When the Greensboro News & Record ran "Bus Driver Bob's" obit on the front page of the final edition, it accidentally omitted the continuation on an inside page. In the past there would have been just a rerun of the story and a formulaic apology. You'd never have seen a personal note from Editor John Robinson (photo) appearing the same day in a blog.

OK, now here's the library angle. Does anyone know of top librarians of big-city libraries doing their own blogs? Perhaps explaining new services or problems with the old? Or sharing the enthusiasm for certain authors? Must everything be library-impersonal? Among librarians, the troops have long been blogging, and then there's Tasha Saecker's gem of a blog for the small-town system that she runs in Wisconsin; but how about the top people in big-city libraries? For that matter, James Billington, Librarian of Congress, while not always the most clueful guy about ebooks and the Net, could do one heck of a blog--covering not just library matters but also those within his field of Russian studies.

Both stodgy, both in need of Contact

Newspapers and libraries tend to have much in common, as oft-stody institutitions that almost pride themselves on not keeping up with the times. So it's good to see Robinson's blog and the N&R's other activities in the same spirit. Must be something in the water in Greensboro, North Carolina (population 223,891). Jeff Thigpen, Greensboro's register of deeds, also has a blog going. If other 'crats can do it, why can't top library administrators? Perhaps something for Sandy Neerman, Greensboro's well-regarded library director, to consider? Her system already has a lively and well-organized Web site, incuding, I might add, a netLibrary-related link promoted on the home page. So, at least from afar, it looks as if a Neerman blog would be in character.

But back to The Big Picture. Given the funding woes of so many American library systems, blogging could be A Very Good Thing. Administrators would not just be writing about library services, but also getting feedback along the way from other bloggers from outside librarydom. Too many library 'crats move within narrow social circles, a problem not unknown to journalists or others such as cops (yes, blogging could be a great form of outreach for police departments--especially as audio and video blogs take off and the medium spreads farther beyond the elite).

Hiring criterion

With blogging so promising as a bridge between bureaucracies and the public, including the press, maybe the relevant skills should be among the criteria for hiring top liberarians and other government administrators. No, I'm not expecting most library 'crats to blog as often or as eloquently as trained journalists like Robinson. But heartfelt blogs could go a long way toward winning friends for local libraries.

Related: Citizen Journalism: A Newspaper That Gets It, in Dan Gillmor's blog.

Housekeeping note: I'm on the road this weekend, after a nice stay with inlaws in Statesville, North Carolina, and will be packing up everything electronic except for my Sony PDA (no danger of running out of reading material--not with scores of e-books on it). Back late Sunday or Monday. Happy New Year, everyone! If you haven't already, check out Six biggest news stories in e-bookdom in 2004.
posted by David Rothman at 6:35 AM | permanent link

A beta version of the GEB eBook Librarian lets you adjust your font size and margins and also bold the text that you import into the eBookwise-1150 and other machines that use Gemstar technology, including the RCA eBooks.

Download the beta from this page. To access the new features, choose "Advanced" within the "Create New" menu.

Great for people with vision problems

For the moment, the option will work only with .txt files you bring in, but programmer Steve Breen will soon be offering capabilities in other formats as well. Hey, way to go! Thanks to Steve, the Gemstar-related machines will be far more useful to people with vision problems.

Even if you enjoy normal sight, just bolding could make a major difference in the viewability of the 1150's screen, especially when you're using the smaller of the two existing font choices.

This is just a hint of good stuff to come from Steve, including, yes, import of OpenReader files after the exact format is settled on. Steve also will be working on OpenReader importation for other machines. Cool!

Biz details

If you like GEB eBook Librarian beta, you can register it for $15. The final results will also be available as the eBookwise Librarian, sold to owners of the eBookwise machine for $9.95.

Details: Justification is possible, too, with the new beta-- although, given the line lengths involved, you may well prefer to do without it if you're using the 1150 or a similar machine. Justification would make more sense on the larger-screened RCA color eBooks and the like. As for owners of the 1100 machines and perhaps some others, keep in mind that the old eBook Librarian from Nuvomedia does let you vary styles and sizes of type by picking up your desktop fonts. However, the Breen program could be handy for other reasons.
posted by David Rothman at 10:36 PM | permanent link

If you doubt that the Tower of eBabel is a turnoff for prospective converts to e-books, check out a clueful post by Rochelle Hartman--a librarian friend of mine in the midwest. Rochelle is not a programmer. But she is far, far more tech-savvy than the typical librarian. In character, in the Tinfoil+Raccoon blog ("looking for the new and shiny in libraryland and beyond"), she warns of the harm that proprietary formats can do.

