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According to the article you linked, Penguin hasn't been working with OverDrive in the first place. Without Penguin and without HC, what does that leave?

Plenty. HC and Penguin do not the book world define.

However, the article I linked to was from March, and Penguin was coming around at that time.
They have seen the light, and as of September they are back on Overdrive.

They have further to go. But they've turned their head in the right direction. The loss of sales was becoming painful.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6664637.html

Hoax Article Accepted by 'Peer-Reviewed'; OA Bentham Journal

Unfortunately, in the eBook world, publishers are basically saying that an instance of an eBook needs to be replaced every year (26 lends at two weeks per lend):

http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/889452-264/harpercollins_caps_loans_on_ebook.html.csp

That's a lot more than a few pennies per lend, to say the least.

Voters seldom get to vote on budgets in most cities, and certainly not at the line item level. Bond issues would certainly come under closer scrutiny especially in this economy. Federal funding of libraries is under close scrutiny over the last year.

On the other side, a Gates foundation study found that people who find libraries "transformational" rather than simply "informational" are more likely to vote for more funding. (What transformational means is unclear).

Still there is a great layer of insulation between the library board and the tax payer.

  It may take years, but funding support will wane when local tax payers figure out they are funding something other than a quiet place to read where they feel comfortable sending their kids. I suspect it would not take much, perhaps only a rows computers filled by unwashed geezers in sweatpants with only one hand on the keyboard, before the library board will choose to sequester the material to specific parts of the library, if merely to preserve the library itself.

A proper library automation system can save considerable time on an ongoing basis and allow you to actually do what you describe with minimal overall effort.

Such a system would have NISO Z39.50 protocol client support for downloading and working with machine readable cataloguing, MARC, records well catalogued at another library for copy cataloguing to populate the records of an automated library system. Downloading records over Z39.50 directly from most libraries with Z39.50 servers, including the Library of Congress, is free and does not generally involve copyright issues as cataloguing records are almost entirely mere collections of facts prepared according to cataloguing rules.

Such a system would also have a degree of granular permissions to support automated self-checkout with a bar code scanner without also giving every user permission to erase the database. Self-checkout systems are often currently assumed to be RFID based, however, systems using a bar code scanner which are much cheaper to implement should be supported for self-checkout. The cheapest solution is to buy sheets of simple bar codes and obtain a used bar code scanner on Ebay. Using product bar codes already printed on material may have inconsistent encoding and non-unique numbers.

Check the support and possible extra price for such features in any candidate system.

1. Set Up Work.

Real work is often required for anything worth having.

Some minimal assistance from a professional librarian, who may be a member of your church or otherwise available in the community, would be invaluable help at least to start. Most library automation systems support configuration options designed for use by people who are not professional librarians but such support would not negate the great value of obtaining some minimal assistance of a professional librarian at the outset. Check the support for non-professional configuration.

The complexity of setting up such software may entail either paying a library support company to set up the software; or at least a few days of time from someone sufficiently familiar with Unix administration willing to read the documentation and seek answers on the mailing lists to set up a free software library automation system without using a professional support company. Some set up complexity might be avoided by using an implementation hosted by a library support company but that would involve a long term support contract which could be avoided with sufficient initial set up effort.

2. Lists of Library Automation Systems.

There is no single source of library automation system options which is comprehensive and up to date.

A library automation system is referred to as an integrated library system, ILS, in the US and a library management system, LMS, in many other English language countries.

2.1. Library of Congress List.

The Library of Congress maintains a list of automation systems which function with MARC records which includes some systems which are not comprehensive library automation systems, http://www.loc.gov/marc/marcsysvend.html .

2.2. Library Technology Guides List.

Library Technology Guides maintains a list of library automation system companies. Library automation companies. - http://www.librarytechnology.org/companies.pl . - In Library technology guides / maintained by Marshall Breeding. - http://www.librarytechnology.org/ .

2.3. Library Journal Guide.

Library Journal publishes an annual overview of the library automation system market. Automation Marketplace 2011 : The New Frontier / by Marshall Breeding. - In Library Journal. - April 1, 2011 - http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/889533-264/automation_marketplace_2011_the_new.html.csp .

2.4.

instead of buying digital copies that will never wear out

That isn't always the case. According to http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/home/889452-264/harpercollins_puts_26_loan_cap.html.csp there is at least one publisher who will put a limit on the number of times a book can be borrowed. After a year to a year and a half, depending on the loan length, the book is no longer available to anyone and has to be repurchased. I have seen physical books that are a good deal older than a year and all they need is a bit of tape on the corners and spine and they're quite usable. Granted if that expiry was removed the ebooks would easily outlast any physical book, but even though the technology is there, society (at least some parts) is not.

