TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for May, 2002

By David Rothman

The story of netLibrary under OCLC has yet to be written. Will the e-collection evolve into a true digital library system on a TeleRead scale? Too, will the new netLibrary indeed become more reader-friendly by, for instance, allowing more than one person at a time within a library system to check out a specific book? OCLC’s netLibrary will be a long way from TeleRead if that does not happen. Similarly OCLC would do well to help libraries work out mass purchasing arrangements with vendors–a timely topic now that the TabletPC and similar TeleRead-style machines are on the way in reality.

If OCLC does the job right, I will feel more than a little vindicated. Check out a list posting I made two years ago, well before the netLibrary purchase–where I suggested that OCLC could step in if James Billington continued to be such a Luddite about e-books.

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InfoSync’s review concludes:

–”What’s positive: WYSIWYG desktop publishing features, doesn’t require any knowledge of the underlying markup language, fast and stable

–”What’s negative: Doesn’t import HTML directly, doesn’t convert images from the source file, pricey.”

Actually the word “pricey” might apply only to the $130 commercial version. The personal edition costs all of $30.

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“The biggest complaint librarians have about the service is its policy of only allowing one user on a campus to ‘check out’ an e-book at a time. In other words, if one researcher is using an e-book, no one else on the campus can access that title until the book is put away. netLibrary officials say that the policy was set at the request of publishers, who worry that putting their books on netLibrary will cut the number of multiple copies they sell to libraries. That is something the company is looking at changing, said Mr. Rosy. He said he believes that publishers are now more willing to listen to the company’s suggestions about contract terms.” – Chronicle of Higher Education quoting netLibrary leader Rich Rosy. Item found via Library Stuff.

The TeleRead take: It’s about time. From the start, TeleRead has been opposed to access limitations as an artificial restriction on knowledge. TeleRead would reward publishers and writers by the number of accesses, with revenue caps that book publishers could change by gambling money up front–one way to “insure” against the national digital library fund being bankrupted by mega-best-sellers.

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“Newspapers are the nation’s favourite read, says a new survey. People spend on average two hours a week reading papers, the research published on Monday found. But online browsing takes up a large chunk of the reading day, ahead of magazines and reference books, the Orange Prize for Fiction research found. The survey of 200 couples suggested 40% of people never read a book and that women are more likely to read novels than men.” – BBC item of May 27, via NewBreed Librarian.

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TeleBlog.org or TeleBlog.com can now take you directly to this TeleBlog, or at least soon will–once the changes are propagated through the Net. Worked fine for me just now, however.

With recent version of Netscape and Internet Explorer, you won’t even have to type the http://www stuff.

The original address of http://www.teleread.org/blog will still work fine.

Many thanks to Frank Meli of 1coms.com, my favorite domain registration service–a terrific, nonbureaucratic alternative to VeriSign.

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Jenny The Shifted Librarian adds her own take on relations between the press and librarydom. Good stuff. LIke me, she’s excited about wireless, and she is also keen on news aggregators, which she thinks will be “the way the next generation of newspaper readers get their news. In a high-speed, always-on, ubiquitous computing, wireless world, it’s a natural.” As I see it, with readers drawing on so many sources for their news, aggregators are all the more reason for a TeleRead-style approach–to smooth out the technological and business complexities.

Too, she correctly wishes that newspapers and libraries would “connect the dots” and work together more often on issues such as archiving and the popularizaition of “ask a librarian.” See my original post responding to a newspaper guru worried about the revenue of newspaper archives in an era when so many libraries are offering old stories to people at home for free.

Needless to say, TeleRead could help increase the money that libraries sent toward newspapers for archival access. Moreover, as I’ve already noted, with old stories free, civic debate would be more intelligent and special-interest groups would enjoy less of an advantage.

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Some Maine educators report a striking reduction in children’s disciplinary problems, thanks to the laptops. Students are far more interested in their studies.

But a $180-million budget shortfall could jeopardize the state program. So says Wired News.

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One of the biggest arguments for TeleRead is the need to make certain that even in the meanest urban neighborhood, even in the most remote fishing village in Alaska, people can access thousands of books from their own homes.

Many residents of Washington, DC, certainly could use TeleRead. In today’s Washington Post, columnist Marc Fisher tells of the miserable condition of the DC library system, especially the branches:

“I searched for the kind of books that could open new worlds to young people who lead lives of utter isolation, teenagers who have never been to the Mall, let alone the ocean or a mountaintop. I looked for Emerson and Melville, Hemingway and Ellison, Joyce and Mailer, Fitzgerald and Wideman, and in branch after branch, I came up empty or close to it…

“The library system has been slashed to 0.6 percent of the city’s budget, compared to a national average of 1.5 percent,” he writes. Even the 1.5 percent is hardly sufficient.

