Paula J. Hane recaps the current status of the DPLA.
“The dream of a national digital public library is inching closer to the planning stage.”
From Paula J. Hane’s post Newsbreak “Update on the Digital Public Library of America”
Nate Hill shares his thoughts on the DPLA technical workshop in DC.
“At the end of the day, I must say that I left feeling good about the project as whole. I think we’ve got a shot at going somewhere with this. I hope we’ll be able to compartmentalize disagreements and hurdles so that progress will continue.”
From Nate Hill’s post for the Public Library Association, “Thoughts from the DPLA meeting in DC”
The Technium discusses preserving physical books.
“Books and other media creations are now getting their type specimen archive. The same guy who has been backing up the internet (yes the entire web!), and is racing Google to scan all books into digital files, has recently become concerned about the lack of a physical archive for all these digitized books.”
From The Technium post, “When Hard Books Disappear”
OverDrive, a major ebook vendor, alters its services.
“Although full details won’t be available until a demonstration at the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in New Orleans next week, David Burleigh, OverDrive’s director of marketing, said in a press release that the company held a series of meetings recently with the 9-member Ohio Metro Library Directors group (OverDrive is based in Cleveland), and has subsequently devised a streamlined lending platform as well as an expanded collection that the company is calling OverDrive Win.”
From Michael Kelly’s post on Library Journal, “OverDrive to Streamline Platform and Expand Offerings”
Adrian Versteegh reports on the Google Books settlement.
“Without access to a major research institution or one of the larger public library systems, it’s difficult for the average citizen to log on to an electronic catalogue and check out, say, a popular novel—as one can now in Norway, for instance. Indeed, it’s overseas that the most robust public library projects are under way: France and Germany have committed to government-funded scanning; Austria and the Netherlands (which is aiming for near-total digitization) have signed deals with Google to host out-of-print works the company has already digitized; and Japan, incredibly, has been at work on an electronic national library since the 1970s.”
From Adrian Versteegh’s article for Poets & Writers, “Digital Digest: Putting the ‘Public’ Back Into Library”