Published by rwatstein November 23rd, 2008
in books, politics and publishing.
Motoko Rich writes: “When President-elect Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes November 16 in his first interview since winning the election, he mentioned having read ‘a new book out about FDR’s first 100 days’ without specifically naming a title or author. That tantalizing reference set off a scramble for the claim to First Reader rights the next day before a spokesman disclosed the president-elect was referring to two books: Jonathan Alter’s The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (Simon & Schuster, 2006), and Jean Edward Smith’s FDR (Random House, 2007).”
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Published by rwatstein November 23rd, 2008
in books and publishing.
November, when the best-of lists come fast and furious, is the most wonderful time of the year. Our own Angelina Benedetti offers up her picks for 2008’s best teen fiction titles for adults, including last night’s National Book Award winner for Young People’s Literature, What I Saw and How I Lied.
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Published by rwatstein November 15th, 2008
in books, Google and publishing.
“On October 28, 2008, after several years of legal wrangling, Google, the Association of American Publishers (AAP), and the Authors Guild reached a settlement agreement concerning Google’s scanning of copyrighted works. The scanning of these works has been done in cooperation with research libraries throughout the United States. The settlement agreement requires court approval by the presiding judge in the U.S. District Court in New York because the case was brought as a class action suit on behalf of selected copyright owners.
In large part, the settlement focuses on in-copyright books that are not commercially available. Public domain works fall outside of the settlement and owners of commercially available, in-copyright books created prior to January 5, 2009, may opt-out of the settlement or opt-in to other terms with Google. As a part of the settlement agreement, Google will fund the establishment of the Book Rights Registry. The Registry, jointly run by authors and publishers, will collect and distribute royalties including an up-front payment by Google of $45 million. Users will have several new opportunities to access scanned books, both free and fee-based, via public and university libraries and through institutional subscriptions for academic, corporate, and government libraries and organizations.”
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Published by rwatstein November 15th, 2008
in books, Google and publishing.
James Grimmelmann, an assistant law professor at New York Law School, reviewed the proposed settlement in the Google Book Search case, along with its 13 appendixes, and came up with some guiding principles for the court as it considers whether to approve the settlement, and for the public to help in thinking about its effects. Basically, he says the settlement is a good thing as it stands, but there are a few tweaks that could make it better.
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Published by rwatstein November 15th, 2008
in libraries, library services and books.
Peter Thuvander and Martin Hedenström of the design group Muungano have won the Swedish Library Bus of the Year award for creating a bookmobile for the town of Kiruna, Sweden’s northernmost city. The award is sponsored by the Swedish Library Association. Because of the lack of sunlight during most of the year in the area it serves, the bus is well-lit when dark to attract users. It offers books, multimedia, computer games, and internet access.
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Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008
in books, Google and publishing.
Voicing its dissatisfaction with the terms of a settlement of lawsuits challenging the Google Book Search project, Harvard University Library will not take part in the program’s scanning of copyright-protected works. One of the original library partners in the project, Harvard plans to continue its policy of only allowing Google to scan books whose copyrights have expired. However, Harvard officials have declared their belief in the project’s legality.
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Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008
in video games, books, reading and gaming.
“You can’t just make a book anymore,” said Mr. Haarsma, a former advertising consultant. Pairing a video game with a novel for young readers, he added, “brings the book into their world, as opposed to going the other way around.”
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Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008
in books, government, politics and reading.
Garry Wills and Aleksandar Hemon offer some recommendations for Barack Obama to put on his reading list, because even if he has already read these titles, “it is good to refresh the message of each, to show where we have been going wrong.” At the top of the list is Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side: “If Mark Twain said at one time that America had become the United States of Lyncherdom, this book shows why, in the world’s eyes, we have become the United States of Torturedom.”
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Published by rwatstein November 9th, 2008
in books, politics and science fiction.
Lauren Davis writes: “Ronald Reagan, Winston Churchill, and Eugene Debs all had one thing in common: They were fans of science fiction. More than that, they all used sci-fi at one point or another to shape their political actions and views. From presidents and prime ministers to ordinary citizens looking for change, many people have turned to science fiction as their political guide. We look at some of the ways space operas, utopias, and aliens have shaped our political landscape and given us hope for a more futuristic tomorrow.”
