"It's true that [a] PDA is a better source to read e-books. It has bigger screens than that of cell phones. But there is no one buying PDAs. That is the problem." - You Youn-sun, public relations manager at Booktopia, a Korean e-book comapany, as quoted by the Korea Herald.

The TeleRead take: Needless to say, an XMLish Universal Consumer Format could help e-books keep up as platforms came and went. Technology marches on. Too bad the trogs would rather fight the format wars than meet consumer needs.

Something clueful

One exception to the general stupidity is OverDrive's use of Mobipocket, the very best of the proprietary formats, which, yes, has a Smartphone version. Astutely, OverDrive's Content Reserve unit and the Cleveland Public Library have been promoting the availabity of library books on cell phones. Would that OverDrive CEO Steve Potash, also president of the OeBF, understand how much better the group could do by looking ahead rather than fixating on the proprietary approach. Mobipocket is good but just a hint of what would be possible if the e-book industry pulled together rather than spending so much time on mediocre and redundant efforts.

Meanwhile a few more details from Korea:

An electronic book can be downloaded from Internet sites. Users can obtain an entire text or parts at cheaper prices than regular books and pay via credit card online. Currently, 200,000 e-books are sold to PDA users every month, but more than a million e-book readers are using mobile phones, said You. Sales for mobile phones have increased from 20 million to 30 million won per month in early 2003 to 300 million won, where they have stayed since in August 2003.

Following the boom, SK Telecom Co. and KTF Co. added e-book content to their basic features. They felt books were better than games or other entertainment for promoting mobile phone services, especially to students.

Booktopia also got a lift from MBC's "Exclamation Point" television program. Since the program began recommending a book every week, about 50,000 more mobile phone downloads have been recorded each month.

Are public libraries out of sync with the public in deciding how much money goes for actual books, and could e-books help matters?

In the Louisville, Kentucky, the metro council has urged more money for the Louisville Free Public Library (shown here in a 2002 centennial photo). But there is a nifty catch. Council members want a higher percentage of the money to go for books. They are dismayed that the library owns only 1.9 books per capita compared to a state recommendation of at least 2.5.

For books: Just a fraction of operating expenses

Just a fraction of actual library spending typically goes for books and other materials--for example, just 14 percent of the operating expenses in the Dallas library system. And yet library systems such as Dallas and Seattle pride themselves on their big library buildings, even though citizens are not always thrilled by the results.

In fairness to librarians, the issues are indeed complex. Below are some points that a nonLuddite friend of mine in the library world has made to me. I'll also include my own thoughts, and I'd welcome further comments from others, particularly librarians.

--Books, especially the paper variety, cost money beyond the actual purchase prices. "Non-librarians usually do not realize that there is a cost involved with processing new materials," writes Gary Price of ResourceShelf, "and often that cost is not included in additional funds for purchasing materials. LFPL would be better served by a general budget increase with no strings attached." The scuttlebutt I've heard--not from Gary--is that a $15 book may cost as much as $45 to put on the shelf.

Response: Not the most cost-effective approach. Wouldn't e-book eliminate the expenses except for, say, cataloguing and other odds and ends? And wouldn't that leave more money for additional book purchases, as well as for more librarians to help the public make the best use of the books.

--Main libraries often may serve as centrally located warehouses, and big libraries downtown make it easier for the public to enjoy immediate access to out-of-fashion oldies.

Response: Great argument. As former poverty beat reporter, I can understand the glories of locating libraries on main bus routes. Still, given the cost of the real estate, I wonder if neighborhoods, especially low-income ones, could not be served with more money going into branches--even if this means that many old books are not available to readers immediately. They could be stored in warehouses for overnight shipment to the central and branch libraries. Meanwhile keep in mind that digitized versions of older classics are already online.

--As a result of the wonderful Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act--see the latest in Spiked and Norman Solomon's column--it's more expensive than it could be otherwise to digitize old books that are seldom used.

Response: True! Bono does not just divert money from schools, libraries and consumers to the copyright elite. It also costs taxpayers a bundle by increasing the dependence on physical libraries.

Well-off library users in Denver are apparently enjoying longer library hours than poor people. TeleRead anyone? A national digital library system would be open 24/7 for all. Meanwhile here are details from the Rocky Mountain News about the inequalities:

Public libraries in Denver's poorest communities are open 30 percent fewer hours than those elsewhere, a community group says, and it's asking Mayor John Hickenlooper to change that.

Sanice Young, a parent leader for Metro Organizations for People, or MOP, released a report Friday that indicates seven libraries in Denver's low-income communities are open, on average, a little less than 30 hours per week.

