Children's Book Apps: A New World Of Learning

by: Lynn Neary

There's a whole new way to read your kids to sleep these days — or to distract them while you are trying to get something done. If you have a smartphone or an iPad, you can download a kids' book app in no time. From classics to stories created specifically as an app, these enhanced e-books include narration, animation and interactive features. Some children are even getting their first exposure to books on a digital device.


Michel Kripalani is deeply invested in Dr. Seuss these days — for two reasons. His company, Oceanhouse Media, has the rights to develop the works of Dr. Seuss as digital books — everything from Green Eggs and Ham to The Cat in the Hat. Kripalani also has a 2-year-old daughter, Kentia, who loves reading Dr. Seuss — on her father's iPad.


"Boy, she can navigate on that thing — it's incredible," Kripalani says. "There's something about a child's ability to navigate by touching what they want, and I believe that's the magic here. It's just that the child is able to touch the tree or touch the bird or touch the word that they don't know, and that's really one of the things that just changes everything."

Kripalani began his career as a video game developer, and he doesn't consider himself an expert on reading. But he says his team was very aware that Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, cared deeply about literacy. So in developing digital versions of books like The Cat in the Hat, they wanted to use the interactive features to help children learn to read.

"As the app is reading the book, the individual words are highlighting," he explains, "so the child is getting an association between what they are hearing and the actual word that's being spoken at the time. They can also touch on any of the pictures and they get a picture word association, so if the child taps on the cat for example, the letters C-A-T float up and the narrator speaks in a clear voice: cat."


With the e-book market so hot right now, a lot of people are eager to get in on the ground floor. Rick Richter left the traditional publishing world to found Ruckus Media, which develops digital versions of well-known kids' books, as well as brand new book apps. Richter says the company's award-winning app A Present for Milo is aimed at very young children.

"What a 2- to 4-year-old wants in an app is to poke and be satisfied," says Richter. "So Milo has 80 different touch points and 125 different animations — and they are randomized, so every time the child enters, it's a different experience."

Other book apps developed by Ruckus are less interactive, but they might offer other options: substituting a well-known actor's narration with a parent's voice, for example. Richter says the possibilities are endless. He believes these apps are an entirely new art form.


"People ask, 'Are you creating books, are you creating games or are you creating animations?' " he says. "The answer is yes. That's what we set out to do — books you can play with and games you can read."

However, there are some detractors who say this new breed of children's "books" are not really books at all.

"It's not a book for a number of reasons," says Philip Nel, a professor of English and director of the children's literature program at Kansas State University.

"One is that in a traditional reading experience, the reader is in charge," Nel says. "The reader acts on the book. With an interactive e-book, the reader does still act on the book, but the book also acts on, and depending on the adaptation, against the reader. So I would say it's not a book, it's maybe a relative of the book. But it's not quite a book."

Nel agrees with Richter that these apps are something entirely different. But he says the flashy features available in some kids' book apps actually interfere with the process of reading.


"Reading may be involved, but there's more to it than that, and it's different than that," he says. "We don't read a film, we watch a film. We don't read a video game, we play a video game. And I was trying to think, what's the verb to describe what the enhanced e-book experience is like; is it 'work,' is it 'use'? Do we 'play' an enhanced e-book?"

Elizabeth Bird, a children's librarian at the New York Public Library, agrees that some of the bells and whistles in kids' book apps are distracting. She says it's important that all of the artwork and interactive features in an app are well integrated with the story. Obviously, not all apps are equal, she says, but the ones that get it right can take a book to a whole new level.

"They allow you to do things that you couldn't do before," Bird says. "For example, there's a wonderful Peter Rabbit app that's out right now that sort of turns Peter Rabbit into a virtual pop-up book. And you can go beyond that. I mean, there are apps where you can touch a word and it will pronounce it for you, and it can also pronounce it for you in any language. You can learn a language a second way by using one of these picture book apps."

Bird doesn't believe apps are about to overtake books. She says kids move seamlessly back and forth between traditional print books and digital books all the time. If a parent wants to use a book app to distract a child, she doesn't see a problem with that, either.


"Let's say that I am in a grocery store and I see a [parent] handing their phone to a child," she says. "Do I want them to hand the child a game like Angry Birds, or do I want them to hand them Freight Train by Donald Crews in the app form? I would prefer that they hand them the book."

Kids book apps are so new, says Kripalani, that it's not surprising that there are problems still to be resolved. But he says when he thinks about his daughter those questions go away.

"I just stand back in awe and I just say, wow, she is just going to be able to absorb so much, so much faster, so much earlier. It's really, really awe-inspiring when you see a 3- or 4-year-old child that really gets it."

from: NPR

Academics to 'embrace Wikipedia'

Students and academics at a world-leading London university want to build bridges between the Wikipedia website and formal research.

by: Sean Coughlin

The online encyclopedia is one of the biggest resources for students, says the newly-formed Wikipedians at Imperial College.


But there is a reluctance to admit to this "elephant in the room", says the group's president, Vinesh Patel.

The group is planning an event to improve editing on Wikipedia pages.

The event to be held at Imperial College in April - the London Wikipedia Academy - is an attempt to address the often unspoken place of Wikipedia in students' research.

A known unknown

"The issue of how it's used needs to be explored, it's the most widely-used resource among students," says Mr Patel, a medical student at the university.

"Wikipedia is here to stay - it's a question of whether we come up to speed with it or try to ignore it."

Mr Patel says he wants to co-ordinate the way pages are edited by students and staff and to make the most of Wikipedia, rather than pretend it's not there.


"Students know there is an inherent unreliablity, as it's open edited. We're not trying to hide that.

"But it's a place where you can orientate yourself when you start a topic.

"The quality has improved and the readability is often second to none," he says.

But Mr Patel says there is a real gap in knowledge about how this free resource is being used.

Rather than swapping anecdotes about the use of Wikipedia, he says his group wants to move to a more evidence-based discussion about the place of Wikipedia in universities.

He always want to research how Wikipedia compares in reliability with other reference sources.

The website is not going to get any formal endorsement from Imperial College, but individual students and staff attending the conference will look at ways of improving what it offers to academic research.

In some US universities there are designated students who organise the editing of Wikipedia pages in their specialist areas.

Mr Patel also wants to use the Wikipedia model to enable students to work with museums and libraries to make more of their material accessible online.

Wikipedia, with almost 3.6 million articles, has been seen as an undeclared source of help for students' essays - but Mr Patel says that there is no reason to single out Wikipedia as a source for plagiarism.

"There are relatively sophisticated software systems to check for plagiarism.

"And is Wikipedia that different from other sources? You could plagiarise from a peer-reviewed journal. It's no more easy to plagiarise from Wikipedia."

Mr Patel says that attitudes vary sharply among academics towards Wikipedia, some receptive to its potential, some very much against it, because of its vulnerability to rogue information.

Charles Matthews, a former Cambridge maths lecturer who is set to address the meeting, has edited 200,000 items on Wikipedia, making him one of the most prolific editors of the online reference pages.

Wikipedia launched in 2001 and has 365 million readers per month.

from: BBC

Five Dumbest Social Media Mistakes Revealed?

by: Nancy Dowd

I just saw this post by Priya Ramesh over at Ragan. Priya breaks down the five dumbest mistakes marketers are making with social media. I liked it because he also suggests some solutions. It may be a great post to share with any staff members that are still a bit "stiff" with their posts.


1. Repurposing press releases for Facebook and Twitter.
As PR pros we think that social media integration is taking a boring press release and converting the headline into a tweet or Facebook update. Please stop. It’s a sure way to turn your friends and followers off.

Instead draw your target audience to the announcement by asking them a question on the topic or pull out a stat or text bite that’s sure to get people to click on your URL.

2. Maintaining a formal, businesslike tone on social networks.
Realize that those in your target audience have an attention span of 10 seconds, and then craft your Twitter, Facebook, or blog content accordingly. The voice you maintain in an annual report, during a board meeting or quarterly stockholders’ call is not going to cut it in the social sphere.

I am not asking you to sound like a hipster if you represent a financial services company. Yes, you need to maintain your brand image but come on, engage.
Step away from that “push” mechanism of sending tweets and updates. and instead “pull” your customers into a conversation by asking them what’s on their minds. It’s OK to show a little personality.

3. Using social media to broadcast and not to get feedback.
The beauty of social media lies in feeling your customers’ pulse in real time and using that valuable feedback to define your future steps. Features like the Facebook poll can be used weekly to ask a question or get your community’s reaction to a future product release. A tweet chat with your customers can result in ways to improve your customer service on Twitter.

Let’s get away from the “I am a PR manager, so my role is only to send messages” mindset. Instead, let’s get our hands dirty asking some tough questions to our online audience. You spent all that money and resources to get people to follow you online, now leverage their feedback to deliver what they truly care about.

**My note- Wow! Tough questions- how many of you are there with your social media? I'm hearing that so many of you have fought just to be able to post to Facebook or Twitter that you may feel a bit afraid to push topics. Are you?