Meanwhile, as a Seattle clip shows, the well-to-do have a better-than-ever selection of books to enjoy via Amazon.com. The answer isn’t to destroy the Amazons but at least make life a little fairer for people without the Amazon.com alternatives.

Here in Northern Virginia, I find myself using Amazon.com and the near-by Fairfax County library system because the one in Alexandria is so inferior for my purposes. It isn’t like DC’s: the buildings are in better shape. But even at the grand new headquarters library, the collection is lacking.

I wouldn’t be surprised if part of Alexandria’s problem, not all of it, is the same as in DC. A fortune spent on desktop computers. Not enough for books even if the per-capita figure stacks up much better against some other places than I’d have expected (though they are pitiful compared to Cleveland or Boston).

Of course we need computers and books alike. TeleRead would be a way of making books more popular in the online world to which so many children are drawn these days.

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A UPI senior business correspondent named Sam Vaknin, who also writes an informative column for eBookWeb, has just published Parts I and II of an interview with Project Gutenberg Director Michael Hart.

Hart holds forth on topics ranging from copyright to the early use of the Internet for the distribution of books. Napster is a daydream for Hollywood compared to what’s on the way–for example, the 3D reproduction of objects such as books. And quite convincingly Hart anticipates the ‘tude of the copyright gentry toward these new developments. Ban em! Or at least try to keep them in check.

Speaking of Project Gutenberg, check out The Public Domain Reader, which helps you see more than 90 public-domain texts in the best format for you. Thanks to Library News Daily for a jog to mention that one, which I’d seen before on the Net.

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Monica E. de Leon, who, along with her husband, Raymundo Pedraza, envisions Mexico adapting the TeleRead idea, write of a contribution from Bill Gates for computerization of libraries there. More details will most likely follow.

“Big news yesterday,” she says, “was a 30-million dollar donation from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to computerize Mexican libraries. President Fox was there to receive the money, and he said it’s one of his Government’s priorities to get people to go to public libraries to read.

“I don’t know exactly how they’re going to invest the money, but besides the 30 million from Memito Puertas (Spanish for ‘Bill Gates’) they already have 400 million more to spend.”

Checking Yahoo, I do see an April 17th story in the New York Times on Microsoft helping Mexico “develop digital community centers as part of a broader ‘eMexico’ initiative meant to bring the entire nation online by 2006.” The 484-word story isn’t free. It’ll cost you $2.50, but hopefully that can eventually change. See the item below about paid online news archives.

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That’s the headline of Steve Outing’s latest column in Editor and Publisher–and also one of the issues that TeleRead could address.

Via a mix of private philanthropy and long-range public funding, a TeleRead-style national digital library system could pay for old articles in way that respected freedom of the press. We’re not talking necessarily about a Pentagon-sized budget here. If nothing else, keep in mind that newspapers are not making that much from accesses to old articles. And yet, from a civic perspective, what could be more important? Some of the most enthusiastic users of archives are local citizens researching issues relating to the environment, zoning, courts or schools. This is much of what the First Amendment is all about, the use of media as empowerment tools for individuals in a democracy. Unfortunately, however, even at just $3 a pop, articles are not always affordable for massive research by ordinary citizens, as opposed to special interest groups.

Think of another benefit, too, from a TeleRead approach. If access is free or truly low cost, then newspaper research could be a core part of civics classes. Imagine the marketing benefits to the news organizations. And in case anyone is curious, no, I don’t think that the library or school versions of newspapers should be stripped of advertising. It’s there in the paper versions, after all.

But what to do about subscription fees for current news? TeleRead would not pay. Still, a well-organized national digital library system would help. It would be a way for people to buy–yes, by themselves, not through TeleRead–current access to a number of newspapers at once. In the past Outing has written perceptively about the payment-related issues, and TeleRead might be one way to bring down the collection costs and avoid having one company dominate as a toll collector.

Related issues still arise. TeleRead is hardly going to save the newspaper business. It just will have to save itself. One way could be truly microscopic coverage of neighborhoods, perhaps through little email newsletters and wide use of paid stringers. More mulitmedia also would help, as would new services such as branded databases to help local businesses market themselves (services that perhaps could be perks for advertisers and help justify rates). And on the savings side, here is some outrageous heresy in the wake of the dotcom crashes: what about junking the big presses? We’re talking long term of course. But as e-readers grow cheaper and simpler to use, especially with wireless and e-ink, will the younger generation really care about pulped wood as much as their elders? I myself am a babyboomer and yet don’t subscribe to the paper New York Times. I read it via my cable modem. When decent portable and wireless displays arrive, I may also give up my subscription to the Washington Post.

