+ The Guardian and The Observer Added to ProQuest Historical Newspapers

+ The Quaero project - new European search technology (via Pandia)

+ Podcast: Breaking down the e-books barrier (via JISC)

e-Books are as yet an untapped and underused resource – a resource which could have a major impact on access to key texts particularly for undergraduates. In this podcast for Inform Plus3, Anne Bell, Librarian at Warwick University, and Caren Milloy, JISC e-books project manager, talk with Philip Pothen about the national e-books observatory project and how it is beginning to realise the enormous potential of an underexploited resource.

Note: You can also listen to the podcast as a phonecast, by dialing this U.S. telephone number: 1 (631) 964-6673.

From a post by Brewster Kahle:

…the Internet Archive’s Open Content Alliance grew to 80 contributing libraries.

We have scanned over 100,000 books now available to everyone. (Over 250,000 total.)***

The New York Times has an article today on page 1, above the fold!

Other announcements of the OCA include:

* Digital inter-library loan of out-of-print works starting;

* Mass Microfilm scanning program started;

* Mass journal literature scanning program started;

* OpenLibrary.org opensource site now has tech framework for online book catalog and books;

* Print-on-demand machine demonstrated with OCA books.

*** Illinois Harvest from the University of Illinois is One Example of an Open Content Alliance Digitization Project
One collection contains full text materials about Abraham Lincoln

See Also: Digitized Book of the Week Blog (via U of I Library)
Try a book in the “Flip Book” Format.

See Also: American Library Association Archived Digital Collections

OK, let’s see if we can try to make this story clear, one step at a time. This post will focus on content. We can save other issues for future posts. With so much scanning going on, it can be very easy to get confused. Bottom Line: Book scanning involves many more projects than the ones that get a lot of the attention. BTW, the NY Times ran another story about digitization projects in March.

The Story: Libraries Shun Deals to Place Books on Web
The focus is on Google Book Search, Live Book Search from Microsoft (when was the last time you visited that service?), and the Open Content Alliance.

(An example of a topical collection from the Open Content Alliance — Illinois Harvest. Includes books about Chicago, Abraham Lincoln, and many other topics.)

+++ List of Open Content Alliance Contributors
+++ Google Book Search Library Partners

1) In this post, we’re talking about digitizing books (both in and out of copyright) that are found in library collections. We’re NOT talking about material made available from publishers directly to Google Book Search (Google Book Search Partner Program) and Amazon’s Search Inside the Book databases. We have found that this difference can confuse people.

2) Some libraries are working with Google/Microsoft/Open Content Alliance.
In fact, both Cornell and the University of California Libraries have announced they will work with both projects. However, when you look at the number of libraries (and don’t forget about archives, museums, etc.) in the world, it’s really only a small number. It’s sad to see that what’s likely happening is that money (not a major issue, in this case) and TIME (a key issue) likely mean that the same titles are being scanned multiple times. We could all think of other uses for the dollars going to digitize the same title more than once.

The article also points out, both MSFT and Yahoo are members of the Open Content Alliance, and it discusses the pluses and minuses of each program. Here’s how we covered it almost two years ago. Then, as today’s article notes:

A year after joining, Microsoft added a restriction that prohibits a book it has digitized from being included in commercial search engines other than Microsoft’s.

3) Book digitization is NOT NEW. It’s difficult to believe that the NY Times article makes NO mention of Project Gutenberg, which has been digitizing books for over 36 years. That’s right, 36 years! BTW, Project Gutenberg Canada launched a few months ago.

4) Keep in mind that access and organization are two different things here. We also know that search habits (for many) will have people searching for phrases like “Dallas Cowboys” or “London Underground” or “New York City Fire Department.” We know that most searchers will not use quotation marks to search the words as a phrase. That means millions and millions of hits. This is an excellent example of what constitutes a good part of the invisible or deep web in 2007. True, Universal Search, Onesearch, 3D search, etc., can help but that’s another story.

