Encyclopedia Britannica to Exit the Print World

According to the New York Times, Encyclopedia Britannica is joining many other landmark reference publications by abandoning print and going online-only.

The Britannica corporate blog describes continuous updates for the web-based product as a big reason for the change, but really, few people go to print sources for this type of information anymore. As the Times notes, online sources have almost wiped out the print reference business. My last reference weeding project weeded or moved to the circulating collection about 85 percent of a traditional public library reference collection.

The Britannica web site includes a large ad for their new app.

OverDrive to Streamline Library eBook Lending, Selection

Library eBook vendor OverDrive announced "OverDrive WIN" today, a major enhancement and simplification of its eBook ecosystem for libraries, which will soon face competition from 3M and others in the rush to meet patron demand for eBooks.

The service will finally eliminate the need for libraries to order or patrons to understand the various eBook or audiobook formats, needing only to select "eBook" or "audiobook". More free eBooks will be added to the OverDrive system, as will free eBook samples from publishers, and the previously announced support for Amazon's Kindle devices.

Two very interesting features were announced that would answer some of the biggest complaints from patrons about the current OverDrive system: the long reserve lists for titles in the system, and titles missing altogether. New 'always available' eBook collections would allow simultaneous access of titles (rather than requiring libraries to predict the demand for titles and scale their purchases accordingly). Finally, OverDrive WIN would include a patron driven acquisition system to allow readers to immediately borrow or recommend a title.

It all sounds very nice, but we'll have to wait for full details (hopefully including pricing) to be revealed at the ALA Annual Conference next week.

Barnes & Noble's NEW Nook eReader

Barnes & Noble announced the new model of its basic Nook eReader today. In place of the rather heavy two-screen first gen nook, the new model uses a touchscreen and is thinner and lighter (and probably much cheaper to produce) than the original. The new Nook does its wireless using wifi only, replacing the more costly 3G service on the original Nook. The price is unchanged at $139 (unsold first gen Nooks are available for $119).

The new Nook is a little wider and heavier than the new Kobo eReader, but otherwise the specs of eReaders are starting to line up pretty closely. I guess this is the sign of a mature market-- like when cars all started using steering wheels instead of the occasional tiller.

Kobo Announces New eReader Touch Edition

Kobo has announced the Kobo eReader Touch Edition, a 6 inch eInk reader equipped with wifi and a touch screen, with a list price of $129. It continues Kobo's steady progress in building the strong alternative to offerings by Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

This product seems directly aimed at the Sony Reader Touch edition, which lacks wifi and retails for $229-- $100 more than the Kobo.

Sony has set a pretty high standard for eReader touchscreen usability, and it will be interesting to see how the Kobo measures up after it reaches the market in "early June".

enTourage Edges Off the Stage

enTourage Systems has announced it's exiting the eBook and eBook Reader market, closing the book (sorry!) on one of the more innovative eReaders so far. Literally combining an eInk eBook Reader and a small tablet computer with a hinge, the Edge and smaller Pocket Edge Readers were hindered by higher-than-the-competition weight and prices.

Although it seemed to offer many interesting possibilities for combining reading and study, it never caught on as an e-textbook reader and was reduced to competing head-on with general purpose eReaders costing half as much.

3M Announces Cloud Library eBook Lending Service

3M has announced the Cloud Library eBook lending service, which will be unveiled at the ALA Conference next month. The press release describes the service as combining content from Random House and other "leading publishers" with special in-library Discovery Terminals and, most intriguingly, a "3M eBook Reader for Libraries" that could be checked out to patrons.

This follows rumors that Overdrive was also considering offering a branded eReader device, and looks like competing eBook ecosystems might be developing for libraries.

eBooks Outsell Printed Books on Amazon

Amazon announced today that Kindle eBooks are now outselling printed books on Amazon US. Coming less than four years after the introduction of the Kindle, and less than a year after eBooks first topped paperback sales on Amazon, it confirms that the book business is making the transition to electronic formats faster than the music business before it.