Rochelle says that if she were to pay $18.50 for an autobiography of Bill Clinton in electronic form, there would be "no guarantee that I could use that book forever... because it wouldn't necessarily migrate if I bought a new machine. There's something rather disposable about the proprietary format, which is another reason that ebooks still haven't caught fire. I feel horrible recycling a $3.00 magazine that I know I'll never read again. There's no way I'm going to spend $18 on a book that I can't keep for several years, or resell if it's a dud."

The confusion factor

Consider, too, another problem with proprietary formats--consumer confusion and the devastating effect on sales of e-book-related hardware and content. Rochelle has been trying out a loaner RCA REB1200 e-book for a library-related project in which I'm also involved; and I told her, correctly, that I couldn't scare up the Clinton autobiography in a format for that particular machine. In her post she worried she would not be able to read the Clinton book electronically, period. But I'm glad to say that if she can tolerate a small screen and risk format obsolescence, then her loaner Sony Clie will work with the Clinton book in Mobipocket format; this particular Clie already has reading software installed for Mobipocket. I'll blame the little misunderstanding on myself, not Rochelle, and help her get the e-book edition going if she wants. I'm just happy that Clinton's My Life is not a Microsoft Reader-only book. Otherwise Rochelle would be out of luck since the Clie and RCA don't run any form of Windows--a required operating system for Reader books. Nothing like letting the software industry dictate your e-reading tastes, eh?

Rochelle's main point, of course, holds up beautifully--that the format war is bad news for consumer. The situation with the RCA and Clie, the tricky question of which books can display on which machines, is a splendid example of the confusion that ensues when the industry is in such a mess. Wait. There's more. Remember, lawyers from Gemstar or another company have apparently thwarted Fictionwise's efforts to make recent DRMed e-books conveniently available for the RCA and other machines that use Gemstar technology.

A raccoon-friendly solution

OpenReader, anyone? The idea isn't to force everybody to use the same reader, but rather offer a common format that could be digested by an open source program, proprietary software from Microsoft, a rival program from Adobe, you name it. Different programs can have different interfaces and different coding. Only the format for the actual e-books will be identical. OpenReader will also promote standardization of the accompanying DRM and seek to make it less onerous than the present varieties--something that will be inherently easier with standards in place.

Jon Noring is the main ringleader for the OpenReader Consortium, and prospective volunteers and industry supporters can reach him at jon@openreader.org. He and I are on the lookout not just for hardcore techies but also standards-setters from related fields such as libraries and publishing--people who know what they want. OpenReader will build on a production format that Jon helped refine for the Open eBook Forum (not to be confused with the OpenReader Consortium), which, alas, has stubbornly refused to create a true consumer format despite past promises.

The price issue

As a newcomer to e-books, Rochelle will also be learning further about another form of insanity--prices. Why is it that so many mainstream publishers insist on gouging e-stores and consumers for the electronic versions? Amazon.com is selling the Clinton book new in hardback for $21 and directing people to used p-editions for as little as $10.99. The price of the e-book from Amazon in Adobe or Microsoft format? $18.48 despite no "shipping costs" but server space and bandwidth. And a Mobipocket version apparently isn't even available from Amazon.

Luckily Rochelle can buy the book in Mobipocket--the best proprietary format for recreational reading on the Clie, far better than Adobe, which also has a reader for Palm-style machines--from eBooks.com. But the eBooks.com price will be $28. The same applies at Fictionwise unless you use rebate offers for "Club" members ($19.04 after rebate) or Micropay users ($22.40). What a downer for consumers and e-stores. I realize that the publishers are trying to protect their hardback sales. But mightn't they be better off pricing e-books reasonably to do higher volume than they would otherwise?

The DRM Mafia

Of course, in fairness to publishers, it does not help the appeal of e-books when the DRM Mafia charges prices that at times exceed 15 percent of revenue. This is the kind of abuse we intend to wipe out with the OpenReader format. We want software companies to prosper, but let them make their bucks honestly rather than overcharging the publishing industry, libraries and the rest of us to justify the many redundancies in the Tower of eBabel.

