Asher Moses has a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald, Book scans reveal Google's handiwork, which introduces us to a new, undiscovered component of the digitization process; the hand scan."Digital bookworms reading titles like the 1855 issue of The Gentleman's Magazine and Plato's The Trial and Death of Socrates have been surprised to find large chunks of some pages blocked by manicured paws clad in pink finger condoms." Rob Shilkin, Google's Australia spokesman, tells us that "in the time since we initially began our scanning, we've vastly improved our scanning technology so that a random finger is automatically brought to...
Bookmobile Heaven
Exile Bibliophile has a Flickr set of over 40 vintage Bookmobile photos.All deserving of a spot in the big parking lot in the sky.Another Flickr group Bookmobiles Parnassus on Wheels has more
E-Phone
It looks like the next generation e-book reader will be part of your phone.Rise of the mobile novel sets alarm bells ringing in Japanese literary circles is the title of Richard Lloyd Parry's piece in the London Times."For the first time, Japan's fiction bestseller list is dominated by books published, read and, in several cases, written on mobile telephones."I repeat:publishedreadand sometimes written on CELL PHONES!How does it work:You pay about $2.50 a month for a subscription to download novels from the publishers website to your cell phone."The stories are divided into gobbets which can be read in about three minutes,...
Preservation Nightmare- Library Dumps Entire Collection
The board of Lenawee County Library in Michigan has voted to dispose of the entire collection of its Ridgeway branch where over 6000 books and 2000 magazines have been destroyed by mold.The library, built in the 1880's, did not have heat, air conditioning, or running water for the last five years!“There was a hole in the roof where a chimney had been...squirrels and mice had gotten in, and the books were covered with two and three different colors of mold.” said Teresa Calderone, who has been the director of the library system since August 1.There was a little bit of...
Digitization and the Bookseller
BooksnapWelcome to the next disruptive technology for the book trade.The force of commerce and the march of technology are soon to meet again at the booksellers door. The door might not be open for long but if entered correctly it might become a new source of revenue for the bookseller.Once Google's romance with the libraries is over do you think Google will stop looking for other sources of information to feed the machine?I would guess within 5 years or so Google will have cycled through the library trade and determined who they will be playing with and they will know...