4. Treating social media as a one-person job within PR/marketing.
If you still think social media is a job for your junior executive who happens to love new technology, you have totally missed a social media opportunity. Moving forward, every PR and marketing professional will be expected to have a basic knowledge and understanding of how social media functions.

I am not saying the VP of communications must take the time to tweet every few hours a day, but you need to encourage every member of your team to practice social media. I am startled at how just one person is tasked with engagement activities across multiple levels for an organization that has the capacity to spend millions of dollars on advertising!

My note- Right? Many libraries are still in the mindset that their webmaster should be updating web content and PR people should be updating Facebook! I'd love to hear from those of you are have knocked down the solos and have lots of staff participating. Send us the links so everyone can see how fabulous you are!

5. Joining the shiny-object bandwagon without a strategy.
Scott Stratten of “Unmarketing” fame summarized it well: “Let’s just get Web 1.0 right first, and then we can talk about Web 2.0.” Have you put enough time and resources on the three most essential social tools: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? Have you increased SEO with your blog? Do you see an incremental increase in your following and engagement activities (comments, shares, likes)?

My note- Have you? I know some of you are because I'm following you. But then there are also increases in followers that have little to do with your target audience at all. It drives me crazy the way some people are following my tweets just because of some "keyword" that matched their search list!

from: The 'M' Word

Google Settlement is Rejected

by: Andrew Albanese & Jim Milliot

In a stunning setback, Judge Denny Chin today rejected the Google Book Settlement, some 13 months after its final fairness hearing. “In the end, I conclude that the [Settlement Agreement] is not fair, adequate, and reasonable.” Chin set a date of April 25th for a status conference, and suggested his concerns with the agreement could be ameliorated with one simple change. “As the United States and other objectors have noted, many of the concerns raised in the objections would be ameliorated if the ASA were converted from an opt-out settlement to an opt-in settlement. I urge the parties to consider revising the ASA accordingly."

In his decision, Chin recognized the value of digitization, but sided firmly with the settlement's objectors and critics that the deal gave Google an unfair advantage. ”While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the ASA would simply go too far.... Indeed, the ASA would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case."

In a statement, publishers said they would seek revive the settlement as suggested by judge Chin. "Publishers have been making substantial investments to enable and enhance online access to content in accordance with copyright laws and we will continue to do so regardless of the outcome of the litigation," said Macmillan CEO John Sargent, one of the settlement's architects. "Publishers are prepared to modify the Settlement Agreement to gain approval. We plan to work together with Google, the Authors Guild and others to overcome the objections raised by the Court and promote the fundamental principle behind our lawsuit, that copyrighted content cannot be used without the permission of the owner, or outside the law.”

Among Chin’s numerous concerns with the ASA is what he calls the second part of the agreement, the section that “would transfer to Google certain rights in exchange for future and ongoing arrangements, including the sharing of future proceeds, and it would release Google (and others) from liability for certain future acts.” That provision, Chin, said goes too far. Chin echoes many of the objectors’ concerns, stating that “creating a mechanism for exploiting unclaimed works is more suited for Congress than this Court.” And although he acknowledged that laws introduced by congress to address the orphan works question were never passed, Chin said the fact that the ASA raises international issues is another reason to have the Congress act.

Chin also said the ASA went beyond the pleadings in granting Google permission to sell full access to copyrighted works that it otherwise would have no right to exploit. The ASA would give Google this authority “even though Google engaged in wholesale, blatant copying, without first obtaining copyright permission.”

Chin was also troubled by the high number of people –6,800—who opted out of the agreement. He noted that academic authors in particular were troubled by the agreement and said that while in many class action lawsuits many members of the class are never heard from, in this case members who are not heard from are giving a license to Google for future use of their works. Chin backed anti-trust objections, noting that the ASA “would give Google a de facto monopoly over unclaimed works.”

The Authors Guild said it hoped the different parties good still find common ground.. “Although this Alexandria of out-of-print books appears lost at the moment,” said Authors Guild president Scott Turow, "we'll be studying Judge Chin's decision and plan on talking to the publishers and Google with the hope that we can arrive at a settlement within the court’s parameters that makes sense for all parties.”

“Regardless of the outcome of our discussions with publishers and Google, opening up far greater access to out-of-print books through new technologies that create new markets is an idea whose time has come,” said Turow. “Readers want access to these unavailable works, and authors need every market they can get. There has to be a way to make this happen. It’s a top priority for the Authors Guild.”

New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann, a close follower of the case, told PW the numerous filings of objectors clearly made a significant impact on Judge Chin. "His opinion recites many of the objections," Grimmelmann noted. "He was clearly swayed by what he saw as a broad base of opposition to the settlement from a diverse group of class members. He called out the forward-looking settlement issue in particular, but he also cites copyright and international and other issues, not just legally, but in terms of class opposition.

You can read the decision in the Scribd reader:

In a stunning setback, Judge Denny Chin today rejected the Google Book Settlement, some 13 months after its final fairness hearing. “In the end, I conclude that the [Settlement Agreement] is not fair, adequate, and reasonable.” Chin set a date of April 25th for a status conference, and suggested his concerns with the agreement could be ameliorated with one simple change. “As the United States and other objectors have noted, many of the concerns raised in the objections would be ameliorated if the ASA were converted from an opt-out settlement to an opt-in settlement. I urge the parties to consider revising the ASA accordingly."

In his decision, Chin recognized the value of digitization, but sided firmly with the settlement's objectors and critics that the deal gave Google an unfair advantage. ”While the digitization of books and the creation of a universal digital library would benefit many, the ASA would simply go too far.... Indeed, the ASA would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copying of copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case."

In a statement, publishers said they would seek revive the settlement as suggested by judge Chin. "Publishers have been making substantial investments to enable and enhance online access to content in accordance with copyright laws and we will continue to do so regardless of the outcome of the litigation," said Macmillan CEO John Sargent, one of the settlement's architects. "Publishers are prepared to modify the Settlement Agreement to gain approval. We plan to work together with Google, the Authors Guild and others to overcome the objections raised by the Court and promote the fundamental principle behind our lawsuit, that copyrighted content cannot be used without the permission of the owner, or outside the law.”

Among Chin’s numerous concerns with the ASA is what he calls the second part of the agreement, the section that “would transfer to Google certain rights in exchange for future and ongoing arrangements, including the sharing of future proceeds, and it would release Google (and others) from liability for certain future acts.” That provision, Chin, said goes too far. Chin echoes many of the objectors’ concerns, stating that “creating a mechanism for exploiting unclaimed works is more suited for Congress than this Court.” And although he acknowledged that laws introduced by congress to address the orphan works question were never passed, Chin said the fact that the ASA raises international issues is another reason to have the Congress act.

Chin also said the ASA went beyond the pleadings in granting Google permission to sell full access to copyrighted works that it otherwise would have no right to exploit. The ASA would give Google this authority “even though Google engaged in wholesale, blatant copying, without first obtaining copyright permission.”

Chin was also troubled by the high number of people –6,800—who opted out of the agreement. He noted that academic authors in particular were troubled by the agreement and said that while in many class action lawsuits many members of the class are never heard from, in this case members who are not heard from are giving a license to Google for future use of their works. Chin backed anti-trust objections, noting that the ASA “would give Google a de facto monopoly over unclaimed works.”

The Authors Guild said it hoped the different parties good still find common ground.. “Although this Alexandria of out-of-print books appears lost at the moment,” said Authors Guild president Scott Turow, "we'll be studying Judge Chin's decision and plan on talking to the publishers and Google with the hope that we can arrive at a settlement within the court’s parameters that makes sense for all parties.”

“Regardless of the outcome of our discussions with publishers and Google, opening up far greater access to out-of-print books through new technologies that create new markets is an idea whose time has come,” said Turow. “Readers want access to these unavailable works, and authors need every market they can get. There has to be a way to make this happen. It’s a top priority for the Authors Guild.”

New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann, a close follower of the case, told PW the numerous filings of objectors clearly made a significant impact on Judge Chin. "His opinion recites many of the objections," Grimmelmann noted. "He was clearly swayed by what he saw as a broad base of opposition to the settlement from a diverse group of class members. He called out the forward-looking settlement issue in particular, but he also cites copyright and international and other issues, not just legally, but in terms of class opposition.

You can read the decision in the Scribd reader:
Google Settlement Rejection Filing

from: Publisher's Weekly

Ebook lending website Lendle shut down by Amazon

Kindle lending community site has its API access revoked by Amazon

by: Benedicte Page

Neither a borrower, nor a lender be … Lendle has been shut down by Amazon. Photograph: Ho/REUTERS


The new ebook lending community site Lendle, set up last month to take advantage of Amazon's free Kindle ebook loan facility, has gone off-line after having its API access revoked by Amazon. The site's homepage now warns users the service is "unavailable indefinitely".


Lendle co-founder Jeff Croft, who launched the site six weeks ago, expressed "pure surprise" at the development, saying in an online statement:

"The letter we received from Amazon states that the reason our API and Amazon Associates accounts have been revoked is that Lendle does not 'serve the principal purpose of driving sales of products and services on the Amazon site'. We take issue with this, as Lendle was built from the ground up to ensure that it would be beneficial to authors, publishers and Amazon."

