Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

Did you know that the New York Public Library has Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s slippers and Charles Dickens’s favorite letter-opener in its collection? Or that they have a special collection of 40,000 restaurant menus, dating from the 1850s to the present? Robin Finn at the New York Times has written an excellent article about some of the NYPL’s more interesting items in Secrets of the Stacks.

Josh Catone at Mashable has created a useful guide for aspiring authors concerning How to Write a Novel Using the Web. He includes a discussion of various tools for organization, research, writing, connecting with other writers, and publishing.

Google has announced that it is making 1 million public domain books from Google Books available for free download in the EPUB format. “EPUB is a free, open standard supported by a growing ecosystem of digital reading devices”, so users will be able to view these books on their mobile devices. According to ReadWriteWeb, Google had previously made this massive EPUB collection available to partners Barnes & Noble and Sony, but never to users before last week’s announcement.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper covers some of the changes happening in today’s libraries with Louise Tickle’s Academic libraries are undergoing a quiet revolution. The article proposes that “Being a librarian these days is all about technology and customer service; no time to stick your nose in a book”.

“Applying for a job in a university library because you “love reading” isn’t going to get you very far these days. These hallowed repositories of academic knowledge have changed beyond recognition over the last decade, and the people recruited to work in them have to be willing to embrace new technologies and customer service with an alacrity that would likely horrify the shushing custodians of the past.”

Sam Dean at OStatic rounds up five free online books to help newbies get up to speed with OSS with 5 Free Online Open Source Books for Beginners. “They introduce basic concepts for getting started with Linux, Firefox, Blender (3D graphics and animation), GIMP (graphics), and the OpenOffice suite of productivity applications.”

ReadWriteWeb takes a look at disruptions in the book publishing business in a two-part post which discusses three big waves hitting the industry including; the digitization of back catalogs, e-books, and print on demand. Bits Of Destruction Hit the Book Publishing Business Part One introduces these waves while Part Two takes a look at what this means for the major players including; readers, authors, printers, publishers, retailers, and e-book device vendors.

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.