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Published by rwatstein November 2nd, 2008
in books, Google, publishing and law.
Harvard says there are too many questions, while other reactions to Google’s sweeping $125 million settlement with publishers and authors over its library scan plan range from optimism to uncertainty.
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Published by rwatstein November 2nd, 2008
in books, Google, publishing and law.
To paraphrase University of Michigan librarian Paul Courant, what began as a blueprint for a universal digital library, has become a universal digital bookstore—and maybe that’s not all bad. Mostly, however, reaction in the library community has been muted thus far today as librarians and advocates attempt to digest a sweeping business deal in the guise of a legal settlement to two high-profile lawsuits filed against Google over its library scanning.
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Published by rwatstein November 2nd, 2008
in books, Google, publishing and law.
In a “landmark” joint settlement to two lawsuits filed against Google by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, Google today announced that the parties had agreed on a plan to expand Google Book Search into the web’s largest online commercial book venture.
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Laura Raphael says it’s OK to use the “L” word when recommending personal favorite reads, and finds that “making a personal recommendation, based on our own likes and dislikes, can be beneficial to our customers.”
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Published by rwatstein November 2nd, 2008
in web sites, books and authors.
Website for this competition inaugurated in 2008 that presents prizes for “The Funniest Book for Children Aged Six and Under” and “The Funniest Book for Children Aged Seven to Fourteen.” Includes lists of nominated books, an article about the science of humor, and links to site about author Roald Dahl. From Booktrust, a British organization “that encourages people of all ages and cultures to discover and enjoy reading.”
Roald Dahl Funny Prize website
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Published by rwatstein November 2nd, 2008
in books and publishing.
For the seventh year running, General Mills’ Cheerios brand will make reading a part of kids’ daily nutritional requirements with its “Spoonfuls of Stories” promotion, putting 5 million copies of five new children’s book titles from Simon & Schuster inside cereal boxes. The reading campaign kicked off October 13 and continues the rest of the month. The books include Duck for President, When Dinosaurs Came with Everything, and Monkey and Me.
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Published by rwatstein October 25th, 2008
in books and publishing.
He was a yellow tabby with twinkling green eyes, who arrived in the overnight drop box of the Spencer (Iowa) Public Library one frigid January night. Dewey Readmore Books became the library’s star boarder and an international celebrity. His story, Dewey, the Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World, by Vicki Myron and Bret Witter, has 336,000 copies in print and has quickly climbed to the top 10 on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and other lists of bestsellers.
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Published by rwatstein October 25th, 2008
in awards, books and publishing.
USA Book News has announced the winners of its National “Best Books 2008” Awards. The online magazine selected more than 500 print and audiobook winners and finalists in some 140 categories, all published in 2008 or late 2007. Selections include titles from major publishers as well as independents and university presses.
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More than 8,000 teen readers across the country chose Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer as their favorite book in the annual Teens’ Top Ten vote, sponsored by YALSA. The online vote took place during Teen Read Week, October 12–18, with the third entry in Meyer’s popular vampire romance series winning easily over J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid.
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Published by rwatstein October 25th, 2008
in libraries and books.
In a ritual repeated nearly every weekend for the past decade here in Colombia’s war-weary Caribbean hinterland, Luis Soriano gathered his two donkeys, Alfa and Beto, in front of his home on a recent Saturday afternoon. Sweating already under the unforgiving sun, he strapped pouches with the word “Biblioburro” painted in blue letters to the donkeys’ backs and loaded them with an eclectic cargo of books destined for people living in the small villages beyond.
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Published by rwatstein October 25th, 2008
in search, books, Google and publishing.
Google said at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair that it as has doubled the number of publishers participating in Google Book Search from last year, and confirmed that among its new partners is Random House, the world’s largest English language publisher.
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Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008
in education, books and reading.
Think it’s hard to get a 6th-grade class excited about reading Shakespeare? Or maybe push the high school freshmen through Beowulf? If you’re old enough to remember the Classics Illustrated comic books, you’ll be glad to know that they’re back, along with a whole army of other graphic novel lines that promise to encourage readers to get into, and through, the classics.
