May 2011

Are Books An Endangered Species?
Michael Levin is an eight-time best-selling author, a former member of the Authors Guild Council and a business writer. In the following piece, he writes that the disappearance of books is not because of Amazon or the Web, but because of book publishers themselves.

In light of systems maintenance that has already been put off for about one month, things could not be put off any longer. There is no episode this week. A new episode is expected to be released on May 30th. This happens. (Click “Read More” for the rest of the post)

From the slush pile the following news miscellany links are presented.

Deutsche Welle: Changes in radio broadcasts starting this summer | Press Releases | Deutsche Welle | 18.05.2011

"For many areas around the world, it will be necessary to further development online and mobile services in order to reach DW’s target audience better: Individuals who are interested in diverse perspectives and use a large amount and variety of media resources. That especially includes opinion leaders and future opinion leaders as well as people who lobby for democracy, freedom and progress in authoritarian countries and thereby strengthen the civil society."

Germany’s Deutsche Welle to end most shortwave broadcasting – Monsters and Critics

Bonn, Germany – The government-financed German broadcaster Deutsche Welle is to cease most of its shortwave broadcasts on July 1, with emphasis shifting to television broadcasts and the internet, the corporation said in Bonn Wednesday.

Groklaw – As of Today, It’s Mark Webbink’s Groklaw 2.0 – Updated

"So. It’s now Groklaw 2.0, with Mark Webbink and a cast of thousands."

Shortwave Central: U.S. made "mistake abandoning shortwave broadcast " to Central Asia

"In response to a question from Representative Steve Cohen about the influence of radio programming beamed into the countries by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Mr Goble said the US made a mistake abandoning shortwave broadcasts in favour of FM stations licensed by the repressive regimes in Central Asia. He said the stations practice self-censorship in order to retain their licences, defeating their purpose."

Should Christians Care about Harold Camping’s, May 21, & Doomsday? | Liveblog | Christianity Today

"@Xianity: APOCALYPSE: On May 21st, one of two things should end ; either the world or Harold Camping’s career as a prophet."

WSJ: data caps keep Netflix from "swamping the network"

"At least some commenters on the piece have no doubt that scarcity is the engine of progress. As David Eyke, one of the column’s first respondents, put it, ‘Consumption pricing is ALWAYS the path to innovation and new inventions. And consumption pricing always leads to conservation of expensive resources. I hope everyone here understands that bandwidth capacity is very VERY expensive.’"

Technolog – Google’s giant newspaper archive stops growing

"As the Technologizer notes, the news archive is kind of clunky, and quite hard to find among Google’s tabs, so a lack of viewers may be one reason the company decided to abandon the ancient archive exercise."

Edward P. Lazear: Why the Job Market Feels So Dismal – WSJ.com

"The combination of low hiring and a large stock of unemployed workers, now 13.7 million, means that the competition for jobs is fierce. Because there are now many more unemployed workers, and because hiring is only about 70% of 2006 levels, a worker is about one-third as likely to find a job today as he or she was in 2006. It is no wonder that workers do not feel that the labor market has recovered."

Fools and Cowards | A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

"One of the saddest aspects of this entire sorry episode was explained well on my public radio station by Charlie Dyer, who pointed out that thanks to the stupidity of people like Camping, a whole host of people who might have been able to find some comfort, and sense of purpose as part of a religious community, will likely be turned off from religion."

Walt at Random » Blog Archive » Cites & Insights Revisited

READ THIS NOW!

Google Ending Newspaper Archiving Project | News & Opinion | PCMag.com

"The Phoenix noted that Google’s process of digitizing newspapers was criticized for being slow, and some of the materials that were submitted never even made their way online. There are some publications that have been scanned but have not yet been indexed in the archive, and it’s unclear whether Google will complete this process."

Google euthanizes newspaper archive scan plan • The Register

"The Boston Phoenix said that Google will now provide its digital scans to participating newspapers for free, and this includes rights to use those scans on third-party sites."

Interesting new paper: "Accessing Truth: Marketplaces of Ideas in the Information Age" http://flpbd.it/y0yy

Evgeny Morozov points to a paper on SSRN that highlights some problems inherent to site licensing.

It’s No Better Up North | The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy

"In any case, Lowering Higher Education stands strongly for the idea that our colleges and universities have gotten way off track."

Koha Leads the Way with New Release | Lianza

"Koha 3.4.0 is a major feature release and contains a significant number of enhancements – including optimising the bibliographic record storage, significant performance enhancements, a M?ori language pack, enhancements to circulations and the OPAC."

LIANZA Conference 2011 – Call for Abstracts | Lianza

"The conference theme is “Te Ihi, Te Wehi, Te Wana”. The loose concept in English is “Passion, People and Power”. We feel this reflects the need for the library profession to take responsibility for their own destiny and engage politically to influence their future."