It's been an astonishing four years, and one can only imagine that the next four will see equally rapid change as the book market becomes centered on eBooks and print retreats into various niches.

For libraries, I think the time frame is important because this market transition is happening so much faster than many of today's cash-strapped libraries can adapt to it. If we don't want to be relegated to niche status as well, we have to re-tool much faster than we have been in the past.

BN Exec: Publishing to "Totally Shift" to e-formats

At the GigaOm Big Data conference this week, Marc Parrish of Barnes & Noble predicted the publishing business will "totally shift" to electronic formats over the next 24 months, faster than the transition to digital by the music and movie industries. (Presumably he meant eBooks would become the dominant, rather than sole format.)

It's notable that futurist predictions can now being made for radical changes occurring over a period of months rather than years or decades!

An interesting aside was that he projected that 35% of "readers" will own an eBook reader by the end of this year-- however "reader" is defined, it's a reminder that the book market (and libraries) are driven by a relatively small group of consumers.

Ebooks Outsell Hardbacks on Amazon

Amazon reported today that it is now selling more ebooks than printed hardcover. Over the last three months, ebooks are outselling hardback by 43% and over the last month (since the big price drop on the Kindle), ebooks are are selling 80% more than hardbacks. These figures do not include free ebooks.

Amazon notes that while the American Association of Publishers is reporting that ebook sales are up 207% over the first five months of the year, sales of it's own Kindle format ebooks are up over 300%.

Amazon Kindle for PC Application Available

Amazon's Kindle application for the PC is available now (Macintosh version still in the works), and after a brief try, I can say it does in fact open the Kindle store to the Kindle-less masses. Samples of the first few chapters can be downloaded to the reader software from books in Kindle store.

But the proprietary format used for the Kindle means that the icon for Kindle for PC sits on my desktop next to the similar Barnes and Noble application, as well as the link for Adobe Digital Editions (used for direct purchased from many publishers).

Eventually, managing books in collections segregated by vendor or publisher and accessed through separate reader software will become an obvious problem for consumers ("Now, who did I buy that book from?"). The music industry found out that consumers don't really care which music company produced an album, and I bet the players in the book business find out that book buyers are no different.

Google's announcement that it's coming Google Editions ebook system will work out of a web browser makes more sense everyday.

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Banned Books Week and Fighting the Last War Over Again

This week the ALA (and many libraries) are celebrating Banned Books Week. But as a recent Wall Street Journal editorial mentioned, "banning" is not the same as challenging, and it is challenging that the ALA seems to be condemning. And most challenges are not successful. The small number of challenges (and the even smaller number of successful ones) tells me that we have won this battle.

Why are we still devoting so much attention to this issue? We have limited resources, and the world has a limited attention span. Why not spend our time on a battle that we are still fighting?

At this year's Access meeting in Canada, author Cory Doctorow suggested librarians use what influence we have to promote rational copyright laws-- you know, the kind that protect the greater good of society (as copyright was originally intended), instead of using copyright to shore up old business models with increasingly draconian penalties.

The "orphan books" being fought over in the Google Book Settlement are mostly the result of continually extending copyright coverage beyond normal commercial viability. Libraries need to be making the case that publishers are not the only party at the table here-- someone has to stand up for the rights of society to it's own cultural legacy.

The old saying was that generals were always preparing to fight the last war over again, rather than adapting strategies and tactics to a changing world. We should not be guilty of the same mistake. The battle for librarians today is over laws that restrict access to information-- not through banning or burning, but through one-sided legislation.

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Sony Announces Partnership with OverDrive, New Wireless Reader

Today, Sony and Library eBook vendor OverDrive are announcing a marketing partnership to bring licensed eBook content to library patrons on Sony's reader platform.

At the launch event, hosted at the New York Public Library (which announced its support of the feature as well), Sony described a new "Library Finder" function at its eBook store that will lead readers to the nearest library with OverDrive editions of the books they are searching for. Patrons will then authenticate through their local library and download the content.