Lendle, like other ebook lending sites, makes it possible for Kindle ebook readers in the US to lend out their ebooks to another member of the site – on a single occasion and for a limited time period of 14 days – and be permitted to borrow someone else's ebook for free in exchange.

Some authors have expressed concern that the sites open up an ebook free-for-all. Crime writer David Hewson this month cited such loan sites as one of the factors, alongside piracy on torrent sites, that are currently "chipping away" at authors' slender incomes.

Croft speculated that "skittish" publishers anxious about the site's effect on sales might have put pressure on Amazon, but admitted that "really, we don't know". He maintained the site does not discourage book buying, saying: "Our site requires that you be willing to lend books before you can borrow them. Our philosophy is: you can't borrow if you don't lend, and you can't lend if you don't buy. The entire system we built is centered around the idea of encouraging people to buy books." The site had engaged with a "passionate, loyal and vocal community many, many thousands of book-lovers strong," he added.

Lendle members voiced anger at Amazon on Twitter today, with http://twitter.com/cleavelands a typical one. "Good job @amazon," he complained. "Way to kill @lendleapp when they were driving sales of ebooks for your site."

On Twitter, @lendleapp said the owners of other community lending sites had indicated that they too had had API addresses revoked by Amazon. "Lendle has not been singled out," the site tweeted. However, a second ebook loan site, Book Lending, said it was carrying on with "business as usual" today.

Amazon has not responded to requests for comment.

from: Guardian

E-Readers Catch Younger Eyes and Go in Backpacks

by: Julie Bosman

Many young readers like Eliana Litos, 11, of Harrison, N.Y., received e-readers as holiday gifts


Something extraordinary happened after Eliana Litos received an e-reader for a Hanukkah gift in December.


“Some weeks I completely forgot about TV,” said Eliana, 11. “I went two weeks with only watching one show, or no shows at all. I was just reading every day.”

Ever since the holidays, publishers have noticed that some unusual titles have spiked in e-book sales. The “Chronicles of Narnia” series. “Hush, Hush.” The “Dork Diaries” series.

At HarperCollins, for example, e-books made up 25 percent of all young-adult sales in January, up from about 6 percent a year before — a boom in sales that quickly got the attention of publishers there.

“Adult fiction is hot, hot, hot, in e-books,” said Susan Katz, the president and publisher of HarperCollins Children’s Books. “And now it seems that teen fiction is getting to be hot, hot, hot.”

In their infancy e-readers were adopted by an older generation that valued the devices for their convenience, portability and, in many cases, simply for their ability to enlarge text to a more legible size. Appetite for e-book editions of best sellers and adult genre fiction — romance, mysteries, thrillers — has seemed almost bottomless.

But now that e-readers are cheaper and more plentiful, they have gone mass market, reaching consumers across age and demographic groups, and enticing some members of the younger generation to pick them up for the first time.

“The kids have taken over the e-readers,” said Rita Threadgill of Harrison, N.Y., whose 11-year-old daughter requested a Kindle for Christmas.

In 2010 young-adult e-books made up about 6 percent of the total digital sales for titles published by St. Martin’s Press, but so far in 2011, the number is up to 20 percent, a spokeswoman for the publisher said.

At HarperCollins Children’s Books e-book sales jumped in recent weeks for titles like “Pretty Little Liars,” a teenage series by Sara Shepard; “I Am Number Four,” a paranormal romance by Pittacus Lore; and “Before I Fall,” a novel by Lauren Oliver. (Some sales, publishers noted, are from older people crossing over to young-adult fiction.)

Jon Anderson, the publisher of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, said some titles, like “Clockwork Angel” and books in the “Night World” series, nearly doubled their e-book sales in the four weeks after Christmas, compared with the four weeks before.

“We had an instant reaction — ‘Boy, a lot of kids got e-readers for Christmas,’ ” Mr. Anderson said, adding that another significant bump in sales occurred over the three-day weekend that included Martin Luther King’s Birthday. “If it follows the same trend as adults, it’s the start of an upward curve.”

Digital sales have typically represented only a small fraction of sales of middle-grade and young-adult books, a phenomenon usually explained partly by the observation that e-readers were too expensive for children and teenagers.

Another theory suggested that the members of the younger set who were first encouraged to read by the immensely popular Harry Potter books tended to prefer hardcover over any other edition, snapping up the books on the day of their release. And anecdotal evidence hinted that younger readers preferred print so that they could exchange books with their friends.

That scene may be slowly replaced by tweens and teenagers clustered in groups and reading their Nooks or Kindles together, wirelessly downloading new titles with the push of a button, studiously comparing the battery life of the devices and accessorizing them with Jonathan Adler and Kate Spade covers in hot pink, tangerine and lime green.

“The young adults and the teenagers are now the newest people who are beginning to experience e-readers,” said Matthew Shear, the publisher of St. Martin’s Press. “If they get hooked, it’s great stuff for the business.”

It is too soon to tell if younger people who have just picked up e-readers will stick to them in the long run, or grow bored and move on.

But Monica Vila, who runs the popular Web site The Online Mom and lectures frequently to parent groups about Internet safety, said that in recent months she had been bombarded with questions from parents about whether they should buy e-readers for their children.

In a speech last month at a parents’ association meeting in Westchester County, Ms. Vila asked for a show of hands to indicate how many parents had bought e-readers for their children as holiday gifts.

About half the hands in the room shot up, she recalled.

“Kids are drawn to the devices, and there’s a definite desire by parents to move books into this format,” Ms. Vila said. “Now you’re finding people who are saying: ‘Let’s use the platform. Let’s use it as a way for kids to learn.’ ”

Some teachers have been encouraging, too, telling their students that they are allowed to bring e-readers to school for leisure reading during homeroom and English class, for example.

“I didn’t buy it until I knew that the teachers in middle school were allowing kids to read their books on their e-readers,” said Amy Mauer-Litos, Eliana’s mother, adding, “I don’t know whether it’s the device itself that is appealing, or the easy access to the books, but I will tell you, we’ve had a lot of snow days lately, and 9 times out of 10, she’s in the family room reading her Nook.”

Some younger readers have been exploring the classics, thanks to the availability of older e-books that are in the public domain — and downloadable free.

After receiving a light gray Sony Reader from her grandparents for Christmas, Mia Garcia, a 12-year-old from Touchet, Wash., downloaded “Little Women,” a book she had not read before.

“It made me cry,” Mia said. “Then I read ‘Hunger Games,’ ” the best-selling dystopian novel, “and it also made me cry.”

Her 8-year-old brother, Tommy, was given an e-reader, too. “I like it because I have so many different books on it already,” he said, including “The Trouble Begins at 8,” a fast-paced biography of Mark Twain written for children in the middle grades.

Eryn Garcia, their mother, said the family used the local library — already stocked with more than 3,000 e-books — to download titles free, sparing her the usual chore of “lugging around 40 pounds of books.”

“There’s something I’m not sure is entirely replaceable about having a stack of inviting books, just waiting for your kids to grab,” Ms. Garcia said. “But I’m an avid believer that you need to find what excites your child about reading. So I’m all for it.”

from: NY Times

Could this new book kill the Kindle?

It's small, light and portable – and it doesn't need charging. So could the new 'flipback' book be the next big thing in publishing?

by: Patrick Kingsley




Patrick Kingsley tries out the new 'flipback' book. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

If you've ever whined about how the Kindle, compact though it may be, doesn't have the look or feel of a nice printed novel – put this in your pipe and read it: the newly invented "flipback" book. Released in Britain this summer, it is being touted as the, er, new Kindle: the tome that's smaller and lighter than an e-reader, but made out of pages, not bytes.

It is all the rage in Holland, where it was introduced in 2009, and has since sold 1m copies. A version has just been launched in Spain, France is next, and the flipback reaches UK shores in June, when Hodder & Stoughton will treat us to a selection of 12 books. They cost £9.99, and will include David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Stephen King's Misery.

I am keen to see what the hype is about so I take a pre-released copy on my travels: Chris Cleave's The Other Hand. Nearly 370 pages long in its original format, the flipback version has more than 550 – but still fits easily in my pocket. The book's not called The Other Hand for nothing. It's so small that I can perch it in one fist, and keep my other hand free for shopping. How? The paper is wafer-thin.

"Great for making rollies," says my nicotine-addicted lunch date. More to the point, it's also great for reading. Unlike an ordinary paperback, the book lies open without intervention on my part, due to its special spine.

It's handy on a rush-hour tube, too. Page-turning with paperbacks will see you elbowing your neighbour in the pancreas in no time. But the minuteness of this little beauty, with its pages that flip rather than turn, help me keep my elbows to myself and pancreases everywhere safe.

Would it work with War and Peace? Unlikely. Is it the new Kindle? Obviously not. It can't hold 1,500 books. But if you want something that doesn't need recharging, and slips into your pocket as easily as a phone, the flipback is worth a try.



from: Guardian

Legal threat after bootleg prompts change at library

by: Jennifer Delgado

The Des Plaines Public Library is changing its wi-fi policy after being threatened with a federal lawsuit because a patron used its internet to bootleg an Academy Award-winning movie.