Detail: Isn't it interesting that Amazon apparently does not even carry the Clinton autobiography in the Mobipocket format? Even the world's biggest online bookstore can't keep up with all the formats in the Tower of eBabel. Nothing at Amazon for eReader fans, either. List price at the eReader store is $35, and even with a discount you'll still pay $22.68.
posted by David Rothman at 3:39 AM | permanent link

Yes, I get it--why Laurent Picard has included uBook, not just Mobipocket and Boo Reader, on his Cybook. You should see Crime and Punishment on a ten-inch screen in double-column landscape mode. I can even read the smallest type of uBook's five size-related choices. Forget about that with Mobipocket, even on the Cybook. The type would look too dot-matrixy. What's more, with uBook, I can adjust the type size more precisely.

I'm hereby telling Laurent that he and David Jean at Gowerpoint (the uBook outfit) may want to do some cross promo. As I've said before, Cybook's philosophy is the opposite of Gemstar's--Laurent wants people to be able to read books exactly the way they want. And that's also the philsophy of uBook.

The virtues of the rest of the gang

Mobipocket and Boo Reader have their own virtues--awesome aesthetics and ease of use in Mobipocket's case, and usefulness for the vision-impaired in the case of Boo Reader and the related Boo Vision. But uBook has appeals of its own. I've tried uBook before on a PDA but could never before appreciate it to the extent I have on the Cybook.

The real torture test for the Cybook: As I'd expect, the Cybook doesn't exactly do an instant pagination routine on War and Peace--a handy test novel, since it dwarfs the typical work in length. Took several minutes with uBook. But I could start in on the book even before full pagination happened, and, once it was done, I could almost instantly hop around. So what if the Cybook lacks the latest, speediest processor? Point is, it's good enough for the job at hand. Speed of pagination, I can assure you, shouldn't be a problem with your garden-variety 80,000-word book.

Related: The Cybook: A 10-inch color screen for Madame Bovary--and a $499 bargain for serious readers. I've squished some glitches and added a few more thoughts at the end. Also see New uBook can read eReader, Mobipocket, PDF, others.
posted by David Rothman at 10:42 PM | permanent link

Below are the six biggest news stories in e-bookdom in '04:

1. The creation of the OpenReader Consortium. I'm a founder but would feel the same way if I weren't. We need to raze the Tower of eBabel, and some heavy-hitters have now expressed their support for the OR concept. A list of them will appear in early '05.

2. The library/Google's convergence and competing efforts from the Internet Archive. Speaking of convergence, let's hope that this event converges soon with #1. Libraries, Google and the Archive all will benefit from OpenReader.

3. The Librie, of course--the first e-book reader with E Ink technology. No longer can Luddites so blithely deny that e-books are as easy to read from as paper.

4. eBookwise/Fictionwise's revival of old Gemstar technology. Here's one more indication that the e-books are gaining traction, although right now we're still talking about a tiny speck of the book industry. It was also good to see Bookeen bring back to life--in an improved form--the Cybook sold originally by Cytale. Even a New York Times article is upbeat on e-books. While the industry remains sick in many ways--witness the failure of the dyfunctional Open eBook Forum to live up to its name with a uniform consumer format, despite past promises--e-books aren't about to vanish.

5. OverDrive's shameful treatment of small publishers, the very same crowd that CEO Steve Potash so ardently wooed when he needed them. Will libraries suffer a similar abuse in time if OverDrive locks up that market?

6. More progress toward a rollout screen for cellphones. Potentially this is a tremendous boost for e-books, given the disappointing sales of PDAs. No, I haven't supplied many details here. But it's rather significant to learn that Siemens and E Ink among the players, joining such roll-out screen pioneers as Rolltronics.

More on OpenReader: We'll especially welcome particpation from libraries to advance OpenReader's XML/CSSish approach based on existing standards. With the OpenReader in effect, life will be easier for readers, writers, publishers, bookstores, distributors and libraries--now the indirect and indirect victims of format-related gouges that at times exceed 15 percent of revenue. OpenReader has techies excited about the concept and eager to contribute, though more volunteers are welcome. You needn't be a programer. We're also interested in hearing from, say, librarians, retailers and publishers who know what they want.

Correction: Yes, the headline should have read '04, not '05. Freudian slip. Can't wait to be doing the same roundup a year hence.
posted by David Rothman at 10:37 AM | permanent link

IBM's OmniFind program will offer"unstructured information management architecture, or UIMA" and,, according to I.B.M., "will lead to a third generation in the ability to retrieve computerized data." - James Fallows in a New York Times column headlined At I.B.M., That Google Thing Is So Yesterday.

The TeleRead take: Here's a page with more details on how the product could fit into IBM's vision. Possibilities for libraries? The same column discusses other companies' search-related efforts, including those for the desktop.

Related: Slashdot reaction (via LISNews).
posted by David Rothman at 10:16 AM | permanent link