Ramblings, citations and "brainwaves" of a college librarian in Toronto. 475 square feet refers to the size of my home, not the size of my office or library.



Mobile Interfaces for EBSCO & Summon


Library Journal

"A frequent complaint is that these services often draw users in through a streamlined mobile portal only to lead them to other site subsections or resources that are unwieldy on a smaller screen, or entirely unusable. As more content providers embrace the mobile medium, however, libraries will be better able to offer both smartphone users and traditional users an equal level of service."



Publishers Weekly

"Prices for the chapters will range from $2 to $3 based on the number of chapters and list price for the complete book. The chapters will come with DRM protection."


Great eBook Piece


Scholarly Kitchen

"professional and scholarly ebooks account for more than three times the rest of the US ebook market combined."


100 Useful Links for eBook Lovers





Magazines in Google Books


Check out all the magazines in Google Books.


http://wikimapia.org


Wikimapia

Open Source mapping.


Kindle Comes to Canada


Kindle Canada is available

Canada gets

1.Free access to the Kindle Store via 3G wireless.
2.300,000 English language books.
3.$11.99 prices.
4.100,000 books under $5.99.
5.Newspapers and Magazines are also available

Canada does not get

1.No free Internet.
2.$2 extra for books due to wireless delivery charge.
3.No wireless delivery of personal documents.
4.No Kindle Blogs.
5.Prices in Canadian Dollars. Everything will be charged in US dollars

Am I the only one who does not want another device to lug around?


Medley May Pass Web of Science


Medley.com, at current growth rates will surpass Web of Science in mid 2010. It is basically an academic paper "cloud". Check it out!


American Book Sellers Association Tries to Fight Book Pricing by Walmart


Clay Shirky has written a great little ditty about how we should fear cartels more than behemoths like Walmart, when it comes to books.

I for one never understood how home movies have fallen in price but not books. $35 hardcovers and $20 semi-hard covers keep me from buying books new. I wait for sales or finds on ebay, Kijiji...

If you want to charge more for blockbuster authors fine. But non-fiction, little known authors, don't think so...


75 Apps to Turn Your iPhone into the Ultimate Personal Library


List here

Includes:
Facts, Dictionaries
Book Collections
Fiction and NonFiction Books and Book Sellers
News

Maybe libraries should have more apps to link their collections with their patrons?


Article File Sharing Sites Emerge


Libraries watch out, are you about to be Napster-ized?

Ken Masters
Opening the non-open access medical journals: Internet-based sharing of journal articles on a medical web site
Internet Journal of Medical Informatics





U.S newspaper circulation has hit its lowest level in 70 years.

Several publishers have stopped delivering newspapers to far-flung sites to save fuel and production costs. Publishers also have hiked prices. Add in classified shrinkage, falling ad revenues...future looks grim. A viable business model based on eReaders better come soon...

I'll be sad if most vanish all all we have are bloggers and TV. But then again I read 3-5 newspapers a day, have been since I was a teenager.



Here is an interesting MPAA report for the argument that Content is King.

Andrew Odlyzko (University of Minnesota Scholar) says no, connectivity is king.


War on Memorization


Seems the school system is forever diluting what kids are asked to remember. Who needs a base of knowledge when everything can be loked up online? But:

"Being able to compress a lot of experiences and summarize them well is part of the very nature of human intelligence, said Douglas Hofstadter, professor of cognitive science at Indiana University, Bloomington, and author of "Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid."

"It's about finding the essence of things," he said. "It's not about restoring everything. It's about reducing things in complexity until they're manageable and understandable.""

CNN


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