Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

The Chronicle of Higher Ed talks with Adam Smith, director of product management at Google in this podcast discussion. The two talk about “Book Search, the proposed settlement in the authors-and-publishers lawsuit against it, what it means for academic authors and researchers and so-called orphan works, and fears of a Google monopoly”.

Scribd, a document-sharing community of over 60 million readers, now offers the ability for users to upload and sell their written works through the website. The new Scribd Store offers e-books, research reports, how-to manuals, and even sheet music for sale by its users.

According to coverage by Brad Stone of the New York Times:

“In the new Scribd store, authors or publishers will be able to set their own price for their work and keep 80 percent of the revenue. They can also decide whether to encode their documents with security software that will prevent their texts from being downloaded or freely copied.”

Lance Eaton, visiting lecturer of history, English, and interdisciplinary studies at Massachusetts-area colleges and universities, writes for Library Journal about Books Born Digital: The emerging phenomenon of books published first in digital format.

“It used to be that a book was published first as a hardcover, then as a lower-cost paperback. With increasingly tech-savvy consumers demanding instantaneous access to content in various formats, that publishing protocol has in the last decade changed to one in which the book in codex form often remains the focus, but digital “extras” like audio excerpts and e-chapters act as enticements toward the purchase of the hard copy. More recently, a new phenomenon has emerged, one in which a title comes first in digital form and then—if at all—in physical form.”

Kaite Stover of the Kansas City Public Library writes for Booklist about using the Book Clubs application in Facebook to extend the library’s face-to-face book club.

The Book Clubs application let’s users set up their own clubs - such as the Book Lovers club which has over 6,500 members - and provides a message board, Wall, and other tools to discuss spotlighted books. From the press release:

“In Book Clubs you can post comments about a book or author, rate or review books, build or search a library of titles, entirely at your convenience. If you choose, you can arrange meetings in person, too, and use book clubs as a place to chat or post club news between meetings.”

Steven Johnson writes about the future of the book for the Wall Street Journal in How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write. In this insightful article, the author poses that new devices such as the Kindle and iPhone are changing the way people read, buy, and write books. According to Johnson, books will become increasingly social and accessible, however this increased access may lead to dimished attention, books being written with search engine rankings in mind, and new distribution models such as paying per chapter.

“Because they have been largely walled off from the world of hypertext, print books have remained a kind of game preserve for the endangered species of linear, deep-focus reading. Online, you can click happily from blog post to email thread to online New Yorker article — sampling, commenting and forwarding as you go. But when you sit down with an old-fashioned book in your hand, the medium works naturally against such distractions; it compels you to follow the thread, to stay engaged with a single narrative or argument…

As a result, I fear that one of the great joys of book reading — the total immersion in another world, or in the world of the author’s ideas — will be compromised. We all may read books the way we increasingly read magazines and newspapers: a little bit here, a little bit there.”

Entertainment Weekly recently reviewed Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - a mashup of the Jane Austen literary classic with additional scenes of zombie mayhem by author Seth Grahame-Smith to be released on April 8, 2009. Be sure and read the review for more details as well as the Amazon record for a look inside preview. Know of any other good book mashups? Please leave them in the comments.

At this point most everyone has heard of LibraryThing, the most popular social cataloging website online, and perhaps even of the Amazon-owned Shelfari, but here are a few websites for book lovers that you may not have heard about:

1. BookSprouts

BookSprouts is a website where you can join and create book clubs. Members can vote on which book to read next, have book discussions in forums, post book reviews, and hold meetings.

 



2. Blippr

Blippr is a website where you can add short reviews of 160 characters or less of books, movies, music, games, and applications. You can connect your account to many other social networks such as Twitter and Facebook where you can continue your conversations.

 



3. 22 Books

22books will allow you to quickly create book lists of any type. You can make comments on books in your list, and embed your lists in other websites.

 



4. Book Cover Archive

The Book Cover Archive is a collection of over 1,000 book covers categorized and browsable by designers, authors, titles, art directors, photographers, illustrators, and more. Readers can leave comments on covers and can suggest entries.

 



5. BookJetty

BookJetty is a social cataloging app that will let you set up a bookshelf of titles you own or want and then easily search for them in your local library with a click. Amazon and other booklists can be imported for quick startup.

 



6. Book Glutton

BookGlutton is a social community where you can read public domain books and discuss them with groups. Members can annotate books and make their comments public for discussions or keep them private. You can even upload your own books.

 



7. Gurulib

Gurulib is a social cataloging program which lets members organize their book, movie, music, game, and software collections. The site allows members to use their webcams as barcode readers to scan in items. Items be loaned out and members can track borrowed titles.

 



8. Listal

This social cataloging website enables members to catalog books, movies, TV shows, video games, DVDs, and music. Members can loan their items, import and export their catalogs, and create favorite lists that others can comment on.

 



9. GoodReads

GoodReads is a robust social cataloging site in which members can create lists, write reviews, form groups, create trivia questions about titles, and converse in forums.