The new policy hasn’t been crafted yet, but those caught illegally downloading will most likely be banned from the library and from using its services for a certain amount of time, said Library Director Holly Sorenson.

“If this happened several times in a row, the response would have been sterner,” Sorenson said, adding there apparently was one download by somebody who can’t be tracked. “We felt this was a conservative approach.”

The lawsuit is part of a nationwide crackdown stemming from last year when producers of the 2010 best picture Oscar winner ‘The Hurt Locker’ went after 5,000 “John Doe” defendants accused of piracy identified by their IP addresses.

Lawyers representing the production company, Voltage Pictures, told the library last month it violated copyright infringement laws when a copy of the movie was illegally downloaded and shared through a peer-to-peer network. The library was told it could be named in a U.S. District Court lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., unless it paid $2,900 by March 11 or $3,900 after that date, according to a settlement letter sent to the library.

Because the facility doesn’t exclusively monitor that network, it’s impossible to know who illegally copied the film, library officials said.

The Des Plaines library avoided any legal action by sending invoices for its 12 copies of ‘The Hurt Locker’ and proving that the wireless internet is a separate network used only by patrons. The facility also sent the production company’s lawyers its current wireless internet policy, which states, “the connection shall not be used for illegal purposes nor used in such a way to violate library policies.”

It’s generally impossible for libraries to prevent illegal activity on a wireless network, said Carrie Russell, a copyright specialist for the American Library Association. She recommends institutions sign up for The Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects various online service providers from being held liable in copyright infringement cases.

Settlement letters don’t prove there was a violation and usually are used to scare libraries into forking over money, Russell said.

“It’s much easier to get someone to pay you money than go to court,” she said. “It’s really a great strategy for the (copyright) holders to collect money without any proof of wrongdoing.”

Institutions of all sizes need to track movement on their internet connections, said Gregory Jackson, vice-president of policy and analysis for EDUCAUSE, a non-profit that promotes the “intelligent use of information technology,” but libraries may balk at that.

“Libraries really don’t like to do that. They have a deep-seated sense that ‘we’re not supposed to be tracking what people are reading or doing,’” Jackson said.

Des Plaines library officials said they are in the process of enlisting with the copyright act, which mandates making consequences part of wireless policies. That’s why the library is changing its guidelines.

Sorenson acknowledged that a revamped policy will be hard to enforce when the library doesn’t monitor every device that hooks up to its wireless internet. It wouldn’t be cost-effective to have an employee watching for illegal activity on that network and the library doesn’t have enough virtual storage to capture every action, she added.

“You say, ‘if we catch you, we will revoke your privileges’ … but how do you catch them?”

from: Triblocal

SXSW 2011: The Year of the Librarian

by: Phoebe Connelly


Image: Austin Convention Center, Eric Uhlir.

Tech for tech's sake is over. In a year when social media is helping inform our coverage of everything from political upheaval in the Middle East to the unfolding nuclear disaster in Japan, your app better do something more than be cool.

I kept coming back to the librarians as I talked to people at SXSWi because this micro-track mirrored what I saw tweeted and written about the conference as a whole. Interactive didn't feel blindly focused on discovering the killer app. Tech didn't feel like an end unto itself -- rather, it was about processing data with a purpose; data for a greater good.

I met with Justin Grimes, a Ph.D. candidate at University of Maryland who has done significant work on open government standards, and works with the formidable Carl Malamud on digitizing federal archives. I told him about my theory that librarians were the lens through which to view SXSWi, and he started nodding. "Librarians are the boots on the ground," Grimes told me. "We don't care what the tech is, we care about what the user actually needs. That's our mandate."

There was, by my count, a panel or a meet-up showcasing librarians every day of this year's SXSWi. Let's start with the most fundamental of technology questions -- Internet access. Rural librarian and technologist Jessamyn West noted at her Friday panel that 22 percent of Americans are still without Internet at home, and 35 percent are without broadband. And, simply offering broadband at libraries or community hubs isn't enough. Users who only access Internet services at their local library, said West, are not as fully engaged with the social web. "The cloud is not real to those who can't access it," declared West.

As always, the question of the social web loomed large at this year's SXSWi. Rumor had it that Google was set to launch a new social media service called Google Circles. Foursquare used the conference to launch a new recommendation feature, which will serve up suggestions for other locales and deals when you use the service to check in a location. Tech is turning on the question of how to make sense of the wealth of data we manufacture as we use the social web. "Visualizations," noted Ryan Shaw, an assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science at University of North Carolina, at a panel on data visualization "are constrained by the data that underlies them."

But maybe we want to constrain the data that's available about ourselves.

In a excellent panel on Friday, moderated by O'Reilly Media's Alexander Howard, Christina Gagnier, Jack Lerner, and Lisa Borodkin discussed the need for an online users' bill of rights. Our online rights, Howard said, are being decided in "boardrooms, or perhaps garages." The three are working on a proposed bill of rights that is open to public voting until June 25, 2011. "If [Terms of Service agreements] were as easy as take it or leave it," said Gagnier, "we wouldn't have a problem."

from: The Atlantic

TD National Reading Summit

TD National Reading Summit
by: Terry


I attended the second of three summits in January 2011, hoping to make a contribution as a member of a volunteer working group comprised of librarians and academics exploring reading in Canada.

The purpose of the National Reading Campaign is to develop a Canadian national reading strategy, which will foster a reading culture in communities across the country. Three successive summits are working to identify key strategies and build coalitions to cultivate policy development and implementation. The two day summits, in both official languages, focus on the needs of Canadians in all regions, including the First Nations, immigrant communities, and youth. The summit reports are now available online.

Why develop a national reading strategy?

• to reflect the value of reading as a tool for democracy and civic engagement
• to enable Canadians to learn about themselves
• as a means to enable individuals to engage in a higher capacity in the economic life of Canada
• as a vehicle for joy and personal /intellectual enrichment
• to create a national framework -institutions involved in reading in Canada, libraries and schools, are municipal or provincially organized, to unify piecemeal approach
• to meet best practices in other countries

Teen and Post Secondary Working Group

This Teen and Post Secondary Working Group, met by conference call over the year and used Google Docs as a platform to assemble briefs and submissions to the working paper that focused on readers in this target group. Best practices, best partners and ideas for the future were tabulated and backgrounders posted online. I submitted a brief on Teen Boys and Reading.

Next Steps

Build consensus, keep working and look forward to Vancouver Summit next year.

James Frey ignores publishing houses to release new book through art gallery

Bad boy of American letters prints just 10,000 copies of his latest work, The Final Testament of the Holy Bible, in time for Easter

by:  Ed Pilkington

These are tough times for the publishing industry, so writers are increasingly turning to unconventional ways to market their work.


There is the horror story printed on toilet paper, the novel composed of 2,000 tattoos etched on volunteers' skin, the unbound book in a box that can be shuffled and read in any order, and of course the numerous collaborative Wikinovels.

Now the bad boy of American letters, James Frey, has jumped on the bandwagon with the announcement that his next book will be published by an art gallery. Just 10,000 copies will be printed on paper, with an additional collectors' edition of 1,000 signed volumes.

Frey's original manuscript will be printed on canvas and displayed by the publisher, the Gagosian gallery in New York, alongside new artworks by several top American artists to illustrate it. They include Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Richard Phillips and Terry Richardson.

For those not able to afford the $150 (£93) price tag for the collectors' edition, Frey is also self-publishing his work directly as an ebook through Kindles, iPads, Nooks and eReaders. The bad news for the folks at Harper Collins, Random House and other big imprints is that, amid these new-fangled outlets, there isn't a publishing house in sight.

Frey said that his decision to bypass conventional book houses was partly in response to what he called the "greatest revolution in publishing since the invention of the printing press. Everything about how we make and consume books is changing very dramatically".

Frey is keeping very much in form. Since his first book, A Million Little Pieces, came out in 2003, the author has rarely been out of the headlines, with controversy following him - or being whipped up by him — like a faithful dog.

A Million Little Pieces was famously denounced by Oprah Winfrey after it was revealed that important parts of the memoir were fabricated.

More recently, he has been accused of running his latest writing venture as a Dickensian sweatshop.

The paper editions will come bound in either white or black leather with the cover typography resembling that of the Bible – which is no coincidence, as the title of the novel is The Final Testament of the Holy Bible.

It tells the story of Ben Zion Avrohom, aka Ben Jones, aka the Messiah, aka the Lord God. Yes, Frey, a master at the dark arts of stirring up literary controversy, has decided to make the central character Jesus in his second coming, with the book devised as the third volume of the Bible.

It is not the second coming as devout Christians would have envisaged it.

This one happens in the Bronx, where Ben Jones, a drunkard, lives in an apartment smoking dope and having sex with prostitutes and men.

