E-Books

The Gutenberg-e project was created as a bold experiment to explore whether peer-reviewed, born-digital monographs would alter the way historical scholarship is presented, whether scholars would receive the same professional credit for these publications as they would from work published in print, and whether the project would enable the publication of monographs that would otherwise be turned down for financial reasons by university presses.

In this free August 1 EDUCAUSE Live! web seminar, The Gutenberg-e Project: Opportunities and Challenges in Publishing Born-Digital Monographs, presenter Kate Wittenberg, consultant, scholarly communication and e-publishing, Columbia University, will discuss the project’s findings and cover both the breakthroughs and obstacles encountered during the course of the project’s development.

The March/April 2008 issue of EDUCAUSE Review is now available online. Read articles from George Siemens, Peter Tittenberger, and Terry Anderson on how technology is changing conference participation and organization, Peter Brantley on digital libraries, and Mark R. Nelson on the future of e-books, as well as Richard N. Katz’s interview with leaders of the Open University.

C|NET's news.com is reporting that Fujitsu will be bringing colored electronic paper to market between April 2006 and March 2007. Looks like early innovator e-ink may fall behind, but who knows what they have coming down the pipe.

http://news.com.com/2061-10801_3-5787365.html?part=rss&tag=5787365&subj=news

First Bowker buys Syndetics and now they're working closely with Source Interlink/Alliance Entertainment/All Music Guide.  What is interesting about this move to me is that I'm guess that it is probably just one step removed from even more consolidation in this increasingly commoditized space ... Source Interlink/AENT seems to have removed any reference to AMG/RedDotNet on their site.  Perhaps a sale to Bowker is in the wings?  What will this mean for Muze, Baker & Taylor, Ingram and the rest?  Who knows, but I'm guessing that we can expect more considation in the future.  Perhaps some international consolidation is next on the horizon?  Maybe something with Bookscan/VNU?  The next few years should definately be interesting.

Read more at:

ITConversations.com has an interesting podcast on Universal Access to All Knowledge by Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive. On the heels of my earlier blog entries on On Socially Assisted Information Discovery, Google Suggest/Folksonomies and Questia, Social Captial Metrics, etc., I'm even more encouraged with the potential for the future of knowledge in society.

Questia Announces College Students' Top 10 Books - Questia provides a "revealing look at what topics and sources are providing research paper fodder for [student papers] nationwide" Thinking back to my thoughts on Amazon Citations, services like Technorati and AllConsuming.net (which appears to be down right now), and the potential of Google's book related activities, I'm wondering if folks are on the very off adding a very valuable metric (but perhaps not yet understood) ... a measure of influence ... a little like what has been available for research papers for ages. In an age of wikis, the Creative Commons and social technology, I think it will be crucial to have respectable, non-commercial stats that guide us toward valued sources of content. Sure there's already happing at a largely primitive states with search results relevance derived from linked to sources, but I think we're on the cusp of something much more pervasive ... something that taps into the history of societal interaction. I'm just not sure what to make of it or how it will all fall into place, but I believe that it is going to be big!

e-book pirates beware ... "The lawsuits allege that the defendants engaged in the illegal sale of pirated electronic copies of books otherwise available in retail markets as well as pirated electronic copies of instructor solutions manuals, which Wiley distributes, at no charge, solely to professors. Collectively, the lawsuits involve piracy of more than 75 distinct Wiley titles."

• http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050317/nyth073_3.html
  

I don't know how long it has been available (about three months now?), but I just noticed that Amazon now lists cited and citing books ... and even links to the exact page that is cited/citing. Very, very cool!!!!

• Here's an example of one of Senge's books ....
• Here's more about Amazon Citations

'Just a quick relay of links in prepartion for tomorrow's EDUCAUSE Live session on podcasting.

• How's That iPod Experiment Going at Duke University?
• Library Shuffles Its Collection
• Drexel gives out iPods to education students
  

College bookstores and campus music services might want to tune into this. The article below, which appears to be archived now, notes that Watersones is considering an MP3 vending kiosk to sell audio books. Knowing that more people, perhaps students in particular, are carrying MP3 players than CD players, this would seem to make a lot of sense. I'm sure the DRM folks (both hackers and backers) are licking there chops tho'

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/science_technology/story.jsp?story=614031

Who knows, one of these days, perhaps a wayward podcast or two will find its way in there too.