Bottom line? If the Post and the rest want to survive, they should forget about making massive sums through archives and instead think of new ways of growing revenue and reducing costs.

Meanwhile let’s keep the archives-related revenue in perspective. “One last thing to consider,” Outing correctly observes, “is just how much a newspaper can make from a paid-archives strategy. Most newspaper companies are hesitant to share archive revenue figures–but even among large papers, it’s very rare to go above $50,000 a year.” While this figure could go up as more people depend on research online, newspapers just should not look to archives for big money–and TeleRead could be another income source.

Like book and magazine publishers, the newspaper business must stop dreading the library model and understand that the press actually could fare better under it.

Followup post

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Want a handle on libraries and related academic developments around the world? Check out the UNESCO Libraries Portal, which has just added this TeleBlog to its link collection.

Furthermore, UNESCO is working with national governments and others to digitize classics and preserve important archives, including those documenting the slave trade. Especially valuable will be digitized books in Arabic, Lithuanian, Polish and other languages. Such efforts are most timely. Nowadays the non-English-language parts of the Net are growing faster than the English regions, which is only fair, given all the catching up needed.

Also online is the library manifesto from UNESCO and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, with words of interest to those who think every word on Net should carry a mini price tag: “The Public Library shall in principle be free of charge.”

TeleRead’s own take is that ideally everything should be free. But as a practical matter that is not possible, with more than 100,000 books published each year in the States alone. What we can do, however, is work toward the day when at least the most significant items will be free.

Within and outside UNESCO, international organizations can help by taking a more enlightened attitude toward copyright law and rolling back the obnoxious copyright extensions pushed through by Hollywood lobbyists and their counterparts abroad.

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TeleRead will never promise full nirvana through the spread of the written word. Libraries and books, however stellar as sources of knowledge, pleasure and inspiration, can do only so much. The latest indication of this comes from the Mark Bowden’s article in the May issue of the Atlantic Monthly, a brilliant profile of Saddam Hussein.

“When I was in prison,” Bowden quotes Saddam through a writer who talked to the dictator, “I read all of Ernest Hemingway’s novels. I particularly like The Old Man and the Sea.”

Lo and behold, the great Saddam is himself an amateur novelist, and here’s part of Bowden’s summary of the plot of the first opus the great man wrote. A young beauty named Zabibah offers comfort to a king. “In time,” Bowden’s summary goes, “Zabibah’s sweet simplicity and virtue charm the court and win the king’s heart—although their relationship remains chaste. Questioning his own stern methods, the king is reassured by Zabibah, who tells him, ‘The people need strict measures so that they can feel protected by this strictness.’”

Ah, the blessings of moral, state-approved literature.

While Iraq is a world in itself, the lesson applies everywhere: isolate politicians and their flunkies as much as possible from the nuts and bolts of librarydom, digital or otherwise. With a TeleRead-style national digital library system, many librarians in many cities would participate in the acquisitions process. And in most cases, not necessarily all, writers and publishers would be paid as they are now–according to the popularity of their works. Beyond that, TeleRead would provide for a mix of government and private funding to encourage more independence of thought than either approach by itself would allow.

By David Rothman

“Officials at the Library of Congress say the irradiation of government mail is damaging some items intended for the library’s collections.”

–Library Journal item (registration required)

TeleRead angle: The irradiation is a protective measure required by the anthrax threat to the Capitol, with which LOC share a ventilation system. What about the dirty-nuke threat? Time for a digital backup of the Library of Congress? And maybe more reliance on digital books–with a TeleRead-style library and systematic backups at many locations? Book preservation is too important to be left to publishers or even James Billington.

By David Rothman

“The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the ‘Content Protection Status Report’ with the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its own ends. The report calls for regulation of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), generic computing components found in scientific, medical and entertainment devices. Under its proposal, every ADC will be controlled by a ‘cop-chip’ that will shut it down if it is asked to assist in converting copyrighted material–your cellphone would refuse to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted music coming from your stereo.”

–Cory Doctorow, posting to an EFF blog

TeleRead perspective: Yet another example of a Senate bribed with campaign donations. The very fact that Hollywood is trying these tactics shows how low we’ve fallen. We badly need reform of the copyright laws in ways that are more compatible with technology and human nature.

