Amazon markets the service to publishers as a way to have "100 percent availability of books" internationally, and the company has enrolled a number of publishers. The problem is that Amazon apparently doesn't police whether book content uploaded to CreateSpace actually belongs to the person doing the uploading.

Books have used the “XYZ: A Novel” format since the 17th century, when realistic fiction started getting popular. The term “novel” was a way to distinguish these more down-to-earth stories from the fanciful “romances” that came before, says Steven Moore, author of “The Novel: An Alternative History.” Then, as now, it was a tag that identified the kind of literature you were getting yourself into.

Slipped behind other books was a lovingly worn copy of the 1929 children’s book “The Postman,” by Charlotte Kuh.

In fact, librarians have long been advocates of digital inclusion and literacy. That’s why, last month, ULC launched a new initiative to give public libraries a leading role in a future with artificial intelligence.

Is Amazon taking over the academic library industry? That's what a new study from a higher-education-focused non-profit takes a look at, and their findings might surprise you as long as you haven't read the title of this article too closely. For the study, Ithaka S+R gathered acquisitions data from 124 U.S.

Literary scholars often hear about dangers of presentism: we are warned against looking at the past for confirmation of our own progress — the distance between us and them — and against collapsing that distance, and seeing, Narcissus-like, our own reflections in long-ago lives and letters. But of course, the present always shapes our encounters with earlier texts, whether we’re reading them, writing about them or, in the case of Shakespeare, staging them.

Speaking of bedrooms – books apparently aren’t allowed in there, as they are a room for “sleep and love”. This raises some questions. Does it mean that if you like reading a book in bed you must then go put it back elsewhere in the house just before falling asleep? Is one book (singular) in the bedroom fine but two or more forbidden? What if you do find a partner thanks to your attractive new flat and he also enjoys reading in bed, does this create a loophole? Should you read this singular book together at the same time?

Before I start, a disclaimer: All of this is, of course, highly subjective. I read nonfiction for enjoyment, and I enjoy nonfiction most when I am learning interesting things, or am guided to think in new ways. Preferably, claims should be backed by peer-reviewed studies, or presented as speculation otherwise.

There are two things that, when I encounter them in a book, immediately cause me to fall in love. The word palimpsest A giant, possibly magic, library (extra points for a Forbidden Section or two) The two are not unrelated. A palimpsest is a book that has been one or more books before, with the older knowledge hidden just beneath the surface of the parchment, waiting to be unearthed.

Researchers at German institutions that have let their Elsevier subscriptions lapse while negotiating a new deal are hitting the paywall for the publisher’s most recent articles around 10,000 times a day, according to Elsevier — which publishes more than 400,000 papers each year. But at least some German libraries involved in negotiating access to Elsevier say they are making huge savings without a subscription, while still providing any articles their academics request.