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Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008
in libraries, library services and books.
Legislators were told October 8 that bookmobile service throughout the Chautauqua-Cattaraugus (N.Y.) Library System will be reduced in the first six months of 2009 and will cease in June due to escalating costs. Members of the system’s Board of Trustees said the decision was necessary due to an anticipated decrease in state funding, rising fuel costs, and the fact that the aging bookmobile will cost an estimated $250,000 to replace.
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A principal and librarian have come down from the rooftop of their northwestern Pennsylvania school in a stunt to encourage student reading. Fifty-one-year-old principal Pam Hanisek and 39-year-old librarian Amanda Barko dared kindergarten through seventh-grade students at the Erie First Christian Academy to read a total of 1,000 books over the summer. They promised to sleep on the school’s roof if the students met the goal.
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Published by rwatstein October 19th, 2008
in books and Amazon.
The organisers of the Frankfurt Book Fair conducted a survey to find out how digitisation will influence the future of the publishing industry, and who will be the driving force behind it. More than 1,000 industry professionals from over 30 countries responded to the survey, issued via the Frankfurt Book Fair Newsletter. According to the survey, China’s digital influence in international publishing is expected to increase threefold over the next five years. Consumers and online retailers like Amazon and Google are believed to drive the digitisation process. The survey noted that e-content will overtake traditional books in sales by 2018. Online bookselling was named as the most important development of the past 60 years.
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Published by rwatstein October 12th, 2008
in video, books and censorship.
Author Stephen Chbosky shares a letter he received from a reader of his young adult novel The Perks of Being a Wallflower (4:26). Alternately funny and moving, it demonstrates the effect that a book can have on a life—even (and especially) a book that some would have removed from library shelves. Filmed at ALA’s Banned Books Read-Out in Chicago September 27.
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Published by rwatstein October 12th, 2008
in books, copyright and ARL.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) this week posted a thought-provoking paper by lawyer Jonathan Band lauding the recent decision in the high-profile “Harry Potter” case. Although J. K. Rowling prevailed in the litigation, Band writes, “the big winner actually was fair use.”
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Published by rwatstein October 12th, 2008
in libraries, library services and books.
This project started with two U.S. librarians, Dana Lubow and Rhonda Neugebauer, who had organized librarian delegations to Cuba and who wanted to support Cuban librarians. They learned from Cuban librarians that a bookmobile would be very appreciated in the rural province of Granma to provide outreach services, so they purchased one on eBay. Soon they determined that the best way to get the bookmobile to Cuba was to join the Pastors for Peace Caravan travel challenge. This travel blog tells their story.
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Published by rwatstein October 5th, 2008
in books, Google and OCLC.
Thanks to new Application Programming Interfaces (API) released by Google on September 22, WorldCat.org users now have an easy, seamless way to view digitized books available in the Google Book Search collection, right on the WorldCat.org Web site. A Google Preview Button will appear in the record display when the text of a work—either excerpts for in-copyright works or full text for public domain materials—is available online. Visitors can click on the button to access the content within WorldCat.org via an embedded Google viewport.“This is a great enhancement to the discovery process on WorldCat.org,” says Bill Carney, Content Manager, OCLC. “The Google Book Search APIs represent an important advance in accessing the content scanned on behalf of libraries participating in the Google Book Search Library Project. Working together enables us to increase the presence of these libraries and their collections on the Web.”
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Published by rwatstein October 5th, 2008
in books.
Jamie Frater writes: “Not everyone has the stomach for disturbing literature, but there is such a large amount of writing in the genre that everyone should give it at least one try. This list will help to introduce you to the darker side of novels—the disturbing, macabre, and oftentimes downright sick. The only rule to this list is that the book must be a work of fiction. If you think something has been left off the list, leave a comment.”
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Published by rwatstein October 5th, 2008
in books, digital and publishing.
Law professors from around the country gathered in Seattle on Saturday to put the printed textbook on trial. That about 40 people gathered on a sunny Saturday to ponder life beyond print shows that times are changing in publishing. The daylong discussion educed topics ranging from cerebral musings — could information proliferation make lawyers obsolete? — to technical nuance — what’s the difference between open source and open access?
