The Contra Costa County Library has been awarded a $60,000 Bay Area Library and Information Systems (BALIS) Innovation grant to create a mobile platform that will push new and existing library content and services into the hands of cell phone users.

The “Snap & Go” project will allow Contra Costa County residents with mobile phones and a library card to access library materials, enhanced content, and manage their accounts without having to visit a library building or gain access to a computer.

Of particular interest to me since I just heard of QR Codes is that the project will utilize them — a two-dimensional barcode technology to encode information and automatically launch web-accessible functions.

The library will develop a Mobile Patron Support System that will link customers with cell phones to library services and information through QR codes that are attached to library materials including books, DVDs, flyers, posters, library cards, and the catalog.

By taking a picture of the barcode, the phone will launch the library’s mobile website and provide access to three functional areas: detailed, dynamically generated information on titles scanned including reviews, first chapters, and read-alike information; links to library mobile web pages including hours and location information; and links to patron account functions.  Find out more about QR Codes here.  [via ResourceShelf ]

This is a nifty innovation.  Are there other libraries out there doing the same or something similar?  By the way, if you have a QR code reader (such as Barcode Scanner from the Android Market) on your phone, take a snap of the barcode on this post.

Some book publishers fear of how e-books might change their bottom line is causing them to try to punish the consumer by delaying the publication of the electronic format of new books.

Nick Bilton, writing for the New York Times, believes that people don’t invest several hundred dollars in an e-reader in order to save money by not purchasing hard bound books.  Instead, they are avid readers who like to have a library of books in one neat portable package.

If they can’t purchase the e-book format of a new book (because of publisher delays), they will just find another available e-book to purchase immediately — they won’t automatically rush off to the bookstore to buy the hard cover.  The consumer understands that digital means immediate and infinite, and the limits imposed by paper no longer exist, he says.  Bilton owns both an Amazon Kindle and a Sony Reader.

Some publishers, understandably wary about digital formats, are burying their heads in the sand, trying to pretend that the old business model isn’t changing.  But “the next generation of book buyers won’t understand why they can’t access any information they want in a digital format. They have grown up in a world where everything, from movies to magazines, is basically just a collection of digital bytes,” warns Bilton.

Frankly, I don’t think it’s going to take as long as “the next generation of book buyers” to disprove the old model.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/srharris/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Who owns the electronic rights to older titles is in dispute, making it a rising source of conflict in one of the publishing industry’s last remaining areas of growth, reports the New York Times.

The family of William Styron wants to see e-book versions of titles like “Sophie’s Choice,” “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and Mr. Styron’s memoir of depression, “Darkness Visible” created.  They believe they retain the rights to digital editions, but so does Styron’s publisher, Random House.

“The discussions about the digital fate of Mr. Styron’s work are similar to the negotiations playing out across the book industry as publishers hustle to capture the rights to release e-book versions of so-called backlist books. Indeed, the same new e-book venture Mr. Styron’s family hopes to use has run into similar resistance from the print publisher of “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller,” says the NY Times.

While most traditional publishers have included e-book rights in new author contracts for 15 years, many titles were originally published before e-books were explicitly included in contracts.  Random House has sent a letter to dozens of literary agents, writing that the company’s older agreements gave it “the exclusive right to publish in electronic book publishing formats.”

Some authors or their estates are seeking alternatives for e-books partly because they are dissatisfied with the digital royalty rate, typically 25% of net proceeds, offered by most traditional publishers.  The argument is that because it costs publishers less to produce and distribute e-books, authors should receive more, not less, in digital royalties.

“I think the potential danger that publishers run by not talking this through carefully,” said Andrew Wylie, a literary agent who represents the estates of authors of backlist titles not yet in digital form, including Ralph Ellison and Vladimir Nabokov, “is that they will be excluded from e-book rights in a significant way.”

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/unlugarenelmundo/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Living Stories is the name of a new experimental collaboration between Google Labs, the New York Times and the Washington Post that seeks to transcend that 500 year-old metaphor with a parsable flow of news content around big stories, says ReadWriteWeb.

Google’s video tour below explains how it works.  At last, someone is rethinking the old news paradigm.

Despite problems, eBook checkouts in libraries increased to more than one million in 2009, up from 600,000 in 2007, according to OverDrive, a company offering both eaudio and ebooks to libraries.

