stack Map adds a link (with an icon if you choose) to the call numbers in your catalog that opens a dynamic stack map with directions to that particular item. Each stack map also includes a QR code which a patron can scan to immediately pull up that map on their mobile phone, to help them get there." - Peter Murray

RT @teamteets: OCLC Innovation Lab's Web Site for Small Libraries service has moved to beta - Peter Murray

RT @teamteets: OCLC Innovation Lab's Web Site for Small Libraries service has moved to beta - Peter Murray

NMC Horizon Report 2012 Higher Ed Edition - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "The NMC Horizon EdTech Weekly App delivers curated, relevant, and timely EdTech projects and news every weekend, the entire series of 2012 NMC Horizon Reports on emerging technology across various learning sectors, and a rich, searchable, re-mixable database of educational technology and innovation resources — all directly to your iPad or iPhone. Whether you are in HiEd, K-12, or the museum world, the NMC Horizon EdTech Weekly App delivers the best of the NMC Horizon Project, dedicated to scouring the world of emerging technology, and conducting global research on the innovations that are making an impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry." - Peter Murray

Ebooks are curb cuts for libraries. For those of us struggling financially, or wiped out after an long day without the time or transportation to get to the local library, or physically disabled and unable to easily move around, being able to take advantage of the tremendous convenience of downloading a book onto a e-reader or mobile phone literally means the difference between reading and not reading. And I realized by the end of the week that this purposeful denial of equal access is what infuriates me most about the actions of publishers against libraries. At the moment when we have the opportunity to improve the lives of many of our neighbors, publishers concern themselves with competitive positioning and an appropriate amount of “friction” in library access. - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "Many of today's accounts focus on Penguin's withdrawal, without covering the rest of Penguin's statement. The publisher says "it is vital that we forge relationships with libraries and build a future together.... Our ongoing partnership with the ALA is more important than ever, and our recent talks with ALA leadership helped bring everything into focus." The company expects to establish an agreement with one or more new vendors to resume digital library lending, under a different set of business conditions. They say in their statement, "we are continuing to talk about our future plans for ebook and digital audiobook availability for library lending with a number of partners providing these services." - Peter Murray

Log In - The New York Times - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "In conclusion, after only one year more than 10% of the media that we thought we have stored for future generations was gone. If the decay continued at the same rate and if we didn't do anything to preserve this digital heritage of the revolution in less than 10 years there will be no story to tell for the future generations and we will lose these magnificent collections that can show what thousands of books couldn't convey." - Peter Murray

Big Data’s Impact in the World | New York Times - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "Within the next few years an important threshold will be crossed: For the first time ever, it will become technologically and financially feasible for authoritarian governments to record nearly everything that is said or done within their borders—every phone conversation, electronic message, social media interaction, the movements of nearly every person and vehicle, and video from every street corner. Governments with a history of using all of the tools at their disposal to track and monitor their citizens will undoubtedly make full use of this capability once it becomes available." - Peter Murray

RT @LYRASIS: Going to PLA? Join us for Let's Talk Technology on 3/14 at the Free Library of Phila, 10 - 3:30 p.m. # ... - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "Several scholars have also examined how hazing rituals tend to vary among students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Lawrence C. Ross Jr., author of The Divine Nine: The History of African American Fraternities and Sororities, has written that hazing among white students often involves excessive alcohol consumption, whereas hazing among black students typically involves "brutalizing pledges."" - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "The market for free online courses is growing every week, with new companies emerging to offer open courses to anyone who wants them. Some of them have forgone the support of traditional institutions to try the for-profit waters instead. For anyone who might be struggling to keep track of the ever-growing field—the companies’ names can sound similar or stretch the bounds of the dictionary—below are four recently created start-ups challenging the traditional degree model with their free online courses" - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "On Monday The Chronicle posed some of those questions to two leaders of the new project: L. Rafael Reif, MIT’s provost, and Anant Agarwal, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. They stressed that the new project, called MITx, will be run separately from the institute’s longstanding effort to put materials from its traditional courses online. That project, called OpenCourseWare, will continue just as before, while MITx will focus on creating new courses designed to be delivered entirely online. All MITx materials will be free, but those who want a certificate after passing a series of online tests will have to pay a “modest fee.”" - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "Mr. Wesch is not swearing off technology—he still believes you can teach well with YouTube and Twitter. But at a time when using more interactive tools to replace the lecture appears to be gaining widespread acceptance, he has a new message. It doesn't matter what method you use if you do not first focus on one intangible factor: the bond between professor and student." - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "Australian outfit Bridge 8, who have the admirable mission of devising “creative strategies for science and society,” and animator James Hutson have created six fantastic two-minute animations on various aspects of critical thinking, aimed at kids ages 8 to 10 but also designed to resonate with grown-ups. Inspired by the animation style of the 1950s, most recognizably Saul Bass, the films are designed to promote a set of educational resources on critical thinking by TechNYou, an emerging technologies public information project funded by the Australian government." - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "For Penguin, that issue was OverDrive's relationship with Amazon. A 2011 arrangement made library lending possible on the Kindle. Publishers have objected to the library loans being executed through Amazon's servers -- imagine walking into your public library then finding yourself at the Target checkout counter." - Peter Murray

Type Report Author Geneva Henry Pages 17 Date 2012 Feb 2 Institution Council on Library and Information Resources / Digital Library Federation - Peter Murray

Where did my tax dollars go? [interactive visualization] - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "Bethel University in Minnesota was losing applicants due to confusing admissions Web pages. Michael Vedders, director of Web services, explains how the college turned the site around." - Peter Murray

"My Blackberry Is Not Working!" - Blackberry, Apple and XBbox360 humor from BBC One | YouTube - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "On May 12-13, 2011, the Library of Congress hosted a two-day meeting on JPEG 2000. The inspiration for the summit was the JPEG 2000 for the Practitioner seminar (Part 1 and Part 2) held at the Wellcome Library in London in November 2010, and the genesis was discussion of JPEG 2000 within the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative Still Image Working Group." - Peter Murray

There are oodles of meaty copyright issues in the case — including many that one would not think would still be unresolved at this late date. ReDigi is arguing that what it’s doing is protected by first sale: just as with physical CDs, resale of legally purchased copies is legal. Capitol’s counter is that no physical “copy” changes hands when a ReDigi user uploads a file and another user downloads it. This disagreement cuts to the heart of what first sale means and is for in this digital age. ReDigi is also making a quiver’s worth of arguments about fair use (when users upload files that they then stream back to themselves), public performance (too painfuly technical to get into on a general-interest blog), and the responsibility of intermediaries for infringements initiated by users. - Peter Murray

Dangers of Fracking - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "Prime Minister Petr Nečas has announced that the Czech Republic will follow Poland and suspend ratification of ACTA, which has become a local lightning rod after 22 EU countries signed on last month. Ratification still needs to take place in various national parliaments." - Peter Murray

Pull quote: "An eight-member federal jury in East Texas deliberated Thursday for just a few hours before concluding that all of Eolas’ asserted claims of ownership to technology allowing access to the interactive web were invalid. That means the three upcoming trials that were scheduled to rule on infringement and damages, for Google, Yahoo and other companies, have been canceled. The eight defendant companies who resisted the lawsuits won’t pay anything to Eolas or its partner, the University of California, for using the web." - Peter Murray

Carl Grant's thoughts on the possible competitive advantage of a new ILS - Peter Murray