LISNews: Librarian News

Ready for digital stacks?
If approved, Google anticipates public and university libraries will participate by making their collections available to be digitized, which would make books more accessible to students, researchers and readers.

For every 10,000 students enrolled at a university, the company would provide its library with one terminal for free access to the Google Books Database, but if a student wants to access the information on their home computer, there woul d be a fee involved, said Peter Botticelli, assistant professor at the UA School of Information Resources and Library Sciences.

Story is at Wired.com. I think the article title may be deceptive. I don't know if this is the first color ebook reader but it is the first color e-ink book reader. Currently the cost is very high so clearly it will not be bought by the general population. What is significant is that the color e-ink technology is out there. In time as the cost comes down textbooks with color pictures will become an option for e-ink readers. I am surprised that someone has not come into the current market with a dual screen ebook reader. One side being a black and white e-ink screen and the other screen a color LCD.

Reuters reports: Media company Discovery Communications Inc has sued Amazon.com, accusing the online retailer's Kindle of infringing its patent on electronic book technology.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Delaware, marks another blow for a closely watched gadget that has drawn fire from publishers that say Amazon is trying to avoid paying royalties.

The lawsuit claims that Amazon, in two versions of its Kindle, has infringed one or more of the claims on a patent that Discovery founder John Hendricks received in November 2007.

The patent deals with encryption technology for the distribution of digital books.

Here is a video that lets you see a Kindle book on an iPod Touch.