The UK is looking at massive library closings due to right-wing ideology on how to close their budget shortfall:
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/10/133656983/britain-faces-closing-the-book-on-libraries

Plus, it's also been seen here in the states with the big budget shortfalls in municipalities:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6618984.html
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/04/10/trustees_vote_yes_on_library_closings/

So in the end, we'll have no text books, no libraries, and you'll have to own your own iPad or other tablet, or rent it from the school.
Isn't it cool that our dystopian future is already here?

You make it an elective and kindly tell the parents that if they don't feel it is appropriate material for their little snowflake that there are plenty of other courses available. The voices of a small minority should not stop the enrichment and education of the majority. We had a few parents complain about material available in our honors english class, luckily the teacher was tenured, loved, and strong willed and had the backing of the administration as she had about every state and national honor a teacher could receive (she sat on the AP testing board as an example). Our librarians (both school and city) were likewise headstrong and did not bow to pressure from a few dingbats. As this article shows only 300 parents of 83,000 card holders chose to restrict the rights of their children in some way when given the choice. Personally I feel this is the best way to handle censorship, give those "concerned" parents an alternative means of control while providing the materials to the vast majority of people who are unconcerned that intellectual discovery will somehow harm their children.

Okay, as mayor she tried to fire the town librarian (went so far as to give her a letter announcing she was fired) for not banning books from the library that people Palin knew found offensive. Can we look forward to a Net with all the offensive stuff removed, or else?

Perhaps to her small credit, Palin backed down from firing the librarian. She went ahead, however, with firing the police chief. There had been a bunch of serious drunken driving bashups. The bars in Wasilla are open until 5 a.m. The chief proposed the closing time be moved to 2 a.m. The bar owners where friends and backers of Palin.

The chief sued for unlawful termination. It went to the Alaska Supreme Court. They threw it out on the basis that in Alaska a mayor can fire a police chief at pleasure, without any requirement for justification.

At first, this may seem unconnected to tech policy - unlike Palin's desire for censorship. But consider how much of the Net is devoted to selling drugs. The Wasilla area is the meth capital of Alaska. Now, if you know small towns with drug problems, you know the patrons of the bars are also the patrons of the meth labs. How else do you expect them to stay up drinking until 5 a.m., before they go off to crash their trucks? Palin's in good with these country folks.

So for the Net under Palin, bottom line: less porn, more drugs.

Did you know that when an academic writes a paper, to get it published, they have to surrender the copyright to the academic journal? After that, they can't even give copies away. If someone wants to see it, they're supposed to point them to the journal publisher where they can "buy" reprints.

Who are these academic publishers? Springer, Wiley, etc. Try doing a scholarly search in Google. You'll find many PDF entries show a few words from the article, but no [cache]. When you click, you seen none of the article, but are taken to a "Pay Up!" page run by Springer, Wiley, etc. I wish Google wouldn't even waste my time listing these. (Note they even make an exception, allowing them to show one version of the web page to Google and another to the public. BMW was blacklisted by Google for doing this. Why are these publishers allowed to get away with it?)

In the pre-Internet days they could get away with it. But with the Internet, these companies should have dropped out of the business. Certainly Universities are sick of paying big bucks and would love to spend their money on more important things. Many third world countries can't afford them period:

http://www.ojr.org/ojr/stories/121004ohanluain/
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6289896.ht ml

Springer, Wiley etc should have gone out of business, but they've managed to hang on. How? In part due to Academics who still contribute to them. Prestige and promotion depends on having their papers published in 'prominent' journals. There are alternatives: peer-reviewed journals, organisational or web sites. What really stinks is most of this research is paid for by the tax payer. But the taxpayer has to pay Springer, Wiley, etc to read the research they paid for.

http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/2900/01/harnad96.pe er.review.html
http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-01/varian.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_journal

Hopefully Universities will finally read academics the riot act: "We're not going to buy anymore of your publishing buddies overpriced ripoff journals, and we're not going to give you credit for being published in one either" and for government/taxpayers to say "We paid you to do the research. We're not going to let you give away the results"

For a more useful story, please see http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6365379.ht ml

Some points:
- The information will be made available online
- The information will be available through library loan
- Not all the libraries are closing
- Bush is not defying Congress. He sent them a budget which they either approve or amend

Boy, it certainly made for a good story though! For about 2 minutes... *sigh* Do some research before posting or blogging next time.