“eBooks are quickly proving an unstoppable force, and opening the floodgates have given libraries the chance to increase readership and cater to a new age of information seekers.  Downloading a book in the comfort of home is no longer just a concept for most.  It’s a daily reality.  For libraries, it is still a relatively new venture, riddled with many obstacles, but even more opportunities,” says Project Gutenberg News.

It behooves libraries to attract the digitally savvy new generation.  The transition to digital downloadable books has been gradual for the library.  The New York Public library currently offers over 17,000 eBook titles, just a fraction of their 800,000 circulating print titles, a small percentage of their acquisitions budget.

Why the seeming reticence to stock up on eBooks?  “One obstacle libraries face is the inability to keep up with new devices now dominating the industry.  Although most libraries offer eBooks that are compatible with computers, Sony Reader and a handful of other digital devices, many of their downloadable offerings cannot be read on Amazon’s Kindle or the Apple’s iphone, both very popular e-readers.” 

The fault here lies not with the libraries, but with many of the makers of ebook readers thinking of their devices as a means to SELL books, not as another way to accommodate the reading public.

Another issue slowing down eBook acquisitions for libraries is publishers’ fear that eBook versions of their print copies in libraries will decrease sales of their print editions.  “This decision comes despite the fact that checking out a downloadable eBook greatly mirrors a checkout of a print copy.  Instead of physically walking out of a library with book copy in hand, all is done at home, or anywhere else, with a digital device. The differences, in the instance of library patronage, seem more academic than financial.”  In other words, it’s a non-issue.  Libraries buy a certain number of licenses for ebooks, just as they would buy a certain number of print books.  I wait for my turn to check out ebooks, just as I do for those in print.

We have seen “fear of format” over and over again whether it was a move from tape to CD, videotape to DVD, eaudio, or ebook, downloading or streaming.  I’d like to see businesses understand that new ways of doing the old things are going to happen with technological development.  Figure out what’s going to work for the consumer if you want to thrive, don’t just get in the way.  [via ResourceShelf]

Report from Wired: “In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the CIA and the wider intelligence community, is putting cash into Visible Technologies, a software firm that specializes in monitoring social media. It’s part of a larger movement within the spy services to get better at using ”open source intelligence” — information that’s publicly available, but often hidden in the flood of TV shows, newspaper articles, blog posts, online videos and radio reports generated every day.”

The idea for use of Visible Technologies is to keep track of foreign social media, and “give spooks early-warning detection on how issues are playing internationally”, but of course the tool can and is being used internally by companies tracking the “buzz” (e.g., bloggers, tweeters) about their products or companies.

“Anything that is out in the open is fair game for collection,” says Steven Aftergood, who tracks intelligence issues at the Federation of American Scientists.  But “even if information is openly gathered by intelligence agencies it would still be problematic if it were used for unauthorized domestic investigations or operations.  Intelligence agencies or employees might be tempted to use the tools at their disposal to compile information on political figures, critics, journalists or others, and to exploit such information for political advantage.  That is not permissible even if all of the information in question is technically ‘open source.’”

Read more at Wired.  Adapted image by Crys.  Creative Commons license.

A number of ebook readers are being introduced this year in an apparent bid to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, thought to be very successful although the company has not revealed sales information.

One of the “cool” features of the Kindle, as yet unmatched by any other reader (stay tuned for developments later this fall), is the free wireless access to the Kindle Store anywhere the cell network is available.  Barnes & Noble’s new ereader that they have named Nook provides users wireless access only when they are in a physical B&N store.

B&N is doing it right, however, in several other ways.  Notably, the ebook reader supports a number of different formats, including the open ePub standard.  Amazon’s decision to use a proprietary format for its ebooks is looking less and less competitive today as open standards allow for more flexibility in reading choices.

I took a careful look at Nook’s information about supported formats, but it left me wondering if the support for PDF and ePub included “protected” files in these formats that you check out of a library.  The ability to check out and read library books on an ereader (like my Sony Reader Touch Edition) is one of the most important features for me.

The Nook also allows owners to “lend” a book for a maximum of two weeks to a friend who has downloaded B&N’s eReader software.  The friend doesn’t need to also own a Nook, the book can be read on a PC, Mac, BlackBerry or iPhone.  Since the Nook is running Android, I wonder if Android phones will be next.

