The Future, They Believe, is Digital

"There are rolling hills and ivy-covered brick buildings. There are small classrooms, high-tech labs, and well-manicured fields. There’s even a clock tower with a massive bell that rings for special events.

Cushing Academy has all the hallmarks of a New England prep school, with one exception.

This year, after having amassed a collection of more than 20,000 books, officials at the pristine campus about 90 minutes west of Boston have decided the 144-year-old school no longer needs a traditional library. The academy’s administrators have decided to discard all their books and have given away half of what stocked their sprawling stacks -- the classics, novels, poetry, biographies, tomes on every subject from the humanities to the sciences. The future, they believe, is digital."

Read the entire article Welcome to the library. Say goodbye to the books.

[via boston.com]

Libraries, With or Without Books

Libraries are no longer just quiet places to read and borrow books. In a world where information is more online and digitized, librarians are changing to meet the needs of their patrons. They are called on to give technical support as well as deal with reference questions and assist patrons with online catalogs and social networking.

Physical books and electronic books are here to stay, but the role of the library will continue to change and develop. Read more about it at CNN.com/technology.

"Think of the changes as a Library 2.0 revolution--a mirror of what's happened on the Web."

Can the Kindle Really Improve on the Book?

Thinking about buying a Kindle 2? Nicholson Baker from the New Yorker bought one, but then again, how could he not?

"Everybody was saying that the new Kindle was terribly important—that it was an alpenhorn blast of post-Gutenbergian revalorization. In the Wall Street Journal, the cultural critic Steven Johnson wrote that he’d been alone one day in a restaurant in Austin, Texas, when he was seized by the urge to read a novel. Within minutes, thanks to Kindle’s free 3G hookup with Sprint wireless — they call it Whispernet — he was well into Chapter 1 of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty ($9.99 for the e-book, $10.20 for the paperback). Writing and publishing, he believed, would never be the same."

Baker gives a thorough review (seven pages online) of his Kindle 2, elaborating on his personal experience, as well as citing celebrities and "ordinary people" alike. With convincing arguments both for and against digital media, I do wonder if the Kindle or other similar devices will ever become mainstream and functional enough to truly replace ink on paper.

[via The New Yorker]

The World's Oldest Bible Goes Digital

Today, technology is helping libraries protect print material -- especially old and rare material -- from damage. See how you can read the world's oldest bible online, from Time magazine.

United Nations Opens World Digital Library

The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization and several national libraries have launched the World Digital Library, a website that allows visitors to browse through some of humanity’s earliest written works online.

The site, four years in the making and in seven languages (English, Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Russian), provides page-by-page viewing of the original works, scanned in by the national libraries that took part in the project, often with multilingual narration by curators.

Included is a manuscript from ancient Japan that is believed to be the first novel ever; a 1562 map of the New World; the only known copy of the first book published in the Philippines, in Spanish and Tagalog; an 11th-century Serbian manuscript; and the oracle bones — pieces of bone or tortoise shell heated and cracked and inscribed that are among the earliest known signs of Chinese writings.

James H. Billington, the U.S. Librarian of Congress, who heads the project, says the project is ready to expand as other national libraries join in with the 32 libraries and research institutions already involved.

[via Yahoo Tech]

Detroit News and Free Press Considering Cutting Back Home Delivery, Focus On Web

News is coming from multiple sources that the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News may be ending daily home delivery and promoting their websites instead.

Courtesy of Yahoo Finance:

[The Wall Street] Journal said home delivery would be limited to Thursday, Friday and Sunday, with an "abbreviated" print edition available at newsstands on other days. Readers would also be directed to the papers' Web sites.

The changes likely would mean major job cuts, the Journal said.

The Free Press, owned by Gannett Co., had a daily circulation of 314,554 at the end of March; 618,324 on Sunday. The News, owned by MediaNews Group Inc., had daily circulation of 178,280. It does not publish a print edition on Sunday.

Bassett said the papers recognize the "tremendous importance of digital communication and finding ways to better deliver news and information to people in ways that are most convenient to them."

Reporter M.L. Elrick, vice chairman of the Free Press unit of the Detroit Newspaper Guild, said there's anxiety in the newsroom.

