TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

Archive for the ‘England’ Category

By Paul Biba

In a press release approving the British government’s initiatives on copyright reform, the Library set forth the principles it sees necessary for any reform. This is a good exercise for looking at reforming our own copyright laws. The Library’s principles are:

1. Many contracts undermine the public interest exceptions in copyright law agreed by Parliament to foster education, learning and creativity. Addressing this issue is crucial so that existing and new exceptions are not over-ridden by contract law.

2. Libraries must be able to make preservation of copies of the material they acquire, including web harvesting of the UK domain.

3. 40% of the British Library’s collections are Orphan Works (where the rightsholder can no longer be found or traced). A legislative solution to Orphan Works would help provide access to the UK’s large historical collections over the internet.

4. Researchers and libraries need to be able to make available ‘fair dealing copies’ of anything in their collections, including sound and film recordings that Fair Dealing does not currently relate to.

5. Computer based research techniques, such as scientific research, needs to be allowed by future copyright law, in the same way that in the analogue world research activity is protected through ‘fair dealing’.

You can find the full press release here. Thanks to Resource Shelf for the link.

By Paul Biba

I am a huge Douglas Adams fan so I’m going to print this press release in full. Unfortunately this edition is not available in the US app store, only in the UK store. I asked about US publication, but they told me no, they are not the US rights holder:

Pan Macmillan’s iPhone app version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, created with Missing Ink Studios to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the original books, has stormed the App Store’s paid book apps chart and spent the weekend at No 4, ahead of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, which had slipped to No 6. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy app has also become the Number 2 Grossing App in the Books category in the UK, and third in Australia. Further, it has now slipped into the Top 100 Grossing Apps for all Apps in the UK at No 95. This makes it the 95th highest cash generating App on the UK App Store over all. The App has also been picked for the “What’s Hot” section of the Store.

The other four books in the Hitchhiker’s series are all climbing up the Top 100 Paid Book Apps chart in the UK.
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By Paul Biba

This is from the press release. However, looking at the site it seems as if full access is by subscription only and if you don’t want to subscribe you have to access the collection by going to a participating local library.

Gale, part of Cengage Learning, along with The British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), have made nineteenth-century British newspapers available on the internet. The database, known as “British Newspapers, 1800-1900″ and available at http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/, gives users access to over two million newspaper pages from 49 different national and regional newspapers from England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Chosen by leading experts and academics, the newspapers represent a cross-section of nineteenth-century society and contain illustrated materials on a variety of topics, including business, sports, politics and entertainment.

By Paul Biba

From the Times Higher Education Supplement. This is the first article I’ve come across about etextbooks in the overseas market.

University librarians are frustrated by the poor availability and high cost of electronic textbooks, despite growing demand from students and academic staff, the biggest-ever study of e-books has found.

So far, publishers have held back from releasing e-textbooks amid uncertainty about their impact on the market for printed texts, but the findings of the two-year study suggest that making more e-books available would not affect sales. …

Researchers found that the exercise had “no conclusive negative impact” on the sale of printed texts. Instead, e-books were used for “grazing” information rather than for continuous reading, meaning hard copies and e-books are complementary.

The nervousness of publishers is understandable: student sales account for 70 per cent to 90 per cent of publishers’ revenues when it comes to textbooks.

In addition you can find a podcast by the JISC here which discusses the results of the survey which had over 50,000 participitants.

Thanks to ResourceShelf for the link.

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By Paul Biba

From the JISC site in the UK.

For a year, 26 e-course texts across four subject areas (Medicine, Business, Engineering and Media Studies) were made available to 127 UK universities who took part in a National e-books observatory project funded by JISC and carried out by JISC Collections. The largest study of its kind, it has seen the behaviours of over 50,000 participants and observed to see how they use a selection of academic electronic textbooks.

In this podcast Rebecca O’Brien is joined by Caren Milloy, the project’s manager at JISC Collections, and her co-author of the National e-books Observatory Project report, Ian Rowlands from CIBER who carried out the study.

Thanks to Resource Shelf for the link.

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By Paul Biba

This is from a survey conducted in the UK and reported on in the Bookseller:

The lack of devices from Amazon and Apple could “inhibit” the UK’s e-book market “in the short term”, as people hold out for products by preferred manufacturers, a YouGov survey has concluded. The survey also found that users of e-book devices rated the range and quality of books available to download as the least satisfying aspect of owning a device.

YouGov found that Sony was the best-known brand, with 65% of “potential purchasers” saying they would buy from the electronics firm: Amazon and Apple came next, with 42% and 35% of respondents saying their products were preferable. This was despite the fact that neither firm has yet launched a device specifically for e-reading in the UK.

By Paul Biba

It looks as if there is some price competition going on. According the The Bookseller:

W H Smith looks like it is ready to spark an e-reader price war after offering the two new Sony e-readers at prices less than those being charged by Waterstone’s.

Waterstone’s will be selling the new Sony Reader – Touch for £249.99, however the WHS website is selling it for £219. With the Sony Reader – Pocket Waterstone’s is taking pre-orders for £179.99 whereas WHS is offering it at £159.

In additional Sony news PC Pro is reporting that the 3G version will be a year behind the US:

Speaking at the launch of the Reader Touch and Pocket Edition, a Sony executive told PC Pro that the company didn’t believe the UK market was ready for the 3G version.

We’re expecting the Kindle to arrive here before Christmas, I think everybody is, but, to be honest, we don’t see it as much of a threat

“We’re a year behind the US with these products, so the groundwork’s done over there,” said Omar Gurnah, category manager for Reader for Sony UK. “We need to bring that level of awareness to the UK market, which is what we’re doing with these [Reader Touch and Pocket Edition]. It’ll definitely happen, but maybe not for another year or so.”

By Paul Biba

From the Research Information Network’s monthly newsletter. If any of our British readers attend these I would be happy to publish a precis.

Crystal ball gazing: services and skills for tomorrow’s libraries
21 September 2009, Open University, Milton Keynes

This annual Open University library seminar includes Liz Chapman, Deputy Director University College Libraries, Lorraine Estelle, CEO of JISC Collections and Sue Hill of Sue Hill Recruitment Services as its key speakers. Themes explored will be the challenges of the digital environment, the impact of technological developments and changing user behaviour and expectations, the skills and ranges of expertise and knowledge essential for library staff of the future and national initiatives relating to current and future provision of services for the UK education and library communities. The closing date for registration 15 September, register by emailing library.secretariat@cranfield.ac.uk
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