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Published by rwatstein October 5th, 2008
in books and Library of Congress.
More than 120,000 book lovers gathered last Saturday on the National Mall for the eighth annual National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by Mrs. Laura Bush. Festival-goers were entertained by their favorite authors, illustrators and poets as they celebrated creativity and imagination among the favorite standing-room-only pavilions including Let’s Read America; the Pavilion of States; Children; Teens & Children; Fiction & Mystery; History & Biography; Home & Family; and Poetry. This year the library showcased its efforts to digitize rare documents and books, including a draft of the Declaration of Independence and previewed the World Digital Library, set to debut in 2009.
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Published by rwatstein October 5th, 2008
in education and books.
Nine months ago, the Manchester, Connecticut, school system began navigating the choppy waters of teaching Twain’s most admired and vilified book, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. One parent complained, and the book was removed from the reading list. Now after months of study, the school system is training 11 high school teachers in how to teach the novel in a broader context that includes discussions of Twain’s era, satire, white privilege, diversity, and social change. The teachers are to receive two days of training before bringing the book back to classes next month.
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Published by rwatstein September 27th, 2008
in books and publishing.
Mary Ellen Quinn writes: “As the new school year gets under way, our annual Best Bets list features new titles we reviewed in the past 12 months that are targeted specifically for students from the elementary through high-school levels. Also here are the latest editions of some library standards. For more good bets, check out the Encyclopedia Update coming up in the September 15 issue of Booklist.”
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Published by rwatstein September 27th, 2008
in books.
A panel of 11 critics writes: “Compiling a list of the 50 Greatest Villains in Literature, without too much recourse to comics and children’s books, proved trickier than we’d imagined—but gosh it was fun. It’s perhaps the nature of grown-up literature that it doesn’t all that often have villains, in the sense of coal-black embodiments of the principle of evil. Yet even writers as subtle as Vladimir Nabokov have spiced their work with a fiend or two. And here they are.”
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Published by rwatstein September 27th, 2008
in books, publishing and e-books.
Bloomsbury Publishing this week announced that is launching an academic imprint with a radical new open access model: all titles will be made available free of charge online, “with free downloads, for non-commercial purposes immediately upon publication.
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Published by rwatstein September 27th, 2008
in YouTube, books and Google.
Out of the blue, Google announced a new feature or rather a new tool for its Book Search Index, which would allow book retailers, publishers and practically anyone with a web site or blog to embed non-copyrighted books from the said index. Yup, you read it right folks, just like YouTube videos, we can now feature the full electronic format of books on our websites, for readers/visitors to flip through the pages of them books. For books which are still under copyright, Google has partnered with some booksellers to have a preview functionality enabled in some of their book inventory. By clicking on the “Google Preview” link next to a particular book title, we can browse through that particular books to check whether it looks promising and a worth our reading time.
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Published by rwatstein September 27th, 2008
in books and publishing.
Who says dead men tell no tales? HoughtonMifflin November 17 is releasing J.R.R. Tolkien’s Tales from the Perilous Realm,“the definitive collection of Tolkien’s classic ‘fairie’ tales” illustrated by top Tolkien artist Alan Lee. Prepare to buy.
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Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008
in books.
An upcoming exhibition at the Morgan Library in New York of Jean de Brunhoff’s working drafts and watercolors for Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant (1931) has reignited a controversy over the meaning of the Babar books, said by some critics to represent European colonialism. Writer Adam Gopnik analyzes the series and concludes: “Far more than an allegory of colonialism, the Babar books are a fable of the difficulties of a bourgeois life.”
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Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008
in library services, books and publishing.
Library users at the University of Michigan will soon be able to order print-on-demand copies of books from the university’s collection, and get them in about the time it takes for a barista to whip up a latte.
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Published by rwatstein September 21st, 2008
in books and film.