LIANZA in the media: Implications for libraries from the new Copyright Act | Lianza

LIANZA Submission on Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Regulations 2011 | Lianza

Accessing Truth: Marketplaces of Ideas in the Information Age by Nima Darouian :: SSRN

"In Part I, this Article introduces the concept of virtual marketplaces of ideas, and explains their significance in the twenty-first century. In Part II, this Article examines the inadequacies of the public policy exceptions of the UCC, UCITA, and PLSC, and recommends courts apply the narrower Reichman/Franklin standard when dealing with ‘mass-market contracts, non-negotiable access contracts, and contracts imposing non-negotiable restrictions on uses of computerized information goods[.]’ In Part III, this Article concludes by offering an exception to a network neutrality proposal, which recognizes the need for a tiered Internet in a particular circumstance."

A nightmare scenario for higher education

Possible mutilation of "fair use"…

Data Networks Force Wireless to Find New Income – NYTimes.com

Services like Skype can cut into wireless carriers’ revenue because they offer easy ways to communicate free online.

Digital Public Library of America Sends Out Call For a Beta Sprint | Disruptive Library Technology Jester

Looking at the development of library-friendly DRM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Google on Friday had stopped digitizing old newspapers as publishers sought to make money off story archives instead of having them hosted free online.
People will still be able to find newspapers already converted to digital format in the Google News Archives at news.google.com/archivesearch but the collection won’t grow.
“We work closely with newspaper partners on a number of initiatives, and as part of the Google News Archives digitization program we collaborated to make older newspapers accessible and searchable online,” the Internet firm said.

Book: Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World

Book review: Can Social Networking Cure Social Ills?

Excerpt from book review:
Man, Aristotle said, is by nature a social animal. This is the premise of Tina Rosenberg’s new and important book, “Join the Club,” which examines the idea that human behavior is defined by our relationships with our acquaintances. Peer pressure, she finds, can lead to acts of great courage, or to great harm. But Rosenberg’s particular ambition is to unlock the secret of using it to “transform the world,” in the words of her subtitle. Calling this approach the “social cure,” she examines how social networks can address some of the world’s most recalcitrant problems — from adolescent cigarette smoking to despotism.

From Publisher’s Weekly

Amazon has removed several yaoi manga from its Kindle Store and refused to allow others to be offered for Kindle, although the bookseller continues to sell the same manga in print and to offer more explicit erotic books in both formats. Yaoi manga, also known as boys-love or BL, is a popular niche genre in manga that features love stories between two males and can range from softly romantic to sexually explicit.

The manga publisher Digital Manga Publishing announced on its blog Tuesday that two of its books had been removed from the Kindle Store and two more were rejected, and the website The Yaoi Review also reported that several Yaoi Press manga and novels had been removed. At least one non-yaoi erotic graphic novel has also been removed from the Kindle Store this week. Amazon representatives contacted by PW did not answer e-mails or phone calls requesting more information.

Full article

A program, which makes books affordable for poor children, helps in ways that libraries and book bins can’t.

Opinion piece at the NYT – Publishers as Partners in Literacy

This is a follow-up piece to: A Book in Every Home, and Then Some
Which was posted on LISNEWS here.

As demands upon library personnel change to embrace new media and modern methods of document control, the educational requirements for professional librarians have evolved. Ashford University, an academic institution owned by Bridgepoint Education (NYSE: BPI), has created a degree in Library Science and Media that is a dynamic academic solution that reaches beyond the traditional librarian’s realm of activity to the new landscape of library oversight, information management and research support.

Full piece here.

Amazon announced a bellwether moment for electronic books today – Kindle e-books now completely outsell hardcover and paperback copies combined.

We are not going to sit here and say anything foolish like “the paper book is dead.” It most certainly is not. Since April 1, 2011, for every 100 paper books that have been sold on Amazon.com, there have been 105 Kindle books sold, Amazon says. It is not like the e-book has killed the paper book and it probably never will. But, e-books are growing and Amazon’s simple formula is driving the pace. Device ubiquity plus low prices and popular content equals: one killer platform steamrolling the competition.

Full article at NYT.com

This week’s New Yorker cover …a picture worth, well, a lot of words.

The image is entitled ““The Library: Roaring Into the Future” by Eric Drooker and it depicts the two famous lions, Patience and Fortitude, protecting the entry to the Main Building of the New York Public Library (the Stephen A. Schwartzman building) currently celebrating its hundredth birthday.

Beautiful, but gloomy. Is this what the future holds for public libraries, all libraries?

More from the New Yorker (there is no accompanying article.)

New York Review of Books Blog: http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/may/18/country-without-libraries/

All across the United States, large and small cities are closing public libraries or curtailing their hours of operations. Detroit, I read a few days ago, may close all of its branches and Denver half of its own: decisions that will undoubtedly put hundreds of its employees out of work. When you count the families all over this country who don’t have computers or can’t afford Internet connections and rely on the ones in libraries to look for jobs, the consequences will be even more dire. People everywhere are unhappy about these closings, and so are mayors making the hard decisions. But with roads and streets left in disrepair, teachers, policemen and firemen being laid off, and politicians in both parties pledging never to raise taxes, no matter what happens to our quality of life, the outlook is bleak.“The greatest nation on earth,” as we still call ourselves, no longer has the political will to arrest its visible and precipitous decline and save the institutions on which the workings of our democracy depend.