One of the hardest tasks for the modern literary writer is getting their work heard over the cacophony of the internet. Frey appears to have found a canny solutionto that conundrum, by picking a subject matter that can be guaranteed to goad the Christian right into providing helpful angry publicity.

That's the other reason, he says, he has decided to go it alone: "This way I can take full control of what I do, both artistically and commercial. I've written controversial books in the past and publishers have [given] me no protection at all — they just threw me under the bus.

"If controversy does arise, it'll be much easier for me to deal with as a self-publisherbecause I haven't got any shareholders to be beholden to. I'll just ignore it." Frey is certainly doing everything he can to provoke a reaction. He has chosen Good Friday for the publication date.


from: Guardian

As Library E-Books Live Long, Publisher Sets Expiration Date

by: Julie Bosman

Imagine the perfect library book. Its pages don’t tear. Its spine is unbreakable. It can be checked out from home. And it can never get lost.

The value of this magically convenient library book — otherwise known as an e-book — is the subject of a fresh and furious debate in the publishing world. For years, public libraries building their e-book collections have typically done so with the agreement from publishers that once a library buys an e-book, it can lend it out, one reader at a time, an unlimited number of times.

Last week, that agreement was upended by HarperCollins Publishers when it began enforcing new restrictions on its e-books, requiring that books be checked out only 26 times before they expire. Assuming a two-week checkout period, that is long enough for a book to last at least one year.

What could have been a simple, barely noticed change in policy has galvanized librarians across the country, many of whom called the new rule unfair and vowed to boycott e-books from HarperCollins, the publisher of Doris Lessing, Sarah Palin and Joyce Carol Oates.

“People just felt gobsmacked,” said Anne Silvers Lee, the chief of the materials management division of the Free Library of Philadelphia, which has temporarily stopped buying HarperCollins e-books. “We want e-books in our collections, our customers are telling us they want e-books, so I want to be able to get e-books from all the publishers. I also need to do it in a way that is not going to be exorbitantly expensive.”

But some librarians said the change, however unwelcome, had ignited a public conversation about e-books in libraries that was long overdue. While librarians are pushing for more e-books to satisfy demand from patrons, publishers, with an eye to their bottom lines, are reconsidering how much the access to their e-books should be worth.

“People are agitated for very good reasons,” said Roberta Stevens, the president of the American Library Association. “Library budgets are, at best, stagnant. E-book usage has been surging. And the other part of it is that there is grave concern that this model would be used by other publishers.”

Even in the retail marketplace, the question of how much an e-book can cost is far from settled. Publishers resisted the standard $9.99 price that Amazon once set on many e-books, and last spring, several major publishers moved to a model that allows them set their own prices.

This month, Random House, the lone holdout among the six biggest trade publishers, finally joined in switching to the agency model. Now many newly released books are priced from $12.99 to $14.99, while discounted titles are regularly as low as $2.99.

HarperCollins, in its defense, pointed out that its policy for libraries was a decade old, made long before e-books were as popular as they are today. The new policy applies to newly acquired books. “We have serious concerns that our previous e-book policy, selling e-books to libraries in perpetuity, if left unchanged, would undermine the emerging e-book ecosystem, hurt the growing e-book channel, place additional pressure on physical bookstores, and in the end lead to a decrease in book sales and royalties paid to authors,” the company said in a statement.

It is still a surprise to many consumers that e-books are available in libraries at all. Particularly in the last several years, libraries have been expanding their e-book collections, often through OverDrive, a large provider of e-books to public libraries and schools. Nationwide, some 66 percent of public libraries offer free e-books to their patrons, according to the American Library Association.

For many libraries, interest from patrons who want to check out e-books has been skyrocketing. At the New York Public Library, e-book use is 36 percent higher than it was only one year ago. Demand has been especially strong since December, several librarians said, because e-readers were popular holiday gifts.

“As our readership goes online, our materials dollars are going online,” said Christopher Platt, the director of collections and circulating operations for the New York Public Library.

In borrowing terms, e-books have been treated much like print books. They are typically available to one user at a time, often for a seven- or 14-day period. But unlike print books, library users don’t have to show up at the library to pick them up — e-books can be downloaded from home, onto mobile devices, personal computers and e-readers, including Nooks, Sony Readers, laptops and smartphones. (Library e-books cannot be read on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader.) After the designated checkout period, the e-book automatically expires from the borrower’s account.

The ease with which e-books can be borrowed from libraries — potentially turning e-book buyers into e-book borrowers — makes some publishers uncomfortable. Simon & Schuster and Macmillan, two of the largest trade publishers in the United States, do not make their e-books available to libraries at all.

“We are working diligently to try to find terms that satisfy the needs of the libraries and protect the value of our intellectual property,” John Sargent, the chief executive of Macmillan, said in an e-mail. “When we determine those terms, we will sell e-books to libraries. At present we do not.”

And those publishers that do make their e-books available in libraries said that the current pricing agreements might need to be updated.

Random House, for example, has no immediate plans to change the terms of its agreements with libraries, said Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for the publisher, but has not ruled it out in the future.

“Anything we institute ahead we’d really want to talk through with the community and together understand what makes sense for us both,” Mr. Applebaum said. “We’re open to changes in the future which are in reasonable step with the expectations and realities of the overall library communities.”

Publishers are nervous that e-book borrowing in libraries will cannibalize e-book retail sales. They also lose out on revenue realized as libraries replace tattered print books or supplement hardcover editions with paperbacks, a common practice. Sales to libraries can account for 7 to 9 percent of a publisher’s overall revenue, two major publishers said.

But e-books have downsides for libraries, too. Many libraries dispose of their unread books through used-book sales, a source of revenue that unread e-books can’t provide.

The American Library Association has assembled two task forces to study the issue.

Even among the librarians who have stopped buying HarperCollins e-books, many said that there might have to be a compromise.

“I can see their side of it,” said Lisa Sampley, the collection services manager in the Springfield-Greene County Library District in Springfield, Mo. “I’m hoping that if other publishers try to change the model, they think about the libraries and how it will affect us. But I’m sure there is some kind of model that could work for us both.”

from: NY Times

Supporting CanLit means shelving our protectionist policy

by: John Barber

There were not many of his old colleagues left in business when publisher Harold Fenn took his case to Ottawa last year, urging the government to support the embattled sector by upholding its long-standing ban on foreign investment in Canadian publishing – something Heritage Minister James Moore is now openly considering, with a new policy due as early as next month.


Permitting unrestricted foreign investment in book publishing, wholesaling and retailing would have potentially devastating consequences for an “already fragile” industry, declared Mr. Fenn, a widely admired pioneer of the independent industry that flourished after foreign takeovers were banned in the 1970s.


“We believe that Canadian content would diminish within the industry, fewer Canadian authors would be published and Canadians would read fewer Canadian books,” the company said in its submission to the minister.

That plea came too late to save H.B. Fenn & Co., which mothballed its premier imprint, Key Porter Books, soon after. A few months after that, the company entered bankruptcy, its founding family walking away with nothing from what was once a multi-million-dollar business with more than 200 employees.

But the lessons to be drawn from the Fenn drama are not as clear as they might have been in the last century, when independent Canadian publishers were seen as essential stewards of an emerging literary identity and the federal government banned foreign takeovers – requiring at the same time that already established subsidiaries, including such firms as Random House of Canada and Penguin Canada, undertake to deliver formal “benefits” to Canada as a condition of their continued existence. Coupled with direct subsidies to Canadian publishers, those restrictions helped produce a spectacular literary flowering, with dozens of new publishers emerging to compete with the incumbents and more Canadian writers cashing royalty cheques than an earlier generation could have imagined.


Forty years on, however, the independents continue to struggle commercially and disappear regularly. Just as unexpectedly, an extraordinary share of the trade they pioneered – Canadian literature as it is known to us and the world – is now controlled by the handful of multinational companies they struggle to compete against. Although the branch plants represent only 3.75 per cent of firms active in Canada, they generate 44 per cent of industry revenues. Independent Canadianpublishers pride themselves on discovering new talent and marketing risky work, but they can rarely afford to retain the talent they develop – let alone to introduce such writers to international markets.

Even the career of Margaret Atwood – the ultimate nationalist writer, still published by McClelland & Stewart, the ultimate nationalist publisher – proves the trend, with iconic M&S now reduced to a de facto imprint of Random House of Canada, a subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG., which owns 25 per cent of the company but manages it alone – including the profitable business of marketing Ms. Atwood.


With Canadian publishers weakening even as Canadian literature flowers, many observers – along with Canadian publishers of every stripe – are calling for major reforms of the old protectionist policies. Rather than strengthening Canadian publishers, they argue, the foreign ownership ban stifles them, forestalling the capital investment and international partnerships modern publishers need to grow. In that analysis, the best medicine for an ailing sector is a bracing dose of free trade.

The argument against foreign domination of Canadian publishing has clearly weakened in light of contemporary reality, with so many of the recognizable names in Canadian literature firmly and contentedly ensconced in branch-plant stables.
No serious policy maker today argues against the need to support a national literature – or the effectiveness of the $20-million worth of annual direct subsidies to Canadian-owned publishers. Butprotection carries its own cost, one that has opened new divisions in the nationalist camp. In the same forum where publishers such as Fenn and fiercely independent House of Anansi Press argued passionately for cultural protection, Lionel Koffler of equally independent Firefly Books registered a thoughtful plea for foreign investment.