CrunchGear states that the Nook “has upped the ante with a small, 3.5-inch LCD screen in the lower quadrant adding touch capabilities that the Kindle definitely does not have.”  B&N says, “Control your nook with an easy-to-use full-color touchscreen, created to work seamlessly with the crisp, clean E Ink ® display.  Just use your finger to swipe through titles and tap open your next read.”

The Nook has 2 GB of storage (about 1,500 eBooks) and an SD slot for expanded storage.  Battery life beats the Kindle with wireless turned off.  Like other recently introduced ereaders, Nook uses the easy-to-read E Ink® display and “retains important reading rituals like bookmarking, making notes, and highlighting passages,”

The Internet Archive (IA) is in the early stages of development of BookServer, with the “lofty goal to essentially create an open web of books where anyone can publish their books and make their content available via search,” says ReadWriteWeb.

According to IA, BookServer is “a growing open architecture for vending and lending digital books over the Internet.  Built on open catalog and open book formats, the BookServer model allows a wide network of publishers, booksellers, libraries, and even authors to make their catalogs of books available directly to readers through their laptops, phones, netbooks, or dedicated reading devices.  BookServer facilitates pay transactions, borrowing books from libraries, and downloading free, publicly accessible books.”

BookServer will provide book publishers and online libraries with the means to more effectively compete with online bookstores like Amazon and Google.  It will allow publishers to set their own pricing and manage the distribution of their books.  A secondary goal of BookServer’s open system is to fight back against the proprietary marketplaces, such as Amazon’s Kindle Store and other booksellers using proprietary formats.  It’s confusing for consumers who face a multitude of choices with limited information about which formats will work on which devices.

RWW notes that “while Google promises its Google Editions store will allow anyone to access digital books as long as they have a web browser and internet access, it’s still unknown at this time how the company plans to make the digital content available offline.  Will it require the use of special web browser plugins to do so? Until Google reveals more about the technical details, it is not possible to know how truly open their online store will be.  And even if their store is 100% open, they are still a company whose ultimate goal is to profit from their work of digitizing books.  BookServer’s goal, on the other hand, is to provide universal access to book data made available in open formats.”

IA says that many will benefit from BookServer:

• Authors find wider distribution for their work.
• Publishers both big and small can distribute books directly to readers.
• Book sellers find new and larger audiences for their products.
• Device makers can offer access to millions of books instantly.
• Libraries can continue to loan books in the way that patrons expect.
• Readers get universal access to all knowledge.

They have provided a slide show called Web of Books on Slideshare to explain how BookServer will work.

24 CEOs and founders representing the world’s leading Internet and technology companies — including Facebook, Sony, Amazon, eBay, Twitter, and Google — threw their support behind the effort to protect an open Internet in a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski today.

Google Public Policy blog notes that “an open Internet fuels a competitive and efficient marketplace, where consumers make the ultimate choices about which products succeed and which fail. This allows businesses of all sizes, from the smallest startup to larger corporations, to compete, yielding maximum economic growth and opportunity.”

The open Internet has been a platform for innovation, economic growth and free expression — “an environment where consumers, not broadband providers, choose winners and losers.”

Support for “net neutrality” by tech companies was expressed at an appropriate time since this is the beginning of Open Access Week, “a growing international movement that uses the Internet to throw open the locked doors that once hid knowledge.  It encourages the unrestricted sharing of research results with everyone, everywhere, for the advancement and enjoyment of science and society.”

Google Inc. will launch a new online service for ebooks next year that will be accessible on any device with a Web broswer, ranging from computers to mobile phones.  Google will actually host the ebooks and make them searchable, although consumers can buy directly from any number of online booksellers and other retail partners as well as Google, using the Google Editions platform.

Google expects the program to start with 400,000 to 600,000 books in the first half of 2010.  They will try to keep purchase transactions simple, maybe by using the existing Google Checkout platform.  You can find details of how they intend to split revenue in the article from the Seattle Times.

Books bought through Google Editions will be stored on the device and readable without a live Internet connection.

Google Editions will cover only books submitted and approved by the copyright holders when it launches next year in an effort to avoid further criticism (and law suits) from authors, publishers, and librarians over copyright issues.

I’m hoping that Google will also see its way clear to making the ebooks transferable to ebook reader devices.   They have indicated that they might, but have not been specific.  I recently purchased the Sony Reader Touch Edition because I was tired of trying to read on my laptop, and I certainly have no wish to read anything lengthy on my mobile phone.

Resource Shelf has a round-up of news about the launch.  Image by Carla216.  Creative Commons license.