 



10. Paperback Swap

PaperBack Swap is a community hub for trading your paperbacks, hardbacks, audiobooks, and textbooks with others. Members can easily mail books as the site provides exact postage labels which can be printed out. Once a book is mailed, you can request one for yourself from the cache of over 3 million titles available.

I’m sure there are many more great book-related sites out there, please add your suggestions in the comments!!

The UK’s Guardian newspaper is compiling a mega-guide to 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read. Over seven days their writers will recommend the very best novels in the following categories:

• War & Travel
• Science Fiction & Fantasy
• State of the Nation
• Family & Self
• Comedy
• Crime
• Love

Zen Habits suggests 20 Amazing and Essential Non-fiction Books to Enrich Your Library including titles such as:

• Simplify Your Life, by Elaine St. James.
• The Art of Happiness, by the Dalai Lama.
• Getting Things Done, by David Allen.
• The 4-Hour Workweek, by Timothy Ferriss.
• Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, by Richard Carlson.

And if that isn’t enough, you can check out their fiction list, 50 Amazing and Essential Novels to Enrich Your Library.

A recent article in the New York Times reports that e-books are steadily gaining popularity and according to publishers such as HarperCollins, Random House and Simon & Schuster, sales of these digital publications have tripled or quadrupled in the last year. In Turning Page, E-Books Start to Take Hold, Brad Stone and Motoko Rich discuss the rise of the Amazon Kindle and other electronic book readers.

“Amazon’s Kindle version of “The Story of Edgar Sawtelle” by David Wroblewski, a best seller recommended by Ms. Winfrey’s book club, now represents 20 percent of total Amazon sales of the book, according to Brian Murray, chief executive of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide.”

via Micro Persuasion

I am very excited to let everyone know about the latest project I’ve been working on in addition to iLibrarian called The Tech Set: Practical Guides to New Tech for Librarians. It’s a new series of books which I’ve been developing with Neal-Schuman Publishers that will be a collection of comprehensive, how-to guides for effectively using technology in libraries. I will be editing the series and I am currently looking for an author for one of the titles called Effective Blogging for Libraries. This will be a practical primer on how to successfully blog from a library’s perspective, here’s the description of the book:

“Nowadays it seems as if everyone has their own blog – but how many of them are effective? Learn how to create a go-to resource for your library patrons with this all-in-one guide to successful blogging. This complete how-to guide book provides practical tips and best practices for creating a winning library blog and informs readers about everything from blog posting techniques, strategies for encouraging comments, and dealing with negative feedback, to effective tagging. The book tackles strategies for blog marketing, transparency and authenticity, managing staff bloggers, usability guidelines, and a variety of assessment methods.”

If you’re a librarian who is knowledgeable about library blogging and has writing experience, please contact me for further details. Here’s a bit more about the series:

The Tech Set book series is a collection of comprehensive, how-to guides for effectively using technology in libraries. Each book in The Tech Set tackles a new and innovative technology type and provides an A-Z primer to let librarians hit the ground running. Written by the field’s hottest tech gurus and packed with practical instructions and advice covering everything from planning and development to marketing and metrics, each title is a one-stop passport to an emerging technology. If you’re ready to start creating, collaborating, connecting, and communicating through cutting-edge tools and techniques, you’ll want to get primed by the Tech Set. Through this series you will learn:
• How to use the latest, cutting-edge technologies
• How to plan for and develop library implementations of these popular applications
• How to utilize the social marketing techniques used by info pros
• How to measure your success with these new technologies
• How to follow best practices already established by innovators and libraries using these technologies

Online researchers will be pleased to note that Google’s Book Search Project has now expanded to include print magazines. Google has partnered with titles such as New York magazine, Men’s Health, Popular Science and others to digitize past issues and present full articles which can be found via keyword searching.

If you’re new to the Google Book Search Project, you may want to check out the latest edition of the Google Book Search Bibliography by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. which was published this Tuesday.

Educause has published a free e-book titled The Tower and The Cloud which looks at the impact of information technology on higher education in an age of cloud computing. The book is comprised of chapters written by well-known authors such as Clifford A. Lynch. The 295 page book is available for free online.

via Open Education News

The new Amazon Windowshop application features new books, new audiobooks, book editor’s picks, as well as bestselling movies and games with new content featured each Tuesday. Each new book featured includes a bookjacket image, a description, and an audio track discussing the book. New audiobooks provide an audiotrack sample from the book. New movie releases include trailers and new CDs sample songs. This multimedia showcase of new releases may provide inspiration for libraries to incorporate some of these ideas into their own websites.

Well-known marketing guru Seth Godin has written a new book about leadership in marketing titled Tribes. According to Godin “The next frontier of marketing is in leading groups of people who are working together to get somewhere.” For a limited time, an audiobook version is available for free on the Audible website, as well as for .95 cents via iTunes.