After 35 years as an independent Canadian publisher, Mr. Koffler said in an interview, he has learned the simple truth that bigger is better. Ready access to capital and “vast productive backlists” – books that keep selling long after their initial publication – keep the multinational conglomerates profitable in virtually every market they enter, he notes. But independent Canadian publishers confined to a small market will always struggle.


“Size matters,” Mr. Koffler said. “But it’s never been easy to capitalize a book publishing business in a country where the people with capital mistrust publishing.” And almost impossible as long as investment by potentially savvier foreigners is banned. Without it, according to many observers, Canadian publishers are fated to the role of marginally profitable farm teams.

Mr. Koffler’s contrary view led to his quiet resignation from the nationalist Association of Canadian Publishers this year. But it accords neatly with opinions long expressed by Firefly’s foreign-based competitors, who have backed them up with impressive histories of publishing top-quality Canadian books.

Once thought to be interested solely in distributing imported books, the branch plants first turned to domestic publishing only to satisfy undertakings made to the federal government under the Investment Canada Act. Since then, they have more than satisfied expectations: Despite the fact that none qualify for federal subsidy, the multinationals not only dominate the English-language market in Canada today, especially for fiction, they alone have made Canadian literature consistently profitable – at home and abroad.

Publishing CanLit is not only profitable in itself, according to Random House of Canada president Brad Martin, it also helps the company sell imported titles by rounding out its offerings to booksellers. He has no doubt Canadian publishers would become more competitive if they were able to partner with cash-rich U.S. or European giants. Key Porter, he says, might still be publishing had foreign investors been permitted to buy it. “We’d probably have taken a close look,” he said.


Still, others are perfectly content with a status quo that encourages impressive output from a wide variety of small publishers, especially in regional and more obscure literary markets, without much regard for commercial pressures.

This unique Canadian mix proved its value this fall, the same season that saw Key Porter disappear, when small-is-beautiful Gaspereau Press of Kentville, N.S., won a Giller Prize for The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud, then adroitly exploited its surprise success by contracting with Vancouver-based Douglas & McIntyre – one of the last remaining independents of any size – to rush out a mass-market edition that quickly became a national bestseller.

Pulling even one of the strands of the delicate cat’s cradle of regulations supporting that status quo risks ruining it, many Canadian publishers say. Despite the multinationals’ traditional good citizenship, Anansi head Sarah MacLachlan says she distrusts assurances that they will continue to support distinctive Canadian voices if takeovers are permitted “Historically, that has not been the way it works when a bigger fish swallows up a smaller fish,” she noted.

But smaller fish need food, too. Without it, they will always remain trapped at the bottom of the food chain – with ominous shadows circling overhead.

____________________________________________________________________
BOOKS BY THE NUMBERS

• $2.8-billion: Estimated total value of the new and used book market
• $2.1-billion: Estimated total value of the new book market
• 234 million: Estimated total number of books sold
• 12.3: Average number of books bought a year (new and used)

Source: Reading and Buying Books for Pleasure [2005]

from: Globe and Mail

Students get math help online

Mississauga students looking for help with math homework can seek help from a certified teacher online.


The Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board is participating in the Ministry of Education’s Math Homework Help pilot project, which provides students in Grades 7-10 with free, real-time math tutoring by certified Ontario teachers.

This is the second year the program is being offered through the Catholic school board. This year, the project has expanded to 31 school boards across the province.

Students can find help by visiting www.ontario.ca/homeworkhelp.

“Students who have questions, but perhaps are too shy to ask them in class, feel comfortable asking questions online,” said Sam Mercurio, Dufferin-Peel’s e-Learning contact for the project. “In fact, students who log in for help do so with an online profile, so their privacy is protected.”

Help is available Sunday to Thursday from 5:30-9:30 p.m. Students receive individualized, confidential math tutoring from a certified Ontario teacher.

There are also online, classroom-like forums for each grade, monitored by teachers. Students can view questions other students have submitted and hear the teacher’s response while watching them work out the math problems on a whiteboard.

Videos of tutorials and commonly asked questions are also available, anytime during the week. There are also online resources, such as math games and a virtual locker where students can save their work.

To register, students will need their OEN (Ontario Education Number), which differs from their student number and can be obtained from their school.

from: mississauga.com

Need Advice on What to Read? Ask the Internet

by: Claire Cain Miller

Netflix uses a software algorithm to recommend movies and Zappos uses one to recommend shoes. Now Goodreads, the social network for book lovers, is introducing an algorithm to recommend books.


Goodreads was started in 2006 for people who wanted to talk about books online. Its 4.6 million members load their virtual bookshelves with books they’ve read, are reading and want to read, rate and review them, and discuss them with friends and others on the site.

On Thursday, Goodreads will announce that it has acquired another start-up, Discovereads.com. It uses machine learning algorithms to analyze which books people might like, based on books they’ve liked in the past and books that people with similar tastes have liked.

Otis Chandler, Goodreads’s founder and chief executive, says the site has been an online version of walking into a friend’s living room and scanning the bookshelves to get recommendations. But readers need more than that, he said, particularly now that libraries, bookstores and some newspapers’ book review sections are disappearing and e-bookstores are inspiring more self-published authors.

“This will give the casual reader a quick answer to ‘What should I read first?’” he said. Once people have rated 10 books on a scale of five stars, Goodreads will be able to suggest books they might like.

Determining people’s tastes is a lucrative business, as Netflix has demonstrated by giving $1 million to the first team to develop a better movie recommendation system than the one it was using.

For books, Amazon.com already has a robust recommendation system. But Mr. Chandler said Goodreads’s recommendations will be better because Amazon considers books a customer has browsed or bought, so buying a gift for a child could throw off the recommendations, for instance.

Goodreads will also use the recommendations to help authors and publishers advertise their books to readers who are most likely to be interested in them. Seventeen thousand authors, including James Patterson and Margaret Atwood, use Goodreads to advertise.

In addition to advertising, Goodreads, which has raised $2 million from investors including True Ventures, makes a small amount of money from commissions when someone clicks from its site to an online bookstore to buy a book.

from: NY Times

Jewish Texts Lost in War Are Surfacing in New York

Lotte Strauss’s husband, Herbert, owned one of the books in the collection on the Science of Judaism.

by: Sam Dolnick

In 1932, as the Nazis rose to power in Germany, a Jewish librarian in Frankfurt published a catalog of 15,000 books he had painstakingly collected for decades.


It listed the key texts of a groundbreaking field called the Science of Judaism, in which scholars analyzed the religion’s philosophy and culture as they would study those of ancient Greece or Rome. The school of thought became the foundation for modern Jewish studies around the world.


In the tumult of war, great chunks of the collection vanished. Now, librarians an ocean away have determined that most of the missing titles have been sitting for years on the crowded shelves of the Leo Baeck Institute, a Manhattan center dedicated to preserving German Jewish culture.

The story of how the hundreds of tattered, cloth-bound books with esoteric German titles ended up in New York includes impossible escapes, careful scholarship and some very heavy suitcases. And while the exact trails of many of the volumes remain murky, they wind through book-lined apartments on the Upper West Side, across a 97-year-old woman’s cluttered coffee table and into a library’s cavernous stacks.

For Jewish scholars, the collection of Science of Judaism texts (in German, Wissenschaft des Judentums) is a touchstone marking the emergence of Jewish tradition as a philosophy and culture worthy of academic study.

“We’re all heirs to the legacy of Wissenschaft,” said Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University.

The University Library Frankfurt still houses the bulk of the collection, but experts there have determined over several decades that they were missing some 2,000 books listed in the 1932 catalog. In the last two years, a team led by Renate Evers, head librarian at the Leo Baeck Institute, found that her shelves had more than 1,000 of the lost titles.

While scholars say the books in New York are probably not the same copies as those lost from the Frankfurt library, their rediscovery offers the chance to rebuild what one professor called “a legendary collection.” Frankfurt librarians are putting the collection online, while the Center for Jewish History, the institute’s parent organization, is seeking a grant to do the same.

“This is very exciting,” said Rachel Heuberger, head of the library’s Judaica division. “You can reconstruct a collection that otherwise never would have come to life again.”

Scholars say the books were most likely brought to New York from Europe by private collectors and antiquities dealers. In the past 50 years, donors, nearly all of them German Jews who immigrated and prospered here, gave them to the Leo Baeck Institute.

The donors, photographed in their cinched ties and sober suits, represent a generation of scholarly New York immigrants that is nearly gone. They escaped the Nazis, built new lives and created a sophisticated community that centered on books, culture and learning. Their ranks included the political philosopher Hannah Arendt and Dr. Ruth Westheimer.

Many came to this country hauling suitcases filled with books, and as they settled here, they created academic journals and scholarly institutes. They debated politics during formal dinners in Washington Heights parlors. They took typewriters along on vacation so they could keep working.

