by Charles Hamaker
Associate University Librarian for Collections and Technical Services
Atkins Library, University of North Carolina–Charlotte 

Who owns the book? Ebooks are a challenging area for libraries. Licensing is a critical issue because ebooks are being marketed as if they were analogous to print purchases. They most definitely are not. They can be available one day and gone the next. IN: InformationToday , February 22, 2012

….

Stewardship is easy and inexpensive to claim; it is expensive and difficult to honor, and perhaps it will prove to be all too easy to later abdicate.

– Clifford Lynch, 2003 [www.arl.org/newsltr/226/ir.html]

What we need is a revolution, not a continuation of tighter controls. We must find another way to “do” ebooks. What can consumers, customers, creators, distributors, and custodians of ebooks do to enhance the experience, preservation, and continuing innovation of etexts for both education and public use?

Concerned readers, libraries, school systems, institutions of higher education, aggregators, publishers, and their associations should come together to create criteria for acceptable and desired features of the new landscape. Such groups would have as their concerns at least three key issues: a competitive marketplace of etexts; innovation in development, design, content, and utility; and preservation. Anything less than substantive dialogue and outcomes in these areas runs the major risk of destruction of the record, the potential of the new medium, and of the core values of a significant portion of our cultural heritage with myopic implementations.

READ MORE

Google eBooks from Buck on Vimeo.

il commento di Mike Shatkzin sul suo blog a proposito del convegno IfBookThen:
http://www.idealog.com/blog/another-lesson-from-the-digital-trail Sembra che l’unica cosa che lo abbia veramente colpito della realtà italiana sia stata la timidezza degli intervenuti.

Altra segnalazione, molto più importante ed interessante, è il resoconto ufficiale dell’incontro fra ALA ed alcuni dei più importanti editori americani:
http://www.libraries.wright.edu/noshelfrequired/2012/02/09/ala-president-and-delegation-meet-with-publishers/
Leggendo questo comunicato sono rimasta stupita di ritrovarvi alcune cose dette da me proprio pochi giorni fa, rimango invece molto perplessa dalla scarsa conoscenza del digital lending da parte degli editori: avrei potuto capirlo qui in Italia visto che è una procedura molto recente, ma in USA sono ormai anni che si fa prestito digitale, come è possibile che ne sappiano così poco? Comunque, nonostante l’ottimismo del comunicato, mi riservo di credere a risultati positivi
solo quando si concretizzeranno, forse l’età che avanza mi porta a diventare troppo scettica….

Ultima segnalazione è un post sul blog Baionette Librarie che trovo sempre stimolante ed intelligente (oltre che divertente):
http://www.steamfantasy.it/blog/2012/02/08/piattaforme-di-pubblicazione-come-aggregatori-di-competenze/
E’ un po’ lungo ma spiega bene la differenza tra scegliere un editore o scegliere di autopubblicarsi, vantaggi e svantaggi, oltre che toccare temi “caldi” come il prezzo degli ebook.

By: Seth Godin

FEBRUARY 13, 2012

Not just a few things, but everything about the book and the book business is transformed by the end of paper. Those that would prefer to deny this obvious truth are going to find the business they love disappear over the next five years.

The book itself is changed. I’m putting the finishing touches on a manifesto I hope to share soon, and I found myself writing differently because I understood that the medium that was going to be used to acquire, consume and share the book was different.

The first change in the creation of the ebook is that there is no appropriate length. Print books are bounded on two sides–they can’t be too short, because there’s a minimum price that a bookseller needs to charge to make it worth stocking. At the same time, a book can’t be too long or ornate, because there’s also a maximum price that readers are willing to pay (and a maximum weight we’re willing to haul around).

