April 2009

The Alchemyst, which got a starred review in School Library Journal, is available as a free PDF download on Amazon for a limited time.

You can download the book here: The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel (Just below the box on Amazon that list the different editions is a link that allows you to download a PDF of the entire book; my understanding is the link is coming down in a couple days so grab a copy now if you want one)

Publicly-funded research doesn’t seem so public when taxpayers must pay to read the results in a journal. A new law may help publishing companies preserve their business models, but will limit public access to the research.

Story on Marketplace

Thanks to Gov. Sarah Palin, most of us have heard a bit of recent history about the Wasilla, AK Public Library.

But twenty years before the kerfuffle over banning books, librarian Edith Olson wrote a book about the library called The Library and I. A History of the first twenty-five years of the Wasilla Public Library.

Olson was the librarian at the Wasilla Public Library from 1938-1958. When she arrived there was no library building and the library consisted of two bookcases in the hall of the school house. The library held 350 books, when she left, 20 years later, there were 9,000 more.

Here’s some info about the book from booksellers Wessel & Lieberman, and you may also read the first two chapters on scribd.

Comment in the New Yorker Book Bench blog about the article How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write

Excerpt from comment: Johnson also ignores a more pressing obstacle for e-books: unattractiveness. It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again: books are sexy; electronic reading devices are not. As Michael Tamblyn, of BookNet, put it, “No one holding a Kindle at Starbucks has ever been asked for their phone number.” Certainly, the Kindle provokes stares—what a curious gadget!—but that guy reading an electronic device at a restaurant by himself? He just looks busy. The same guy reading a crumbly paperback? Attractive and approachable. Maybe you can see what he’s reading—that new play by Yasmina Reza, say. It’s a clue to your compatibility, and a means of striking up a conversation.

SANTA CRUZ — As library leaders consider shifting their young adult collection from a small Westside branch to downtown’s flagship to help close a $1 million deficit, patrons are wondering if downtown is the safest place for kids and families to hang out.

“Last week I had to go downtown and my bike seat was stolen,” said Laura Young-Hinck, 38, who spends Monday afternoons at the Westside’s Garfield Park Library with her daughter Ruby, 3, and their Chihuahua, Amelia. At Garfield Park, “it feels a lot safer than the downtown library,” Young-Hinck said.

On May 11, members of the city-county library system’s Joint Powers Board will consider whether to move Garfield Park’s extensive young adult collection to the Central Branch on Church Street as part of a larger effort to save $1 million in the system’s $12 million budget. The genealogy collection, which is downtown and staffed by volunteers, would move to Garfield Park.

Apple pulled a baby shaking application from the Apple App’s Store recently. The NYT Bits blog has a piece titled, “In Defense of Baby Shaking on the iPhone” that makes comparisons to libraries and bookstores. Some of the library refrences are in the comments to the piece.

Seeking to strengthen its presence on the iPhone and iPod Touch, Amazon has acquired Lexcycle, the company behind Stanza, a popular free e-book application for the iPhone, according to Lexcycle’s blog.

Stanza allows users to browse a library of around 100,000 books and periodicals for the iPhone, many of them in the ePub format — a widely accepted standard for e-books that Amazon has yet to support with its proprietary Kindle platform.

More here.

In most cases, unless a medical professional or researcher works for an organization that can afford subscriptions to medical journals, much research remains beyond their reach. There are thousands of different journals, and access to just the most well-regarded can run thousands of dollars a year.

Now, with Washington rushing to transform health care, a debate often limited to hospital wards, medical schools and Internet forums is pushing to the fore. It’s a debate deeply rooted in beliefs about access to information — medical research. Increasingly, a generational gap is emerging.
[Story @ AB News]

A group of authors and the heirs of others, including representatives of the estate of John Steinbeck, and of the musician Arlo Guthrie, are asking a federal judge to delay by four months the deadline for authors to decide whether or not to participate in the settlement of a landmark class-action lawsuit against Google.

The settlement, which would establish a complex mechanism for authors to grant rights to digital versions of their books, has been criticized by various parties. Some groups plan to oppose some of its provisions.

Full story in the NYT

Publishers Weekly reports: A federal judge overseeing the approval process for the Google Book Search settlement has rejected an attempt by the Internet Archive (IA) to intervene in the action. In a short ruling released today, Judge Dennis Chin wrote that he construed the IA’s letter to the court, filed last week, as “a motion to intervene,” and denied it. “The proposed interveners are, however, free to file objections to the proposed settlement.” Objections and comments must be filed by May 5.

The IA had asked the court to alter the proposed settlement to give other companies that have scanned printed books the same protections regarding orphan works that would be granted to Google under the terms of the settlement. The IA had said it does not want to file an amicus brief, also known as a friend of the court brief, as other parties said they intend to do, and it believes “there are no existing parties in the case that could adequately represent the Archive’s interests, or the interest of other Internet content providers.”