Herbert A. Strauss, who came to New York with his wife in 1946, owned one of the lost books, an 1843 volume by Ludwig Philippson. Where he got it, his widow, Lotte, has no idea. A historian and a professor, he was always coming home to their Upper Manhattan apartment with his arms full of new tomes.

“He was not only married to me,” Mrs. Strauss said. “He was also married to his desk.”

When he died in 2005, she donated 4,500 of his books to the Leo Baeck Institute.

The couple had met in Germany, and escaped together to Switzerland just steps ahead of the Gestapo. They recounted their ordeals in separate memoirs published in 1999.

Mrs. Strauss, 97, a great-grandmother, recalled meeting her husband. “I was fascinated by him,” she said. “He was good-looking and he had new ideas.”

On a recent afternoon in her sun-drenched apartment, Mrs. Strauss pulled out her husband’s brittle papers. There were Nazi-era ration cards decorated with swastikas — red for bread, blue for meat. There was a lifeguard certificate from Berlin that showed a young man, sleeves rolled up past his elbows, smiling at something off-camera.

Did he carry books with him when he came to New York?

Mrs. Strauss laughed. “We came here poor as church mice,” she said. “You went as you were; you didn’t carry a thing.” She was eight months pregnant and had one dress to her name. Mr. Strauss built his library, and their life, in New York.

Ludwig Schwarzschild, a dermatologist, brought his library with him when he came to the United States in 1934. Although his practice north of Frankfurt was shuttered by the authorities, he, his wife and their two young children were able to take most of their possessions out of Germany, said their daughter, Lore Singerman, of Annapolis, Md.

Mrs. Singerman, 78, remembered a Manhattan childhood of heavy European furniture and crowded bookcases. Reading was highly prized — prayer books, The Saturday Evening Post, National Geographic.

Her father owned one of the lost Wissenschaft volumes, an 1888 edition of a Hermann Cohen book. His family donated it to the institute in 1970, the year he died. Mrs. Singerman does not know where her father got the book, but said, “If it was in German, he probably brought it with him — he didn’t buy German books here.”

Fred W. Lessing, another German Jewish donor, built such a vast book collection at his home in Scarsdale, N.Y., that he ordered catalog cards from the Library of Congress to keep track of it all. He was chief executive of a Yonkers metal company, but his passion was his library and discussions with professors and writers.

Mr. Lessing scoured auction catalogs for treasures, with a special focus on the history of the Enlightenment. His children knew enough not to touch his “good books,” said his daughter Joan Lessing. “His library was part of our lives,” she said. “Books were in every room.”

Mr. Lessing gave the institute an early-20th-century edition of a volume by Adolf Eckstein, but his daughter did not know where he had gotten it.

Even the Frankfurt librarian who cataloged the entire collection, Aron Freimann, came to New York. After arriving in 1939, he went on to work at the New York Public Library.

Today, his granddaughter, Ruth Dresner, lives in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. She keeps her grandfather’s catalog on her shelf — she calls it his “magnum opus” — and plans to leave it to her children.

“I’m 80 years old, and I’m very devoted and dedicated to perpetuating tradition,” she said. “I am very proud.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: March 9, 2011

A caption on Tuesday with an article about Jewish texts lost in World War II that have resurfaced in New York described an accompanying map incorrectly. It is a map of central Europe, not only of Frankfurt.


from: NY Times

Country music star Dolly Parton in Scots book giveaway

Country music star Dolly Parton has launched a project to give free books to children in Scotland.


The Imagination Library scheme will see youngsters in care given a free book every month until their fifth birthday.


The initiative, which is being run in partnership with the Scottish government and the Scottish Book Trust, will involve about 3,341 children.

The Dollywood Foundation project has already proved successful in the US and other parts of the UK.

Dolly Parton developed the project in 1995 for her hometown of Sevier County in Tennessee.
It proved so successful that neighbouring communities asked to join, before it spread across the US.

The project began in the UK in Rotherham in December 2007 and has grown to operate in a dozen areas.

However, the Scottish project is the first to run on a national basis, purely for children in care.

'Language skills'

Dolly Parton said: "I am thrilled to be a part of this wonderful effort. When I started the Imagination Library in my hometown, I never dreamed that one day we would be helping Scottish kids”

"Much of my music has been inspired by Scotland so it's only right that we are now in a position to bring more joy into the lives of the nation's looked after children.

"From the bottom of my country heart, I want to thank the Scottish government and the Scottish Book Trust for asking us to be part of something so special."

Children's Minister Adam Ingram said the scheme aimed to ensure looked after children were given some of the same life chances as others.

He added: "Research also shows that children whose parents and carers talk to them frequently have better language skills than those who do not and that the presence of books in the home can have an important impact on long-term achievement."

The books for the Imagination Library programme will be selected by a committee of experts in the field of childhood development, literacy and education, with a Scottish expert set to join the panel later this year.


from: BBC

Ssshhh! The noisy US revolution coming to British libraries

by: Kunal Datta

Public libraries could be set for a radical overhaul that could see books offered alongside coffee, murder mystery nights, poetry evenings and open mic sessions, should the plans of a private US company be given the green light. Library Systems & Services, a Maryland-based firm, owns 13 public libraries in the US. Its aim in Britain is to manage 15 per cent of public libraries within the next five years.


LSSI is in consultation with local authorities across the UK, proposing to transform libraries into "multifunctional spaces". It hopes to have won contracts in at least four local authorities by the end of the year.

The company's entry to the UK is being managed by Stuart Fitzgerald and Jim Lynch, former inspectors for the Audit Commission. "There is an inefficiency that has crept into library services," Mr Fitzgerald says. "It's wrong. And it's not how public money should be spent."

LSSI's entry into the UK could also mark the start of a fierce transatlantic bidding war. Its main UK rival is John Laing, which manages libraries in Hounslow. The two have already competed head-to-head in a number of tenders, including the £10m contract for Slough's libraries which was eventually awarded to Essex Council last year.

The revenue model will differ for each council, although LSSI claims it can run public libraries at a fraction of the cost of local authorities.

The "slacks and trainers mentality" among librarians will be abolished, Mr Lynch says. In its place will be "a rigorous service culture".

Mr Fitzgerald adds: "We will work with local partners: the health services, the police, the fire service and business to get their messages across. Those agencies will pay to keep the library building open, people will come in to get books and at the same time these events will be happening in the libraries with these agencies as our partners."

But it might not be a smooth transition. In California two lawsuits have been filed to block local authorities from withdrawing from the state system and outsourcing to LSSI. Roberta Stevens, the president of the American Library Association, warns: "One of the biggest risks is the long-term nature of these contracts and their lack of transparency, particularly for librarians. Local authorities have to be absolutely clear on long-term commitments before signing these deals."

Peter Allenson, Unite's national organiser for local government, said: "The prospect of libraries being taken over by private companies, which will invariably be seeking to make profits, will lead to a much diminished service for the millions of people that use libraries in the UK."

Mr Fitzgerald insists that book borrowing will remain free, while peripheral services, such as coffee shops, IT centres and bookshops, could be added. "This is not selling off the crown jewels," he says. "It is about putting the library in the hands of experts who will remain answerable to the council at all times."

from: Independent

The dogs who listen to children reading

Scheme aims to encourage children to read aloud

by: Patrick Barkham


Some children show the dog the pictures as they read

When children read to him, Danny does not criticise or correct their pronunciation. He just nods and pricks up an ear, although sometimes he closes his eyes and appears not to be listening.


Danny is a greyhound and a novel way of encouraging pupils at Oakhill primary school in Tamworth, Staffordshire, to read aloud. A "listening dog", he is part of a scheme that originated in the US called Reading Education Assistance Dogs (Read).

"It helps with their self-esteem in reading out loud because he is non-judgmental," says the dog's owner, Tony Nevett, who has a degree in animal-assisted therapy. "He doesn't judge them and he doesn't laugh at them. He's just a tool – the children don't realise they are reading, which they might not have the confidence to do in class." Some children even show Danny the pictures as they read.

Danny received five months of training to become a Read dog. Greyhounds are particularly well-suited because they do not bark and their short coat is less likely to trigger allergies.

Nevett hopes that the scheme, piloted in Kent, will spread. "We've had some success stories, including a girl with Down's Syndrome who really took to the dog and improved her reading," he says. "When Danny goes to sleep I tell the children that he's dreaming about their story."


from: Guardian

Banned books return to shelves in Egypt and Tunisia

by: Benedicte Page


Old books market in Cairo. Photograph: Alamy

A number of highly political titles censored by the regime of ousted Tunisian president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali are now returning to the country's bookshop shelves.

La Regente de Carthage by Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet, a critical book about the former president's family, focusing in particular on the role of his wife, Leila, is among those now openly on sale in the country, according to the International Publishers Association.

Alongside it is a previously banned study of the long-serving Tunisian president from whom Ben Ali took over following a 1987 coup: Habib Bourguiba: La Trace et l'Heritage by Michel Camau and Vincent Geisser.

