This is bizarre. You've got Hollywood systematically buying off or at least silencing politicians with massive campaign contributions. And yet now Washington might crack down instead on grassroots bloggers who link to favorite political sites. Even big media might suffer in some ways, except that I suppose they can charge that much more for their campaign ads, with the Net somewhat defanged. Here's an interesting question. What if, in grousing about the discrepancy between candidates' populist rhetoric and their cowardice on copyright matters, I link to their sites in a less-than-positive way? Am I still evil? Jeeze. The idiots who (mis)govern us!

Speaking of greed and intellectual property: Check out Copy Protection Patent Holder Demands Twelve Percent of iTunes' Revenue, via Techdirt.
posted by David Rothman at 8:54 AM | permanent link

"The New York Public Library this week unveiled an online archive of 275,000 images, available to the public for free. The project, called the NYPL Digital Gallery, is supported by a $7 million grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies and includes Civil War photographs, illuminated manuscripts, Japanese prints, early American maps, and photographs of New York City buildings and streetscapes." (Educause, summing up article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, via Rick Barry.)

The "free" question: Whoops--read about some fine print.
posted by David Rothman at 4:23 AM | permanent link

"A Long Island public library is among the first in the nation to loan...Apple iPod Shuffles containing audio books." - NPR's Talk of the Nation.

The TeleRead take: Good news for the audio book industry! Meanwhile David Faucheux is concerned that the iPOD--in some versions, at least--isn't blind friendly. Anyone know the lowdown on both the older versions and the new Shuffles? Seth at the Finding Voice, Finding Hearing blog says his blind wife is using a Shuffle--successfully, it appears. I know David would love for his fears to be wrong. Meanwhile it's great to see another blind blog--yes, Seth's wife, Denise, contributes.

Update, 1:42 p.m.: David, as I expected, is pleased that the iPOD will work out for blind people.
posted by David Rothman at 10:03 PM | permanent link

"Instead of having an entire book take up several CDs, one book fits within several MP3 files, usually ranging from 150 MB to 350 MB... The library currently stocks both of the two versions of the iPod shuffle -- six of the 1-GB model, and four of the 512-MB model." - Wired, via LISNews.
posted by David Rothman at 6:23 PM | permanent link

While Greg Schwartz at Open Stacks, aka The Pod Librarian, is living up to the name given him by Jenny Levine, we now have another welcome development--the emergence of The Vod Librarian.

That's David King. Fresh to videoblogging, he works for the Kansas City Public Library, which, by the way, has one of the best home pages I've seen on a library site.

David, whose blog is big on such topics as "usability, searching, new technologies, design" and other good stuff, isn't just doing personal R&D with video. He has graciously put a useful vodcast tutorial online for other librarians and the world at large.

Imagine the possibilities of vodcasting, podcasting and other forms of multimedia content aggregation for promoting and "niche-casting" special events and other library offerings. Way to go, David!

Thanks to Steve Garfield for the discovery of the David's neato tutorial.

The e-book connection: How are you going to get video- and games-crazed teenagers to read books if you don't you try to meet them on their terms? While video isn't the only way to do this, it's one approach. Text remains my favorite medium. But that's about all that most library sites offer, and some balance could go a long way. Videos and audio can spur interest in related books and in special events promoting those books and other library offerings.
posted by David Rothman at 9:13 AM | permanent link

Bookeen, maker of the Cybook, has opened up Ubibooks. The new e-store is starting out with several thousand books in Mobipocket format and will soon have more than 19,000. Ubibooks is one of the best-looking stores on the Net, showing the same aesthetics that distinguish my favorite e-book device of the moment. More importantly, books are available in five languages--English, French, German, Spanish and Italian. If you want to look beyond the standard titles, including the English-language variety, this would be one place to try.

Speaking of Bookeen: Cofounder Laurent Pickard says fresh news will be out soon. A Cybook software update is on the way.

Reminder: Laurent is a friend of the OpenReader Consortium and has kindly lent me a long-term loaner so I can follow the evolution of the machine. Yes, with or without the loaner, I would feel the same--because of the ten-inch screen and the Cybook's multiformat orientation. I'm particularly eager to try out the next Cybook incarnation of the uBook reader program, the best software I've used for reading public domain books. You can adjust the fonts just so.
posted by David Rothman at 11:10 AM | permanent link

Here's a reminder via LISNews. Deadline is March 25. See earlier item.
posted by David Rothman at 11:05 AM | permanent link

With Google and other search engines obviously in mind, the New York Times will create in-depth topic pages--with permanent links. Ah, but there's a catch. You'll apparently still have to cough up for the full archived articles that ran in the paper. No, this won't put the Wikipedia out of business. More at Joho the Blog. (Via Adam Gaffin's post to Online News.)
posted by David Rothman at 10:42 AM | permanent link

Obvious is the potential of e-books for the disabled. This is among the many reasons why Jon Noring and I and others with the OpenReader initiative have pressed on for a durable e-book format that would be synthesizer-friendly. If only the industry cared more! Proprietary formats with problematic DRM are rough enough on sighted people, and they are inherently blind-hostile.

