January 2001

Someone writes \”This is kind of interesting. Sirsi and Sagebrush Corporation have partnered to give Sagebrush a multiuser system to sell to the school market. Sagebrush has been buying marketshare for two years now and this allows them a slice of the pie that normally goes to the larger multiuser systems like Sirsi. None of the major vendors have shown any real talent in targeting this market.
Whatt does this mean for Follet and Sirs?
My guess is it doesn\’t hurt the bread and butter part of the business for Follet, the single school. To be truthful they could never win thoughs to begin with. However it does make Sagebrush more interesting to the multi-site school installations which are gravey to the larger vendors.
So Sirsi now has someone dedicated to this market so that the other large vendors will have to fight for the large sites with the handicap of not really knowing the market.

The Press Release \”

I have a bunch of eBook stories hanging around here, all of which are worth a quick read over.

Random House turns to niche e-book sales on how they want to target niche audiences with smaller books online.
(note: If you read this story, a 380×335 ad is obscene, no more News.com from me).



Here\’s One Healthy E-Publisher, FictionWise is doing just fine, with over 400 titles and sales topping 10,000 e-books a month.



Going Beyond the Book is now The McGraw-Hill Companies\’ approach to e-publishing.
There is an Interesting quote from this PublishersWeekly story, plus one more story below.

I have a bunch of eBook stories hanging around here, all of which are worth a quick read over.

Random House turns to niche e-book sales on how they want to target niche audiences with smaller books online.
(note: If you read this story, a 380×335 ad is obscene, no more News.com from me).



Here\’s One Healthy E-Publisher, FictionWise is doing just fine, with over 400 titles and sales topping 10,000 e-books a month.



Going Beyond the Book is now The McGraw-Hill Companies\’ approach to e-publishing.
There is an Interesting quote from this PublishersWeekly story, plus one more story below.\”Publishing used to be based on the economics of scarcity. Information was just plain hard to get. Look, for example, at international book distribution. Until very recently, we would mark up a U.S. book by as much as 40% even in Europe! Why? Because if you wanted it you would pay that much for it, because you couldn\’t get it any other way. Now you can get the book via the Web or on your visits to N.Y.C., and the book can be shipped to Europe fairly cheaply and quickly. With electronic publishing, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of information scarcity.\”

The Free E-Book Market Economy from idg.net has both good news, and bad news for the eBook world. A new study shows that a large percentage of Americans are willing to read books on a variety of electronic platforms, including laptops, PDAs and dedicated e-book devices. They just won\’t pay for them.

Here\’s a very nice story from The Chicago Tribune about how so much is changing in libraries, after being \”dark dens for bookworms and students\” for so long.

More than $3 billion has been spent on libraries nationwide over the last six years, and 1,200 libraries have been built or expanded.
Now if they would just start asking the librarians how to actually build them correctly…

\”Good library architecture makes you stand straighter and feel good about coming to the library,\”

Thanks to Bob Cox for this one!

Charles Davis writes \”The meticulous conservation of Oxford\’s Bodleian Library has earned an award from the
Pan-European Federation for Heritage, Europa Nostra.
Oxford University\’s main research library is one of
two English institutions to win a diploma at a
conference in The Hague, The Netherlands. Built in 1602, the Bodleian is one of the oldest libraries in Europe
See
thisisoxfordshire for the story
\”

This Story from Capitolhillblue
says President Bush has now \”exited the information
superhighway\” avoid having his e-mail become public,
something I\’m sure BIll Gates, and Bill Clinton wish
they would\’ve done.

     \”Now that presidential e-mail is subject to
open records, it\’s going to be a phone-call
relationship,\” Bush said.

These stories all seem somehow related, and I\’m not
sure what else to do with them.

So you\’re afraid of
losing all your federal assistance
thanks to CIPA? Maybe someone will Make a Mistake and
give you $70,000 that was the schools, or vice-versa,
like in this case.

Maybe Someone Will Give You $10,000, or maybe you
could just Open Your Garage.

The National
Post has a rather I
nteresting Story on copyright. Ilana Mercer
says the copyright system shoul be abolished because
there can be no justification for the use of force against
legitimate property owners.

\”And force is, very
plainly, what flows from the enforcement of the law.
Since ideas should not be treated as property, laws that
target those who have not violated person or property
are wrong.\”

I can\’t say I agree or disagree, but it is a very well
thought out argument.

Gov. Gary Locke wants to save money by eliminating
prison law libraries, which some say blocks
reasonable access to the courts, which some also say
will cause a flurry of lawsuits. Full Story from Seattle P-I.

\”It\’s wholesome activity,\” Alexander said. \”It\’s not
like we\’re setting up a motorcycle club for
prisoners.\”

Interested in how history will remember the presidency of voracious reader Bill Clinton, Harold Evans ponders the question \”Does history suggest any correlation between a passion for serious reading and an ability to inspire and manage the nation?\” in this article from the New York Times.

Compiling a list of bibliophile presidents from biographies and histories, he compares them with presidential rankings from a 1994 Siena Research Institute tracking survey and the 1999 C-Span Survey of Presidential Leadership

Not surprisingly, the bibliophiles ranked higher overall.

Bonnie Lee sent in a story on the Alabama Virtual Library, a $3 million cooperative effort that brings online resources to schools.
This article from Infotoday.com provides an overview of the path they took to make this project a reality for Alabama, and spotlights the significant collaboration that was involved. It\’s quite an interesting and indepth how to guide on the entire process.