Also now appearing in the country's bookshops are The Assassination of Salah Ben Youssef by Omar Khlifi, a book about the shooting of a former Tunisian minister of justice in Frankfurt in 1961, and works by journalist Toaufik Ben Brik, a prominent critic of Ben Ali's presidency.

Alexis Krikorian, director of the Freedom to Publish programme at the IPA, said the emergence of these and other formerly banned books within Tunisia was "very good news". Whether censorship still existed with regard to new titles was a separate issue, he added, but it was likely that the legal submission procedure, which under the old regime had been misused to block books at their printers, "no longer applies".

Anecdotal reports are also emerging of once suppressed titles appearing for impromptu sale on street corners and newspaper kiosks across Egypt. Salwa Gaspard of joint English/Arabic language publisher Saqi Books said accounts in the Arabic press told of books that had been hidden for years in private basements now once more seeing the light of day.

Cairo is also to hold a book fair in Tahrir Square – the focus for protests against former president Hosni Mubarak – at the end of March, according to Trevor Naylor of the American University of Cairo Press bookshop, which is based in the square. Naylor told the Bookseller that the event had been planned in the wake of the cancelled Cairo Book Fair, which was abandoned in January in the face of growing political unrest.

"Everyone around the globe now associates Tahrir Square with freedom and revolution," Naylor said. "We really wanted to do something that celebrates what happened here, and this seems like a great way to do it."

from: Guardian

Artist turns old books into sculptures

American artist Brian Dettmer carves amazing sculptures from discarded books

by: Max Benato


Artist Brian Dettmer sculpts books into works of art, such as this The Household Physicians. Photograph: Brian Dettmer


Oh what to do with those out-of-date annuals, encyclopaedias, and other wieghty tomes. While some books beg to be passed on and shared, or even cherished selfishly through the centuries, some just don't stand the test of time.


Which is where a little book surgery comes in handy. American Brian Dettmer is one of a growing number of artists who has made a virtue of the redundant book by transforming it into a modern masterpiece.

He begins by sealing the edges of the book, then cuts into the surface and dissects it from the front using a range of tools that includes knives, tweezers and surgical tools.

There's no rushing it though – each page is painstakingly sculpted one at a time. And he never adds anything to the books, but only takes away.

Do try this at home.

from: Guardian

On Murder & Montreal

by: Nathalie Atkinson

In between bottles of Dow and Molson’s, and often on an empty stomach, private investigator Russell Teed drinks a lot of Canadian rye. Enough that Bob and Doug McKenzie would be proud. Teed, a Westmount heir, not a heavy, isn’t exactly hardboiled but he’s street-savvy — the gumshoe equivalent of a forensic accountant.

Working from his cramped office in the CanAm building on Montreal’s Dominion Square, Teed is the creation of Charles Ross Graham, writing as David Montrose. The first two Montrose books appeared in 1951 and 1952 as part of Collins’ White Circle pocket books series (of which there were several hundred similar crime novels). They disappeared just as quickly: scarcely a copy can be found in any library in Canada.

Montreal-based Véhicule Press has been around since 1973, “and for over 25 years now, even longer,” says publisher Simon Dardick, “I’ve wanted to publish these books.” He’s collected several copies of Montrose’s four novels from secondhand bookshops over the years. “Then I’d look at some of the racism in it and think I can’t do it. Until I realized that it’s like taking the N-words out of Mark Twain: we put our little [publisher’s note] at the beginning instead — because I think they’re really valuable documents.”

Finally, Véhicule Press reissued The Crime on Cote des Neiges and Murder Over Dorval — the first two — last fall in a new reprint series called Ricochet (a nice bilingual touch). “It took a few beers to figure that one out,” he laughs. The covers are souped-up versions of the original art. It’s a small niche, Dardick admits, but sales on the 1,200 initial print run of the first two titles have been moderate; “there seems to be an appetite for it,” which means they’ll be adding titles to Ricochet. Montrose’s third Teed novel, The Body on Mount Royal, will come out next spring, with a contemporary artist designing a new cover in the pulp style.

“It’s a lovely antidote,” says Dardick, “to a lot of serious literary stuff we publish — it deserves to be looked at, and given some respect. To me, for Canadians, this is an interesting part of our history — our literary history, and our social history.”

Montrose’s prose can sometimes be a bit purple, in that Mickey Spillane way. Take Teed’s description of a femme fatale: “Her lower lip was more sensual than a Renaissance Venus. An archbishop would want to kiss that lower lip, would want to bite it until he drew blood.” But it’s also surprisingly good — more Dashiell Hammett than Spillane. When Teed pays a visit to a well-appointed modern apartment on Peel, “It looked just beautiful. It looked like a $10,000 cheque to an interior decorator.”

That they’re set in Montreal’s jazz and sometimes-seedy cabaret 1950s heyday is all the better — Teed plays all-night card games on Jeanne-Mance near Sherbrooke and goes on recce to remote cabins (just substitute the Laurentian Highway for Sam Spade’s Bay Area roads).

“Montreal becomes a character in the city,” Dardick says. “Decarie Boulevard, which is such a downmarket street now because of the recessed highway that goes right through the middle of it, used to be, as Montrose refers to it, the place to go to be seen.”

“I love the idea that they’re situated in Montreal, but we didn’t want to put Montreal in the name of the imprint,” he adds, “because if I can find something good that focuses on Winnipeg or Toronto, there are gems out there and it does interest me to reprint them whenever we can.”

Véhicule is also looking into rights for Ronald J. Cooke’s The Mayor of Cote St-Paul, first published in 1950, and The House of Craig Street (although the street’s name has since been changed to Viger).

Dardick is also intrigued by Brian Moore, the multiple Governor General’s Award winner for fiction and Booker-prize nominee. He explains that Moore seldom acknowledged his early writing of genre thrillers such as The Executioners. “He never wanted it to be known and what I’ve heard is he just disavowed them, because back in those days you didn’t write this type of book.”

A lot like Graham. “I think that Graham worked for a chemical company and middle management, it was just not done,” Dardick says. “I’ve always wondered whether he lived in Montrose Avenue in Westmount and that was his way of choosing a pseudonym.”

Meanwhile, Véhicule is still actively searching for the rights owners, since Graham a.k.a. Montrose died in 1967 (although the novels will become public domain in a few years). The foreword to the first book offers all that is known about Graham: that he was born in New Brunswick, lived in Nova Scotia and was an economist and chemical analyst with a penchant for crime writing. He was married twice, and he wrote four novels.

After that, the trail goes cold.

EXCERPT

“Dawn had done it. Looking from the edge of the bluff, all Montreal was spread below, from the rich stone mansions on Redpath Crescent at the top of town, to the turrets of the Chateau Apartments on Sherbrooke, to the narrow busy million-signed crampedness of St. Catherine, to the railroad tracks, St. Henri’s squalor, the canal, Verdun, the river. The St. Lawrence river, winding up here from the Atlantic to bring ocean ships farther inland than anywhere else in the world.

A mighty city. A mighty city for the Sark to live on like a maggot on a piece of rich fat meat. I wasn’t too sorry he was dead.” – From The Crime on Cote des Neiges by David Montrose (Véhicule Press)

OTHER PULP REPRINTS

True pulps aren’t paperbacks but earlier magazines printed on cheap pulp paper, which flourished domestically in Canada after the 1940 War Exchange Conservation Act by William Lyon Mackenzie King’s government. The influential writer Frank L. Packard, who during the Canadian pulp era created a character named Jimmie Dale, (also known as The Gray Seal), a template that later inspired Walter Gibson’s The Shadow. The pocket books sometimes called pulp, with artsy outrageous covers that came out in the 1940s and 1950s were for commuters to lug and slip into their pockets.

“We don’t deal generally in Canadian pulp material,” says dealer Neil Mechem of Girasol Collectibles in Mississauga. “It’s not generally collectible and Canadian material is not widely collected.” Mechem makes the rounds of the key spring pulp shows: the Fantastic Pulp Show & Sale in May in Toronto and the ones in Chicago (Windy City) and Ohio (Pulpfest), where does find that in addition to readers of pulp, “we’re seeing people coming into it for the nostalgic and historical value of it as pop culture is concerned.” It’s enough that Girasol has a niche pulp replica series – a complete facsimile reprint of whole magazines, even assembled in the same fashion, with a staple, and a Spider line of trade paperback series that re-sets text alongside original illustrations.

“It’s like anything else in quantity,” Mechem adds. “There’s the good the bad and the ugly. There is a lot of hack writing there’s a lot of that but there’s that in every genre.”

Tony Davis, a Toronto pulp aficionado and editor of the annual The Pulpster, recently went to the National Archives in Ottawa to check out the collection for a book he’s working on. Library & Archives Canada has made their “Tales from the Vault!” collection of Canadian pulp fiction (from 1940-1952) available for research, and online. Davis finds most of the Canadian-authored pulps at American shows. “I tend to find more from American vendors than I do from Canadian. The Americans usually say oh, it’s Canadian.” And lucky for Davis, accordingly they’re priced cheaply.

from: National Post