Marjorie Kehe writes: “It used to be that you read the book and then, a couple of years later, you saw the movie. But recently, it’s been happening the other way around. Especially interesting is the fact that sometimes the book starts as a figment of the filmmaker’s imagination. The forthcoming Christian movie Fireproof features an imaginary book, The Love Dare, as a plot point. But the codirectors of the movie sat down and penned such a book in the space of a few weeks. It hasn’t hit bookstores yet, but has already sold 300,000 copies and may become the bestselling Christian book of 2008.”
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Published by rwatstein September 14th, 2008
in education, books and wiki.
“Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit.” Searchable, or browse by topic, featured book, or other factors. Also includes links to Wikijunior (non-fiction books for children from birth to age 12), textbooks in “simple English,” and books in languages other than English.
Wikibooks website
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Published by rwatstein September 14th, 2008
in books and copyright.
J.K. Rowling has emerged triumphant in her copyright suit to squash the publication of Steven Vander Ark’s The Harry Potter Lexicon (RDR Books). U.S. District Judge Robert P. Patterson permanently blocked the release of the book in its current form, saying it would cause Rowling irreparable harm as a writer. He also awarded Rowling and co-plaintiff Warner Bros. $6,750 in statutory damages. Undaunted, Vander Ark next month is releasing In Search of Harry Potter, a travelogue based on Rowling’s series.
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Published by rwatstein September 14th, 2008
in books.
Greek Rural Postmen and Their Cancellation Numbers (Hellenic Philatelic Society of Great Britain, 1994) has been crowned the oddest book title of the past 30 years. In The Bookseller’s online poll in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year, Derek Willan’s comprehensive record of a sector of Greece’s postal routes gained 13% of the public vote. Gary Leon Hill’s People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead (Weiser, 2005) finished second (11% of the public vote) and John W. Trimmer’s guide to avoiding maritime mishaps, How to Avoid Huge Ships (The author, 1982) finished third (10%).
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Published by rwatstein September 14th, 2008
in education, books and publishing.
Senator Dick Durbin comments on an act he authored that’s intended to make textbooks costs more manageable — but notes that the publishing industry has succeeded in postponing the act’s implementation until July 2010.
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Published by rwatstein August 31st, 2008
in libraries, library services and books.
Wheatland, CA library officials say they are introducing the nation’s first “robotic rural librarian,” an automated dispenser that will make books available anytime.The GoLibrary equipment will be unveiled at 10 a.m. today in the park next to Wheatland Community Center, 101 C St. The event will include music, refreshments and a drawing for book-related gift baskets.The book dispenser holds about 500 books. Users will be able to swipe their library cards and use the touch-screen to check out books.
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Published by rwatstein July 26th, 2008
in books.
Paul Collins writes: “Aside from a face-melting Ark of the Covenant, a Shakespeare First Folio is the lousiest loot in the world to steal. Here’s why: The 230 surviving First Folios are now the most minutely studied published works in history. The folio is unusual in that two centuries of records trace the path of specific copies. In the case of the one stolen from Durham University, there’s plenty for authorities to work with.”
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Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008
in communities, books and travel.
Collection of annotated booklists based upon selections in which “dozens of travelers (writers, photographers, explorers, editors, and others) … name[d] the books that have most enriched their sense of place and best informed their peregrinations.” These are “not guidebooks, but novels and narrative nonfiction and classic photography books.” Browsable by region of the world. Also includes an “Around the World in 80+ Books” feature. From National Geographic Traveler magazine.
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Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008
in books.
This 2008 listing of summer reading suggestions “encompasses ancient and modern, fiction and non-fiction. All they have in common is that we’re confident that if you take any one of these on holiday, you are in for a huge treat.” Includes links to related lists of the best new books (UK publishers) and celebrity book picks. From the British newspaper The Telegraph.
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Published by rwatstein July 19th, 2008
in libraries, books, digital and Google.
Sacre Bleu! While some librarians at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference were left wondering whether Google “had used them,” for their book collections after the search giant did not exhibit in Anaheim, the company this week announced that it had signed its 29th library partner for Google Book Search. Google officials announced that the Lyon Municipal Library, France’s second largest library after the national library in Paris, and the project’s first partner in France, has signed on to make more than 500,000 books available online as part of Google’s Book Search Library project.
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