These posts have more about what's new, enhanced, etc. http://www.resourceshelf.com/2006/03/askcoms-new-l ook-scores-big-points.html http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php /3587686 http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6317186.ht ml The image database has also been revamped. http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php /3580061

"Don't Discredit My Online Degree"
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6269436.ht ml

I'm in my early thirties. I do most of my work online or with computers, but to read long stuff I still need to print it out. But hey, give me a break, I didn't even grow up with a remote control. Yet the generations after me WILL learn online MORE easily than in a traditional classroom setting. There's so many tech bonuses to an online classroom that blow away 1-on-1 instruction. So I see online education gaining ground over traditional brick-and-mortar universities, not merely because of the current retail mindset in higher education (let's face it, the current "get your degree online!" ads are little different from the 70s "get your degree by mail!" days), but because learning will become more efficient and productive online. But expect this to happen at least as slowly as e-books and the mythical "paperless office" -- not any time soon.

Back to the submitter's question, the problem now is that the people doing the hiring DON'T learn well online, so they discredit online degrees. Until that changes, be aware that an online degree can be a stigma to certain managers, but perhaps you (a) wouldn't want to work for such people anyway, and (b) would actually get the reverse effect with a hiring manager that appreciated your future-minded learning style.

It's not like any of the 9/11 hijackers used library computers to do anything after all...

oops

I don't want to bite the hand that feeds me --- after all, Google is essentially offering me free advertizing --- but they just don't seem to have it together. I sent my books in, and they scanned them quite promptly. In my account, they showed up as "processed," and it said that they would go live in a couple of weeks. Well, that was something like six months ago (not sure of the exact date). Since then, they've sent me a couple of paper mail and e-mail messages saying it'll be real soon now. They added an option to allow me to upload PDFs instead of having them use the scans. I wasn't sure if that would speed up the process or slow it down, but I ended up doing it, and overwriting the scanned versions of the books, because I wanted the best possible version to show up. To do that, they wanted me to use either server-side or client-side software. The server-side software didn't work on any browser/OS combination I tried (including IE on Windows). The client-side software, which was Windows only, failed the first time, but did work the second time.

I'm not saying they're bad or evil or incompetent or anything, but they do seem to have bitten off more than they could chew sometimes.

ghostlibrary writes "Even while NIH is getting new ethics regs, patientINFORM is being evangelized as a way for ordinary citizens to look up experimental treatment online, in essence circumventing their doctor, and the FDA long ago the tacitly approved this. /. debated Wikis in hospital. RSI fans track risky or untested procedures from the Typing Injury FAQ and Health-Hack covers IT-related self-help medicine. Laser-eye stuff is now mainstream and doesn't need a check beyond google. Any other sites out there for those willing to dictate their own medical course? Does this mean Internet users will become test subjects moreso than the usual college students and elderly?"

ghostlibrary writes "People who are interested in obtaining information about experimental treatments for health conditions can turn to a new web site called patientINFORM, which is being evangelized by a collective of publishers and medical groups. This site is controversial because it in effect allows patients to circumvent their doctors in the search for unconventional and unapproved therapies. While the FDA has tacitly approved this kind of information service in the past, the NIH is about to issue new regs covering the conflicts of interest this kind of service raises. This site joins other sites that disseminate information about risky or untested procedures, such as the Typing Injury FAQ, which covers RSI (repetitive strain injuries) or Health-Hack, which covers IT-related self-help medicine. Laser-eye stuff is now mainstream and doesn't need a check beyond google, and past Slashdot articles have even discussed the advisability of using wikis in hospitals.

Are there other sites out there for those willing to dictate their own medical course? Does this mean Internet users are joining the usual college students and elderly as experimental subjects for untested therapies?"

It took me a while to figure out that you were referring to:

Meanwhile, the APS/AAI statements cite other federal policies and regulations the NIH proposal seemingly violates, including the Freedom of Information Act and an Office of Management and Budget circular that says the NIH must perform a "cost comparison study."

To address your question, I think at least one site lost information in paraphrasing. APS states "While this outcome arguably could be defeated by reliance on FOIA Exemption Four, 5 U.S.C. [section] 552(b)(4)...". And the FOIA shows that this exemption is "trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential". However, this does not mean that this information cannot be published (as far as I can tell - IANAL), merely that it doesn't have to be published. However, I think that the previously mentioned link has misrepresented the APS position on this. (I'm not saying I agree with the APS, merely that I don't believe they are using the FOIA to justify blocking the information, merely saying that the FOIA does not forbid blocking the information.)

I don't agree with his anti-digital positions, including his unsupported belief Google is "inefficient" and somehow "random". Nor does he appreciate the value of posting books, previously inaccessible in library archives, online--thereby making them available to millions.

Gorman's Blog

I live in HoCo too. Luis and Mike spoke at the Columbia Area LUG in March. It was a great and very informative talk. We were all hoping they'd get some coverage for what they've done. Also read the article by their manager in the Library Journal. That kind of article will reach far more library-types than any discussion on Slashdot, and will probably be a lot more influential. Libraries are a great place to introduce people to Linux. Way to go guys!