But who says e-bookdom is the only offender? In the Blind Chance blog today, I have a few observations on the Gannett-owned newspaper in David Faucheux's hometown of Lafayette, Louisiana. Several times now I've tried in vain to get the Daily Advertiser to write about the accomplishments of a blind blogger, who, as of this week, is even podcasting. Gannett claims to care endlessly about the laudable goal of racial diversity. But at least at times, it can be rather blind to coverage of the disabled if the Faucheux situation is representative. I'm going to e-mail Tara Connell, Gannett's vice president of corporate communications, and see if her company can educate the myopic editors in Lafayette and ideally apply the lessons to newspapers in other communities.
posted by David Rothman at 4:31 AM | permanent link

Now you can hear podcasts of Blind Chance, the audio blog from David Faucheux, the blind librarian whose work is featured on Audio Blogger and was the subject of a chatcast yesterday. The B.C. feed address is:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/blindchanceaudio

Big thanks to Greg Schwartz for the suggestion to use Feedburner's instant RSS enhancer, which works with iPodder and other common podcast-receiving software. From now on, it'll be silly to have an audio blog without podcasting.
posted by David Rothman at 9:27 AM | permanent link

I'm lending my Librie to Matt McClintock, the public-spirited soul behind the free manybooks.net, so he can get the LRF format right. Sony shouldn't take this as a compliment. The Librie's screen contrast isn't sufficient for me, at least, and it would be much harder to give up the Cybook, still my favorite. I love the Librie crowd, though. Why does Sony continue to insult them by offering an instruction manual just in Japanese--not even an abbreviated manual in English? The good news is that Peter Knowles, another public-spirited type, hopes in time to do GUI versions of his English-language software to tame the machine.

On the pro-Librie side: A large suburban library system in the Washington, D.C., area recently approached Sony for a look at the Librie. No machine so far. Here in the States, an English-language Librie could be an interesting library machine if prices declined and screen contrast went up along with the quality of the interface.
posted by David Rothman at 6:09 AM | permanent link

"The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is an action comedy about an ebook, at least if we have to believe the trailers at IMDB. Hey, how come there is going to be a movie about an ebook and we don’t get to read on Teleread about it? ;-)" - Ebook action movie, in Branko's Web log.

The TeleRead take: Oops. Fixed. Meanwhile, who says we're just for well-stocked national digital libraries? Actually, judging by the French fuss over Google, it would be difficult at this point to think about even global digital libraries, but one can dream. La Bibliothèque nationale de France, whatever the case, should be perfectly free to do its own galactic digital library (please--no alien jokes from either side of the Atlantic). Besides, hasn't Vint Cerf already been looking ahead to TCP/IP connections with Mars, at least? Let's just hope that gracefully evolving e-book standards will be in place, whatever the language.
posted by David Rothman at 4:09 AM | permanent link

Congratulations to the 600-title International Children's Digital Library on a fine write-up in the Washington Times. (Via LISNews.)

Related: Internet Public Library Scores a Perfect 10, from the University of Michigan News Service via LISNews.
posted by David Rothman at 11:27 AM | permanent link

Details here.
posted by David Rothman at 8:07 AM | permanent link

One of the library world's most heartfelt blogs--enlivened by wry Southern humor--comes from a man who cannot see his own words.

My friend David Faucheux, a blind MLIS in Lafayette, Louisiana, who'll do a chatcast at 8 p.m. EST tonight, has been posting to his Blind Chance audio blog since last spring. David has drawn listeners from Hanoi to London. He is even featured on the home page and FAQ page of Audio Blogger and has won recognition from Feedster as well. ALA President-Elect Michael Gorman may question the usefulness of blogging, but David Fauxcheux and his fans don't.

Stirfried cricket MP3

Listen to David's new MP3 on stirfried crickets and other insect delights for an example of his work. Or if you want something more somber, hear David remember Nader, the yellow Labrador, his late guide dog. Time to think about helping blind people in your community start their own audio blogs to convey their experiences and needs?

If you want the nuts and bolts here or would like to learn more about blind-blogging and other kinds, tune in David's chatcast, sponsored by the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center, which carries his RSS headines--available to all.

Some chatcast details

Click here to participate in the chatcast if you have Internet Explorer and a soundcard and speakers. You'll automatically download the software, which contains no spyware. You can ask questions either via a microphone or by typing. Need more info on accessing the chatcast? Reach Tom Peters or Lori Bell.
posted by David Rothman at 1:34 AM | permanent link

"States already take land and other property in order to benefit the public by building things such as roads and schools. Now some legislators and officials are saying they should be able to take away a drug company’s intellectual property, its patent." - The American Prospect via Slashdot.

The TeleRead take: Zealots have tried to position copyrights as being eternal like land titles. But could this parallel haunt them in the end--even though copyright law isn't the same as patent law? In the case of drugs, of course, government officials are POed over patent-enabled gouges, and as the Eyes on the Prize case shows, public opinion might eventually turn against Hollywood's copyright equivalents. No miracles expected soon. But here's a little hope that new political and legal tactics could be devised to cope with the damage from the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. With the threat of eminent domain actions, maybe Hollywood will be more open to compromises such as those advocated by Larry Lessig.
posted by David Rothman at 1:25 AM | permanent link