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E-Book Museum at Library of Congress?
David H. Rothman writes "E-books and other digital publications in the U.K. are about to go into a national archive, and in fact the Brits and others have even shown an interest in the e-book technology of yore. Goodness knows, as some have pointed out, we already have enough virtual e-book museums--unwittingly created by the march of technology. But how about an International Electronic Book Museum in the Real World, ideally the Library of Congress? Before Luddites and crypto-Luddites keel over at the thought, they should keep in mind that the technology is already several decades old and that it would be helpful to collect the artifacts in a systematic way before it's too late. More at TeleRead."
Are E-Books already a thing of the past we can only see in museums now?
Need electronic paper.
Someone download them all and create your own library!
"Goodness knows, as some have pointed out, we already have enough virtual e-book museums--unwittingly created by the march of technology."
P2P and my hard drives.
What happens when the software for reading these e-books is no longer supported? By using proprietary formats, it is inevitable that one day, the stuff in our nation's own library will be unreadable.
Only by creating an open standard, which anyone can choose to implement on the system of their choice (open source it, while you're at it!), can the information truly be timeless.
They don't make the same mistake as the BBC's Doomsday book project where they stored all the data on quickly obsoleted BBC Micro controlled laser discs using a proprietary format - woops! A real pain for them to recover it only a decade later.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
How many eBooks have been released as eBook only, not counting prereleases of excerpts or first chapters with "special intros". Aren't most of them just existing publications in a different format? If the format dies then there is a reason, and if the work continues in some sort of archival medium then how is it a loss? Would the same lamentations be heard over cassette recordings of books on tape?
...how many Libraries of Con...um, oh ok nevermind...
I can see it now: They go with a Microsoft databse, and the actual books decay and are lost. Then one day, an M$ update that goes out of control causes the database to crash. Irreplaceable works by such authors as the Minnesota steel worker who penned "here I sit all brokenhearted" are lost to the sands of time.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
This is really going to screw up the Library of Congress data storage unit.
;)
Now the Library of Congress will be holding many Libraries of Congress. It's a conundrum!
http://almostsmart.com
e-journals? They want to archive blogs???? Any idiot can e-publish. Sheesh.
> ideally the Library of Congress?
Why? What's so ideal about the Library of Congress to hold an international collection of e-books?
I agree with you, but for the fact that unlike the dead tree or audio formats, the e-book has at least the potential to be full-text searchable. Which could be invaluable for the work in question.
If this flies we wouldn't need Distributed Proofreaders anymore. Bdoes the phrase, "Electronic Book Museum in the Real World" mean? Isn't an e-book museum, by it's very nature, virtual? If not, aren't the e-books then just regular books, minus the "e"?
Download my free songs!
That's not true. Here (pdf file) is some info on college textbooks, for example. Printing, paper, and binding (PPB) are almost never a significant percentage of the retail price of a book.
I would like to see the Library of Congress start accepting digital books for copyright registration, however -- it's a drag to have to send them hardcopies.
In the early 1990s, Adobe's Acrobat reader was released. Although it is not a software specifically for eBooks, its multi-platform file format (PDF file) is an attractive feature for eBook publications. The digitization of both texts and graphics into a compact file that can be recognized in every platform is an important concept in eBooks. However, we still do not have an eBook publishing standard at the moment, though work in that direction is being done.
Well, actually PDF is the defacto standard for digital books. It's just that none of the handheld devices use the standard; they all use their own nonstandard, proprietary formats instead.
There are standard subsets of PDF that have been defined that are appropriate for archiving books. For example, the subsets don't allow you to include video or programs.
Find free books.
Seriously, how much storage would you need for the Library of Congress? If I can fit the human genome on my Ipod right now, what size hard drive do I need for a gajillion books?
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
....*snore*....
That's a nice way to dismiss any criticism of the subject at hand (I'm not saying that it deserves any criticism though).
If you don't agree, you're a luddite, and if you claim you're not a luddite, disagreeing will make you a crypto-luddite. It's almost like the unbeatable logic behind "denial is the first symptom of addiction".
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
The Library of Congress is already working on a program for preserving "digitally born" documents. Look at http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/
*disclaimer: I currently work at the Library of Congress, but not on this project.
. there used to be a sig here.....
At least the western tit mouse is safe!
Oh wait, they burned up too.
Won't DRM make it difficult for the Library of Congress to archive these? What about when it needs to be transferred to a new digital format (because paper has been around for ages; computer technology completely changes every 10 years)?
Distributed Proofreaders is the main source of public domain electronic books. It is part of Project Gutenberg. DP consists of thousands of volunteers doing hundreds of books each month, and some of our math books, for which DP is using LaTeX. Thus, the project needs savvy (La)TeX folk to correct the OCRed texts.
Thus, if you have a spare ten minutes now and then, you can make a significant contribution to public domain and mathematics. The finished e-books are free, downloadable, and computer-searchable. Sign up here!
The work is done through a web interface that lets you compare a scanned page image against OCRed text, and make any necessary changes to the text. The interface works with most browsers, from IE and Netscape to Mozilla and Opera. (I have proofread a couple pages myself, and can vouch for it being straightforward.) You can do one page whenever you have time or a hundred a day -- it's up to you. No commitments, no schedules.
If you'd like a change from mathematics, there are plenty of other books to do: from classics to pot-boilers, in English, French, German, Dutch,
Finnish, Swedish, etc.
Also, there are probably a few micronations that could be added to the list, e.g. Sealand.
I would think that many publishers already have a great deal of their works completely digitized at this point. As an aside, PDF would be just fine for a project like this, in fact pdf might even be overkill. And as far as how much trouble upgrading in 10 years will be, that's bollocks if the system is done right.
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
People looking for electronic archives should check out Bluemud.org. We have what I believe is the largest online archive of electronic documents. 25,000 documents online right now and another 225,000 waiting to be sorted by our librarians. As a warning, though, it's a mish-mash of stuff. A lot of full books, but a lot of other crap too: Old hacker 'zines, random usenet archives, and other more esoteric things.
Plus, it's an open community. Anyone can become a librarian on the site and help sort documents.
I think this is very useful as a large number of online versions of paper zines & newspapers have far more resources than their dead-tree counter part. Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times to name the few. So far, there was no central and/or organized way to capture this information.
I also liked the bit: "This new legislation means that a vital part of the nation's heritage will be safe and accessible as an important resource for businesses and education users in the future," said Mole.
__________
Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace!
Around 5 or so years back the Library of Congress (or one of its peers) started digitally archiving old LPs and other recordings to preserve them. I know at one time, this archive was publicly available, but I've no idea of its current status or availability.
An example of the content is it had several hours of mp3s transferred from live interviews of hillbilly moonshines. How-to's, stories, tales, etc...
I'm curious if anyone knows where this might be, who is running it, and if it's still around?
Thx
A significant amount of early Internet history is there as well: Stuff you don't/won't see in AOL or MSN and stuff you certainly won't see in newspapers or books anymore because it doesn't validate today's corporate dogma.
The Usenet archives need to find some independent mirrors before Google gets torn to shreds and its remains sold of to appease shareholder pressure. It's not hard to imaging the new group of MBA overlords deciding that maintenance of the archive is not profitable enough to warrant the active effort it takes to keep it from entropy.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Oh,gee. Ebooks. What's next? Virtual reality? Esther Dyson?