E-Books and Electronic Publishing

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.

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

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!

Here's a hodgepodge of comments, questions and pointers about ebooks and releated news of interest ...

The new Digital Textbooks in the Classroom Conference sounds interesting. I'd love to find out what Darren Bischoff of E Ink and Ted J. Gaiser of Boston College have to say.

The Washington Times coverage of the University of Maryland's International Children's Digital Library initiative. So far, they've collection represents more than 600 titles in some 30 languages. 

Random House's new deal with/investment in VOCEL is slated to bring more content to cell phones.  In somewhat related news, a teacher in Japan uses cell phones in the classroom.

If you haven't seen Campus Technology's February 2nd article on ebooks/electronic publishing, it is definately worth a look too.

Somewhat unrelated, but interesting is a bill put forth by Texas State Rep. Abel Herrero to standardize which texts can be used in classes. Hmm. It is an attempt to reduce the price on textbooks, but is it good, bad, or ugly? 

In other news, the BBC is covering Nicholas Negroponte's latest effort to bring sub $100 notebook computers to developing nations as an educational tool.

State Rep. Abel Herrero to standardize which texts can be used in classes. Hmm. It is an attempt to reduce the price on textbooks, but is it good, bad, or ugly?  In related news from Texas, another plan was offered to make textbooks tax free. In Illinois, they're considering textbook rental services inspired by the one deployed at Southeast Missouri State.

Finally, more coverage of the rising cost of textbooks is found here:

• http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1107333313224630.xml
  
• http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=17458
• http://hartfordadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:101111

The textbook publishers respond here ...