Although some commentators are describing the library checkout features as a bit quaint in this digital age, most librarians familiar with publishers' licensing practices will find this easy to understand.

Sony also announced a new, high-end ($399) member of its Reader family that will have the Kindle-like ability to download content wirelessly over ATT's cell phone network.

Sony certainly seems to be moving to meet Amazon's challenge in the eBook market, and in a way that highlights the use of existing open standards and much of the existing "pBook" infrastructure, like libraries.

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Sony Embraces EPUB format for eBook Store, Reader

In a big win for the open standard EPUB ebook format, Betanews is reporting that Sony is dropping its proprietary DRMed format for the Sony Reader and was going with EPUB and Adobe's server-side DRM. Sony will only sell EPUB format books from its eBook Store by the end of the year.

EPUB, the XML-based open standard of the International Digital Publishing Forum, is also going to be supported by Barnes & Nobles' Plastic Logic-sourced eBook Reader due next year.

Moving to common formats, and especially to open formats, will remove a significant barrier to eBook acceptance. Now if only that other eBook Reader would support EPUB!

Thanks to Michael Sauers for passing along the story.

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Sugar on a Stick Brings OLPC Apps (and New Life) to Old Computers

OLPC spinoff Sugar Labs announced today that they are releasing "Sugar on a Stick", a version of the wonderful Sugar learning applications from the One Laptop Per Child that runs from a USB stick (based on Fedora Linux LiveUSB technology).

This will allow children to have access to their software environment from most computers at home, at school, or (maybe) in libraries simply by booting from the USB stick. Since the stick bypasses the machines' own hard disk, it can be used with computers normally running MS Windows, Linux or the Macintosh OS. It can even be used with computers without hard disks.

Not only is this a great software package for kids, but it points to a low-maintenance-cost public computing model that could open up new possibilities for libraries.

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Zotero 1.5 Beta and Zotero's Web Application Released

Targeting the proprietary RefWorks software, the folks at the open source Zotero project have announced the beta release of the Zotero 1.5 citation gathering plug-in for Firefox and the launch of Zotero's web application which allow users to sync up their Zotero collections between multiple computers over the web. This gives students and libraries a free alternative to RefWorks, and one that also doesn't lock researchers into a proprietary format.

Version 1.5 also delivers an improved interface, easier management of pdfs, and better integration with OpenOffice and Microsoft Word for bibliography creation.

I'll be reporting back on how this beta release handles in the near future.

Congrats to the people working on this important project!

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Amazon Announces Kindle 2

After months of leaks and rumors, Amazon announced the second generation Kindle today, called (you guessed it) the Kindle 2.

Thinner, faster, with improved controls and more features than the first generation product, the Kindle 2 is priced the same as the outgoing model.

It's interesting to compare the evolution of the Kindle with the iPod. Although storage on the Kindle 2 is greater, the company points out that books purchased for the Kindle can be re-downloaded wirelessly at any time, meaning that local storage is less of an issue. The advances in mobile technology in the years since the debut of the iPod now permit this approach, one that still isn't showing up on the iPod.

The Kindle 2 adds an "experimental" text to speech feature. The device saves the user's place in the book and allows users to switch between reading a text and listening to it. Depending on how well, or seamlessly, this works, it could truly be a revolutionary feature.

It looks like Amazon paid attention to the complaints about the original Kindle and is also trying to drive innovation in the e-reader market. With cheaper readers like the Foxit's e-Slick coming to the market, Amazon looks to be taking steps to maintain it's place atop the high-end of the e-reader market.

E-Books Go Mobile

The use of mobile phones as ebook readers in common in Japan, and is growing in the US and elsewhere. A number of publishers are making the leap (last month, for example, Books on Board announced their catalog of 20,000 books would be available for the iPhone).

Now comes word that Google is entering this market. Google has launched a mobile phone version of Google Book Search that could could eventually grow to include the 1.5 million public domain books scanned as part of their digitization project.