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Beware. Efforts are underway to tear down the geographical barriers against Web-related libel suits from remote jurisdictions. The libel case discussed in the N.Y. Times today is domestic but at least indirectly might have implications all over the planet.

One of the key components of TeleRead is the recognition that different nations have different cultures and different laws–hence this talk about well-stocked national digital libraries, plural. Let’s hope that lawyer-related globalization is kept in check or at least kept rational.

Imagine the prospect of international libel battles sparked by image-minded dictators who couldn’t care less about Times vs. Sullivan. Or who at least could oh so gently suggest that private citizens launch suits when they’re unflatteringly mentioned on Web sites in democratic countries.

Sounds far-fetched right now, of course. But then, so have other Net-related legal outrages at one time such as the new and very real Draconian copyright laws in the States and elsewhere.

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Check out the e-book area of Operation Outreach-USA, which includes books downloadable in Microsoft Reader format–as well as accompanying guides for parents and teachers. The organization is a partner of America’s Promise, Gen. Colin Powell’s group.

The Outreach program, which in a paper-book incarnation has been around for some years and reaches 3,000 schools, relies on car dealers and other sponsoring businesses and is intended to encourage both literacy and character development. The idea sounds intriguing even if Outreach is hardly a replacement for a well-stocked national digital library. One publisher, Storytellers, Inc., appears to dominate Outreach’s e-book area, and Microsoft is the format king here.

Overwhelmingly, the e-books seem to be about animals–for example, The Blue Kangaroo for pre-kindergarteners and The Pacing Mustang for middle schoolers.

I myself would welcome not just more books about people but also oodles of links to good public-domain texts from sources such as Project Gutenberg and the University of Virginia. They could be made part of the Outreach e-catalogue. As it happens, Storytellers has included a “retold” version of Beautiful Joe, a 19th-century classic that reportedly was the first book to sell more than a million copies in Canada.

In any event, the e-book area and rest of the site are colorful and professionally done and deserve a very close look if you’re a parent, teacher, school librarian or public-spirited business owner or manager. Those guides for teachers and parents–I like the idea, even if the public sections of the Outreach Web site don’t provide sufficient previews for surfers without passwords–could come in handy.

Still, I’d like to see a more ambitious effort that also included books without the guides; must everything be so neatly packaged? And why not guides to the free classics already on the Net? Methinks that the present limitations of Storytellers and Outreach should not be your school’s limitations. Simply put, you should not rely excessively on e-books from one publisher; bear in mind that public-domain children’s classics such as Alice in Wonderland are already in Microsoft’s Reader format via the UVA site and elsewhere.

If you can use e-book search engines and download free ASCII texts, which can be translated into Reader format via a Microsoft Word add-on, then so much the better. No illustrations? Perhaps that’s an opportunity for the children to receive assignments from art teachers, assuming any are still alive and walking the earth in this multimedia era where everything comes prefabricated.

Too, bear in mind that Outreach’s e-books don’t appear to be free, or if they are, the Web site fails to make this clear. The general Operation Outreach site says the price for participating in the program is “$250 for the average size class or about $5,000 per school and includes everything–all training, books and instructional materials.” Do remember the built-in limitations here if you want children to enjoy a wide range of e-books; pity the kids who can’t stand animal books, however popular they are.

A well-stocked national digital library remains the best way–not the only way–to deal with the proverbial “savage inequalities” of public and school libraries. Tax money could help. So could plain old philanthropy. I don’t blame Outreach for relying on local sponsors, I’d do the same and in fact applaud the participating business as indicated earlier; still, let’s not forget the commercial tradeoff. A recent press release said: “Operation Outreach-USA is an excellent marketing tool and public relations project for Chrysler dealers trying to increase sales and enhance image among their customer base.” So that’s what education has come to nowadays–a marketing tool?

Meanwhile, despite the above caveats about commercialism and lack of variety, we should applaud Outreach for its efforts–in the areas of both e- and p-books. With schools and libraries hurting so badly, let’s worry less about purity and more about helping children now, and that’s what Outreach seems truly about. At least the children can own the p-books, which they can’t do at present with the e-variety unless they have computers at home. In Las Vegas, a teacher told a local newspaper: “The students will be so excited to be the first child ever to use their books. They’ll pick it up, put it to their faces and rub it. It’s the sensation of having something new that they don’t get much.” Without a well-integrated TeleRead-style solution immediately available, and offering both a well-stocked national digital collection and ways for kids to read the books on computers at home, we should be glad that Outreach is around.