July 2010

SkyRiver Files Antitrust Suit Against OCLC
July 29, 2010
Emeryville, CA—In a move that could have far-reaching implications for competition in the library software and technology services industry, SkyRiver Technology Solutions, LLC has filed suit in federal court in San Francisco against OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. The suit alleges that OCLC, a purported non-profit with a membership of 72,000 libraries worldwide, is unlawfully monopolizing the markets for cataloging services, interlibrary lending, and bibliographic data, and attempting to monopolize the market for integrated library systems, by anticompetitive and exclusionary practices.

OCLC is a nonprofit Ohio corporation formed in 1967 and headquartered in Dublin, Ohio. OCLC’s stated mission is “furthering access to the world’s information and reducing library costs.” But over the years, OCLC has evolved into a global enterprise that sells numerous commercial products and services to libraries, generating revenues in excess of $200 million annually from 2005 through 2008, tax-free profits averaging over $17 million per year, and amassing a securities portfolio as high as $176 million in 2007. Since 1982 OCLC has used its tax-free profits to acquire 14 for-profit companies.

“OCLC started out 40 years ago as a library cooperative, but it has become a corporate monopoly.” said SkyRiver’s President Leslie Straus. “In the process OCLC has punished its own members who have tried to seek out lower cost alternatives like SkyRiver.”

SkyRiver is joined in the lawsuit by Innovative Interfaces, Inc., a library automation company. The suit also addresses OCLC’s anticompetitive behavior in the integrated library systems market.

SkyRiver was launched in October 2009 to provide a high quality, low cost alternative to OCLC cataloging, potentially allowing customers to achieve savings of up to 40%. The complaint details how public sector SkyRiver customers, like Michigan State University and California State University, Long Beach, turned to SkyRiver to achieve cost savings, only to have OCLC quote them a price increase of over 1100% to upload their holdings to OCLC’s WorldCat database for the benefit of other interlibrary loan (ILL) users. Straus concludes, “If allowed to continue unabated, OCLC’s actions can have the effect of eliminating competition and taking away choice for libraries. They will not succeed.”

A printable version of the press release can be found [here]

For more information about the SkyRiver’s lawsuit and the issue of choice for libraries in the marketplace for library software and services, visit www.choiceforlibraries.com. Twitter users are encouraged to use hashtag #skyoclc.

E-books of the latest generation are so brand new that publishers can’t agree on what to call them.

In the spring Hachette Book Group called its version, by David Baldacci, an “enriched” book. Penguin Group released an “amplified” version of a novel by Ken Follett last week. And on Thursday Simon & Schuster will come out with one of its own, an “enhanced” e-book version of “Nixonland” by Rick Perlstein.

All of them go beyond the simple black-and-white e-book that digitally mirrors its ink-and-paper predecessor. The new multimedia books use video that is integrated with text, and they are best read — and watched — on an iPad, the tablet device that has created vast possibilities for book publishers.

The start-up company Vook pioneered the concept as a mobile application and for the Web in 2009, but with the iPad, traditional publishers are taking the multimedia book much more seriously.

There is a new wi-fi Kindle and it cost $139. You can see it here: Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Wi-Fi, 6

There is also a new Kindle out that allows 3G cellular network to download books. It is $189 which is the same price as the Kindle 2 was selling for. You can see it here: Kindle Wireless Reading Device, Free 3G + Wi-Fi, 6

Despite being public property, government documents are not necessarily free or easy to obtain. Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org details his decades-long quest for open access to “America’s Operating System.”

Transcript and MP3 download here.

Bookavore Blog says, “With sincere apologies if this has been done before, but I think this is the only way I can read another one of these. Maybe I might be cranky today!”

“Will e-books wipe out/kill/decimate/pulverize/HULKSMASH/angry verb real books?” — one drink

…and so on…

A new report finds that even as people abandon print publications, they distrust the information they read online.

Full piece at the NYT Bits Blog

Not a library cat…this robber, Randy Humple, stole the Westminster (MD) Library’s pet tarantula last May.

“It was a busy day & we had noticed she was in her cage, and less than 20 minutes later realized that someone had broken into her cage & she was missing”, says librarian Christina Kuntz.

In less than 2 hours police had their man. 27 year old Humple was arrested & charged with spidernapping Chili Rose, the libraries pet tarantula. He will serve 90 days in jail.

Kuntz is a huge fan of the tarantula. She says that the pet encourages children to come up to the information desk and start a conversation.

Story and video from ABC.

Her message is clear: No more mustard yellow carpet (she’s got that right).

During the past four years, Library Services Director Nancy Martinez has hoped that the 31-year-old carpet in the Lodi Public Library would disintegrate while it was being cleaned.

After completing $1.8 million in renovations last August, staff is already looking toward finishing the rest of the library, which is mainly the adult area, and finally replacing all of the mustard carpet.

Councilmember Bob Johnson said there is quite the contrast between the new children’s area and the adult section at the council’s shirtsleeves meeting Tuesday.

“Some of those chairs could be donated to the Smithsonian,” Johnson added.

More from the Lodi (CA) News.

Amazon said its Kindle store has sold over one million digital copies of the books in Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy: “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “The Girl Who Played with Fire” and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.”

Full story

A court in Norway has ordered Åsne Seierstad, author of the Afghanistan-set bestseller The Bookseller of Kabul, and her publisher, Cappelen Damm, to pay 250,000 kroner (£26,276) in damages to a woman portrayed in the book.

Oslo district court ruled that the Norwegian author and journalist, whose book was based on the three months she spent living with a bookseller and his family, had breached the privacy of Suraia Rais, wife of bookseller Shah Muhammad Rais, and included inaccurate information in her account.

“The information [in the book] about Rais’s thoughts and feelings is sensitive,” the Oslo district court ruled, according to a report in the Dagbladet newspaper. “They are attributed to her as true, and neither Seierstad nor Cappelen Damm can be considered to have acted in good faith to ensure they were correct and accurate.”

Mr Rais – the bookseller of the title – has always disputed its contents, which portray him as a tyrannical head of the household. He claimed that the book was distorted, revealed family secrets and put his family in danger, to the extent that his two wives both fled the country to live in exile in Canada and Norway. In 2007, Mr Rais wrote his own account of his life Once Upon a Time There was a Bookseller in Kabul. Last year he signed a deal with Indian distributor Motilal Books to sell his books into the UK.

Guardian UK.