The books currently exist as scanned images-- these mobile versions will be text created through optical character recognition. Where the computers produce only garbled text, readers can click on the sport to retrieve that part of the scanned image.

Not only does this open up smart phones to the vast public domain resources harvested through Google's digitization project, but this also shows that OCR technology has improved to the point where Google (at least) thinks it is ready for prime time.

Scanned images are just the first phase of bringing books into the digital world. Ebooks need to exist as digital text, and human-based projects like Project Gutenberg are probably proceeding too slowly. OCR is vital to the next phase of mass-digitization. We'll soon see if Google's timing is right.

Google Books Libraries Establish HathiTrust Repository

LISNews reports that the University Libraries involved in the Google Books project have established a central repository for the 2 million digital books scanned thus far.

Called the Hathi Trust, and with lead participants the Universities of Michigan and Indiana, the repository will serve as a backup should Google go out of business, or lose interest in the project (as Microsoft did with its Live Books project). "Hathi" is the Hindi word for elephant, who are famously good at remembering things.

A large scale search feature is planned for the repository, as are a number of other intriguing features, including an API to allow partner libraries to integrate the collection into their local systems, access mechanisms for the disabled, the ability to publish virtual collections, the ability to add (or "ingest") non-Google content, and a public discovery interface.

As full-text search looks to replace the traditional library search methods over the next few years, it's great to have a non-corporate source for the search data. Congrats to the HathiTrust team!

Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview Adds Multi-Computer Sync, Auto Backup

The folks over at Zotero have made available a development release which shows off new features which will make Zotero an even better competitor to the proprietary RefWorks and Endnote citation tools.

Zotero is a Firefox plug in which captures and builds citation information (from a variety of web pages including most major library automation systems), stores this information locally (up to now!) and allows export in a variety of citation styles to OpenOffice or MS Office for inclusion in research papers. Other features allow the storage of PDFs, images and web pages. All of this goes into a searchable database on the user's machine.

As far as this goes, it's a wonderful, light-weight app that is also free and open source. However, up to now it has lacked the online features that make costly and proprietary products like Endnote and RefWorks so valuable for libraries. Unless a student was able to do all the research for a paper and write it in one sitting, the tool has not been too practical in computer lab settings, where the saved data would likely be erased at the end of the session.

But the new version, called Zotero 1.5 Sync Preview, adds multi-computer synchronization, automatic backups, and support for thousands of existing Endnote export styles.

The Preview edition runs only on Firefox 3, and like most other development releases, the notes include multiple caution and warnings about possible instability or data loss. (So, probably not a good idea to test this on the only copy of the notes for your dissertation!)

But for the would-be pioneer, the Preview edition shows how Zotero is developing into a real competitor for RefWorks and Endnote in the always cash-strapped, understaffed world of libraries.

Kindle as E-Textbook Reader?

In the same way that campuses have gravitated to the proprietary iPod system for podcasting academic content, there is a move to embrace Amazon's Kindle as an e-textbook platform.

As reported by the Christian Science Monitor, Princeton University Press will publish e-books in the proprietary Kindle format (joining the Oxford, Yale and University of California Presses). Inside Higher Ed reports that publishers are not revealing the financial arrangements behind this (which reportedly involves revenue sharing).

It's also interesting to note that the ebook versions are only slightly less expensive than printed paperbacks, but the real (and probably compelling difference) is that printed books often take two to four weeks to ship, while ebooks are downloadable immediately. I can see this as driving students into ebooks in a big way. There's still the $359 price of the Kindle-- it would take saving a few bucks each on an epic quantity of textbooks to pay for the reader.

There's also that proprietary format that locks students into Amazon's world. The money can be tempting, and the convenience of relying on others to make tough decisions for us can be seductive, but I don't think our interests are identical with these large corporations who view our students as customers. We would do better to promote a non-proprietary format which will not threaten to strand our students at the flip of a marketing plan.