But 15 libraries in more affluent communities are open, on average, more than 43 hours per week the report said. The central library downtown was not included in the research.

"We want Mayor John Hickenlooper and the Denver Public Libraries to come up with a community literacy plan that addresses these inequities," Young said.

City Librarian Rick Ashton said he asked for a meeting with MOP as soon as he received a copy of its report. He said library hours across Denver have been shortened because of the city's budget shortfall.

Also, library hours are just one part of library services, he said. In low-income communities, the library focuses on outreach efforts, particularly for children and young families.

"That focus is on reading programs in Head Start and other early childhood environments, school visits by our staff . . . and general neighborhood and community outreach." he said...

Public librarians love to talk up library databases as a free way to access high-quality information. But wait. There is something you may give up in return--your sanity, considering the Rube Goldbergish tortures that librarians or at least their database vendors often inflict on innocent users.

So far this morning I've struck out in my efforts to use two of the three databases that I've tried from the library system here in Alexandria, VA. One worked but lacked the article I needed, while two others won't let me use the information on my library card--those 14 infuriating digits. Adding to the joys, here is the error message associated with BigChalk Library, a gem that would do Microsoft proud:

1. Make sure you are accessing Big Chalk Library through the Alexandria Library site.

2. Make sure the barcode you enter is 14 digits long, no spaces, dashes, etc. and is an official Alexandria Library card.

3. Make sure Java scripting on your browser is "enabled."

4. The cookies setting on your browser must be "enabled."

5. For Internet Explorer users, the security setting must be set to "medium low."

6. For Internet Explorer 6.0 and up, your privacy settings must be set to "low."

7. If you have personal firewall software, be sure to check that "referring URL" blocking is "disabled."

8. If you are still experiencing problems, please clear your cache and delete all temporary internet files.

The goal at the Million Book Project--involving Carnegie Mellon, the Internet Archive and other organizations: A million books digitized by 2005.

Number of books scanned so far: 80,000.

Fully processed and now available for download: 14,000.

Sources: An Internet Archive Web page on the project and a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article and LISNews.

More details from the Post-Gazette:

The National Science Foundation has provided three grants totaling more than $3.5 million for the project. Much of that money has been spent on computers and scanners. The partners in China and India, including the Indian Institute of Science, the University of Pune, Nanjing University and Peking University, shoulder the chore of scanning book texts into the data base.

About 80,000 books have been digitized thus far, with 10,000 pages scanned every day during two shifts ---- or about two 300-page books every hour, [Raj] Reddy [of Carnegie Mellon University] said. Almost 30 scanning centers are now operating in India and China and another is in Egypt. More are being established in Australia and in Europe, as the project continues to expand into new countries.

After a year and a half of scanning, the project still seems to be far from its goal of a million books, Reddy acknowledged, but the pace is picking up. It took about nine months to complete just the first 1,000 books. By the end of this year, 100,000 books will be digitized and the one-millionth book could be added within two years, he added.

"We're trying to make the scanning less onerous," Reddy said, noting that the repetitive work can wear on the project staff.

But scanning represents only about 10 percent of the work. Most of the effort is spent on finding, selecting and shipping the books, not to mention reviewing and cataloguing the digitized versions. The texts are in a wide variety of languages, including Sanskrit, Urdu, Arabic, French and Hindi.

Reddy said he hopes that one million books will just be the beginning of the digitization effort.

"A million books is only about 1 percent of all the books in the world," he noted.

Jamie Knox sent along Iraq’s newly amended copyright law (as if THIS was where we needed to worry about rule of law in Iraq). I’ve just begun going through it, but there are favorite tidbits so far: collections of data can be protected; readings of the Koran are protected; and collections of government documents can be protected. But significantly, the term is life plus 50! More disharmony…

Don't think that access issues are important in e-books, or on the Net as a whole? Well, consider the following stats from Access Through Technology--an article by Marti Goddard in School Library Journal:

Census 2000 figures indicate that more than 19 percent of the U.S. population aged five and older are people with disabilities. The estimated 50 million individuals who comprise this group especially need access to computers in libraries. Citing data from the 1999 Survey on Income and Program Participation, a report published by the U.S. Department of Commerce states, "People who have a disability were only half as likely to live in homes with Internet access than those without any disability. And while just under 25 percent of people without a disability have never used a personal computer, the situation is quite different for those who have a disability. Close to 60 percent of people who have at least one type of disability have never used a computer."

