Copyright threat to libraries offering e-books online
"The Association of American Publishers...has contacted one school, the University of California, San Diego, claiming 'blatantly infringing use is being made of numerous books, journals and other copyrighted works.'" - InformationWeek.
E-Carnegie forgets the L word
"Nobody's paid to do search or just find information," says Bill Gates, once lauded as a Carnegie for the Internet era. Huh? So librarians--corporate, academic and public--don't exist? Truly sad. Not...
Must: E-book training for future librarians
So how long until all library schools--aka LIS schools, correctly or not--require e-book training for future librarians? Already some future teachers must get hands-on tech experience with laptops. For years I've...
Librarian Rex vs. free-form labeling
"The strategy of tagging--free-form labeling, without regard to categorical constraints--seems like a recipe for disaster, but as the Web has shown us, you can extract a surprising amount of value from...
TeleRead-style library proposed for Canada by law professor
A Canadian Internet guru and law professor, Toronto Star columnist Michael Geist, is proposing that his country become the first to "create a comprehensive national digital library. The library, which...
‘The Classics in the Slums’: A lesson for George Bush (and the Dems)
"Who wants to read old books?" an education lobbyist told me in resisting my suggestion to lobby against the elitist Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. Well, at least in...
The Plot against America: The e-book angle
Philip Roth once bemoaned the scarcity of American readers interested in truly serious literature.I don't remember what statistic he came up with--just that it might have been not much more...
21 of Bard’s plays viewable via quartos on the Web
Twenty-one Shakespearean plays, published as quartos, can be seen in that form on the Web, courtesy the British Library.Different versions appeared of the same work. In Hamlet, Act 3, Scene...
My Antonia chatcast is a ‘must’ for Gatsby lovers–and the Cather book is free...
F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece The Great Gatsby (1925) often takes honors as the American novel of the 20th century. It's my favorite. But Willa Cather's My Antonia (1918), about rural...
Library palaces vs. a child-friendly neighborhood approach
Stinky homeless men staring at porn on library computers. Unzipped flies. Threats against female patrons. A slew of thefts. 117 police calls in 12 months. That's life at Dallas's downtown...