READ MORE

From: Sue Myburgh, Food for thought (thanks, Dennis Moser):http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/08/a-bookfuturist-manifesto/61231/

TIM CARMODY – Tim Carmody writes about media and technology at Wired.com,Snarkmarket, HiLobrow, The Idler, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and other outlets. Together with the community at Snarkmarket, he helped write and edit a 2009 book titled New Liberal Arts. More

AUG 11 2010, 11:18 AM ET 28

The first thing to understand about bookfuturism is that “book” modifies “futurism” as much as the other way around. So bookfuturists aren’t just people promoting the future of the book; they’re also a different kind of futurist, the way a cubo-futurist painting like Duchamp‘s “Nude Descending A Staircase” is different, or Afro-futurism was/is different from typically white science-fiction culture.

A futurist (in Marinetti’s original sense) wants to burn down libraries. A bookfuturist wants to put video games in them. A bookfuturist, in other words, isn’t someone who purely embraces the new and consigns the old to the rubbish heap. She’s always looking for things that blend her appreciation of the two.

I started using the words “bookfuturist” and “bookfuturism” because of Joanne McNeil’s name for her Twitter list of wordly nerds who like to think about books and new media: “bookfuturism.” I was one of the people she put on the list, and as soon as I saw the name, I wrote, “I want to write a bookfuturist manifesto!”

READ MORE

I’ve griped about e-book prices many times before, and I remain steadfast in my belief that publishers charge way too much for a product that requires no printing, consumables, shipping, storage (in the traditional sense), or other typical print-book expenses.

Fortunately, there’s a way to squeeze a bit more value out of the e-books you do buy: lend them to someone else, then get other loaned books in return.

This is possible thanks to the publishers that allow e-book lending. Not all do, and the terms are pretty limited–each book can be loaned out only once, and for a period of just 14 days–but it’s definitely a way to get more bang for your e-book buck.

If you’re a Kindle or Nook owner, check your digital library. You’ll see that some titles support lending; you just enter the e-mail address of the recipient and presto, off the book goes. (Annoyingly, you can no longer read the book yourself until the loan period expires.)

Read more: http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33153_7-57373446-10391733/four-matchmaking-services-for-e-book-borrowing-and-lending/#ixzz1m7IKXKuK

link: http://wp.me/p11m4s-o0

Quasi a smentire quanto detto nel precedente post vi invio questo link (postato su Facebook da Bianca Gai) su Random House che ha deciso di vendere gli ebook alle biblioteche ad un prezzo maggiorato (che non si sa quanto è) per consentire prestiti senza restrizioni.

http://mhpbooks.com/48837/random-house-takes-the-plunge-says-it-will-sell-books-to-libraries-with-no-restriction-on-number-of-loans/

e Luca Furlotti commenta:

Una bella notizia. Grazie.

Tanto per rimanere sull’argomento:

La nostra biblioteca ha deciso per ora di non comprare ebook da Amazon, per le note limitazioni: si possono soddisfare infatti soltanto 6 utenti e con complicazioni di ogni sorta per il login e il logout.

 
Per quanto riguarda la nostra biblioteca, le alternative  sono: (1) comprare gli ebook dall’editore, quando é possibile e quando non ci sono limitazioni sull’uso o (2) stipulare contratti con aggregator come MyiLibrary, EBSCOhost, ebrary, EBS che offrano opzioni di download ragionevoli (cioé di prestito) – abbiamo chiesto proprio in questi giorni per i trial (ma quanto titoli sono in PDF!! uff).

Comunque, ci proviamo e verificheremo.

…

Il resoconto che ieri Luciana ci ha fatto sulla seconda edizione della conferenza sul futuro dell’editoria è stato particolarmente apprezzato dal gruppo ed è stato rilanciato su altri blog dei partecipanti al gruppo. Contribuisco quindi all’ulteriore rimbalzo nella Rete del suo commento anche perché, l’impressione che ne ho ricavato io (soprattutto sugli ultimi punti evidenziati da Luciana), è che siamo di fronte ai dinosauri. 

Sarà che noi di Bibienne abbiamo veramente sparigliato la filiera e il modo di progettare/realizzare/fruire di un testo con Didasfera, archiviando ormai da tempo discussioni circa il problema dei pirati e dei lucchetti…

Certo, noi ci occupiamo di testi per l’apprendimento, però ricordate cosa scriveva Noa un paio di anni fa?

LEGGI TUTTO