Christianity Today has reviewed the latest Lessig book on the copyright wars--Free Culture. A snippet from the review:

Loaded with fascinating examples, Free Culture is a thought-provoking read, though at times it slows under the weight of repetition. It's a book designed to make you angry at the status quo, and on that level it works superbly well, but those hoping that Lessig will come down squarely on the side of the millions of file-swapping Christian teenagers will be disappointed. File-swapping, like the VCR, has all sorts of non-infringing uses, but if record companies don't grant permission to share their music, Lessig is no Abbie Hoffman. He will argue, though, that labels cannot hang onto their copyrights forever; Christian teens will just have to wait for middle age before downloading that Steven Curtis Chapman disc for free.

Minorities and small town libraries have benefited from the library-related efforts of the Bill and Gates Foundation. But at the same time the foundation has not revitalized small-town life to the extent hoped. What's more, it's clear that free books are not online in sufficient numbers to help make this a true, Carnegie-like vision. Some details from the Puget Sound Business Journal:

The five-year, $250 million effort by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to bring computers and Internet access to libraries in poor communities is drawing to a close, with the last equipment to be installed by October.

By most measures, the effort to ensure equal access to the World Wide Web is a great success, as 95 percent of U.S. libraries now offer patrons free computer use and Internet time.

Some 40,000 computers are now humming in 10,000 mostly rural library branches. The program has brought the Internet to more than 60 percent of the nation's libraries.

Along the way, the foundation has extensively studied the program that was its first major philanthropic effort, issuing more than 20 evaluation reports through the years. The data affirmed that the program was succeeding in bringing Internet access to people who otherwise wouldn't have it--30 percent of library computer users the foundation surveyed said they had no other way to get online.

Ethnic minorities were far more reliant on library computers than whites, with few Caucasians saying the library computer was the only one they had access to, compared with 26 percent of Hispanics and nearly 30 percent of African Americans.

"Now they have the same access to information as they would at the New York Public Library, even if their local library has a smaller book budget, because they can go online," said library initiatives director Richard Akeroyd. "There's no discrimination."

Earlier I quoted John Stafford on the Tablet PC--but not on the moronic Digital Rights Management schemes that have been poison for tablet sales. DRM has especially vexed users of Microsoft Reader, Redmond's e-book software promoted for the Tablet PC.

Now John Stafford has come forward with his own comments on DRM technology, and I doubt that the DRM Mafia and allies will enjoy them:

...I have books that have been sitting in my to-read pile for 10 years. EBooks without DRM give me something more--guaranteed retention, ability to regift, ease of searching, better user experience. I'm willing to pay full price. Ebooks with DRM need to come with a substantial price break. I just can't trust that they'll be on my to-read pile 10 years from now.

I think the long-term solution will be DRM on initial release with an open version escrowed by a third party for release 12-18 months later. The open version could have advertising (especially for new books by the same author) and serialization (to "imprint" my name on the book--much like libraries of old).

But I can't give my mother (an avid reader) a Tablet PC--even though it would be great for her aging eyes--until DRM is solved. She would gladly pay a fair price (remove the middlemen and paper handling costs and there is plenty of profit for authors, editors, and publishers) for easy-to-use eBooks. Note to publishers: the buyers of books are not the Kazaa type. And no DRM solution I've seen so far is going to meet her requirements for ease of use, sharing, and long-term retention. DRM publishers are marketing to me (lucky to buy two books a year, tech-savvy) instead of her (75 books a year, tech clueless).

On paper--sorry, I can't link and won't pirate--Wired's June issue is running an atlas of "Free & Unfree" countries based on intellectual property laws. Naturally we in the States are a dark blue, meaning that the U.S. is among the copyright and patent zealots. Mexico is an reddish orange, at least as the color shows up in my copy. That's Valenti-nightmare territory.

Canada and Australia are a less fanatical--lighter--shade of blue. Africa is mostly gray, while Asia and the former Soviet Union are mostly orange. Europe tends to be control freak turf, with Germany a dark blue, the same as Japan. Hitler and Tojo would have loved the DRM-fanatic mindset, and I suspect that Stalin would have, too, although the present inhabitants of the ex-USSR may have learned better from history than have governments in the U.S., Germany and Japan. From Wired:

IP atagonists are challenging the protection regime. We focus on four industries: media, medicine, agriculture, and software. And while the battle rages, here and there a few pioneers are redrawing the map, making a third way that respects patent protections and copyright controls while trying to foster more opportunities for broader access. The beginnings can be found in Linux and The Grey Album, generics and the Creative Commons.