"Everyone here is afraid we're going to have staff cuts," he said. "I wish I had my sources call me as often as my colleagues have called the past couple days. No one knows where this is going to end up."

This news follows the growing trend started by the Christian Science Monitor, and more recently PC Magazine, of newspapers pushing towards digital. Unfortunately, this news from the Free Press and News, show the downsides of switching to a more digitally focused medium, as workers fear for losing their jobs.

Ultimately this decision, if made, will benefit the consumer by providing more up to the minute news, and easier delivery. Though it appears that the effect on the workers may be more negative, with job cuts and layoffs in their future. According to Freep.com, the Detroit newspapers will have a major announcement at 11 am. This post will be updated with the breaking news as it happens.

Who knows, we might all be holding Kindles in our hands sooner then we thought...

Goolge Puts Life Magazine Images Online

Google announced on November 18 that it will upload 10 million of Life magazine's photos and etchings dating all the way back to the 1750s, to its Google Images site. Only a very small percentage of these images have ever been published.

So far, about 2 million images have been digitized and uploaded.

According to the company blog: "This effort to bring offline images online was inspired by our mission to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

Search the images here.

Good job, Google.

(via Lifehacker)

PC Magazine Ends Print Edition; Goes All Digital

One of my personal favorite publications, PC Magazine, will be no longer sold in print format. Editor-In-Chief, Lance Ulanof, announced today on his site that the magazine would be going 100% digital in February 2009.

From the PC Mag site:

An Open letter to PC Magazine (Print) Readers:

The January 2009 issue (Volume 28, Issue 1) of PC Magazine will mark a monumental transition for the publication. It is the last printed edition of this venerable publication. Of course, as with any technology-related enterprise, this is not the end, but the beginning of something exciting and new.

Starting in February 2009, PC Magazine will become a 100-percent digital publication. So, in addition to our popular network of Websites, which includes our centerpiece, PCMag.com, as well as ExtremeTech, blogs like Gearlog and AppScout, and audio and video content that includes PCMag Radio, Cranky Geeks and DL.TV, we'll offer PC Magazine Digital Edition to all of our print subscribers. The PC Magazine Digital Edition has actually been available since 2002. So for thousands of you, the benefits of this unique medium are already clear. And those benefits will continue to multiply in the coming months, as we work hard to enhance your digital experience.

Ulanof goes on to say that PC Magazine will now be accessible through the site www.zinio.com and will be available for all current subscribers . For now, readers can get a free issue and see what the new format will look like by visiting this site

This follows in the wake of the Christian Science Monitor's October announcement that, beginning in the spring 2009, it will be ending its print publication for a 100% digital publication. It is amazing to see how the way we read is changing daily with more and more magazines and news publications switching to all digital.

Google Settles Book-Scanning Lawsuits

According to an October 28 article in The New York Times – by Miguel Helft and Motoko Rich – Google and book publishers have agreed to a settlement in two copyright lawsuits brought by the publishers against the company.

In the settlement, Google will pay publishers and authors $125 million. In exchange, the company will resume scanning copyrighted, out-of-print books, and provide up to 20 percent of the text on-line at no charge, under its Google Book Search program.

In addition, the settlement creates a method for how Google, publishers and authors will share the profits of digitized versions of printed books. The company will take 37 percent of the revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors.

The Times quotes James Gleick, the author of five books and a member of the board of the Authors Guild, one of the plaintiffs in the suit: “This huge body of books that were effectively lost to the marketplace are being rescued.”

This is a good thing. In the end, more material will be available to more people, more easily.

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, however, not everyone agrees.

In her article, Harvard Says No Thanks to Google Deal for Scanning In-Copyright Works, Jennifer Howard writes:

"Harvard University has examined Google’s recent legal settlement with publishers and authors, and found it wanting…

Harvard’s concerns center on access to the scanned texts — how widely available access would be and how much it might cost. “As we understand it, the settlement contains too many potential limitations on access to and use of the books by members of the higher-education community and by patrons of public libraries,” Harvard’s university-library director, Robert C. Darnton, wrote in a letter to the library staff...

In a statement, Harvard said it would re-evaluate its position as the settlement moves forward."

What do you think?