5) Other issues for other ResourceShelf posts include:

A) Book digitization from companies like:
++ ebrary. (ebrary Discover offers more than 20,000 full text books for free. Pay only to copy or print a page.)
++ NetLibrary, available free from many public libraries — which just passed the 150,000 book milestone
++ Books 24×7
++ Safari Tech Books O’Reilly and Pearson

B) Quality of the scanning and how it appears on the web.

C) The issue of whether people really want to read books on a computer screen — be it a large monitor or on an iPhone or Treo?

5) Let’s review some projects, services, and where to find digitized books:
+ Online Books Page
Thousands and thousands of FREE, full text books from many sources. If you browse the “What’s New” page, you’ll see links to freely available full text books — both old and new — being digitized by organizations like:

+ American Historical Association
+ John F. Kennedy Library
+ The Online Library of Liberty
+ LibraryIreland
+ Rice University Press
+ Internet Sacred Text Archive
+ Doctortee.net
+ University of Virginia Digital Collections
+ Making of America (U of Michigan), Over 12,000 Volumes
+ Illinois Institute of Technology

And these are just the tip of the iceberg.

In other words, many organizations and LIBRARIES, are digitizing books.

Info pros should know about a variety of sources. Here are a few more:
+ International Children’s Digital Library
Both old and new books. Free Access. Fun for all!!!
+ Digital Book Index
130,000 titles listed, over 100,000 free. Also note the list of organizations providing content in the right rail.
+ World Public Library
Over 500,000 titles, searchable, available for a very small yearly fee.
+ Internet Archive–Texts
Comprises several projects and has the same leadership as the Open Content Alliance. Also, many titles are available in several formats, from simple text to HTML to PDF.
+ UK: Full text books and cool technology from the Turning the Pages service at The British Library.
+ UK: British Library books go digital
+ OpenLibrary.org
+ Shakespeare Full Text and Full Image on the Web
Some gorgeous work.

Want More? Projects from Around the Globe? Dave Mattison’s British Columbia International Digital Library is the place to begin.
Start browsing here and here. Wow!!!

Publishers Get in the Act: The National Academies Press Offers Thousands of Full Text Books at No Charge to Search/Read (Unlimited Amount) at No Charge.

See Also: Bradley on Changes at Google Book Search: Google Book Search Improved(?) (via SEL)

See Also: an article about U of Toronto Scanning: Building an Online Library, One Volume at a Time (via WSJ, free)

See Also: 2004 Video of Book Scanning Robot at University of Toronto

ResourceShelf’s Sunday Best (RSB) #4: The Online Books Page
After one visit on you”ll be hooked. Full text books from numerous sources and a constantly updated “What’s New” list and feed.

Yale University Press Adds Digital Content to OCLC NetLibrary, More than 2,000 eBook titles will be Made Available Online
More exciting news and great content for NetLibrary. However, like we said the other day, NetLibrary, with the help of info pros needs alert people know that this service exists and can be accecssed for free 24×7x365.

Notable books in the Yale University Press collection include Ali Allawi’s The Occupation of Iraq, E.H. Gombrich’s A Little History of the World, the Yale Series of Younger Poets, the Annotated Shakespeare, the Lamar Series in Western History, the Annals of Communism series, Yale University Press Health and Wellness series, upcoming Yale Drama Series titles, and upcoming Cecile and Theodore Margellos World Republic of Letters series titles.

Source: OCLC

See Also: NetLibrary reaches 150,000 - title milestone

+ NetLibrary reaches 150,000- title milestone
Congrats to the NetLibrary team in Boulder. Now, if they could get more people to know about the service we think these users would be pleasantly surprised at what they found and how NetLibrary works. In other words, we think plenty of new and excited users would flock to the service. NetLibrary features include being able to access FULL TEXT, FULL IMAGE BOOKS with no limit on how much you can view online and 24×7x365 from just about anywhere with a web connection. However, as we’ve said many times before, people (aka potential users) have NO CHANCE of using what they don’t know about period. Be it a database, a new wireless device, or a service that washes your car while you’re at work. Btw, The 150,000th title to go live with NetLibrary was ECOhouse: A Design Guide by Sue Roaf, Manuel Fuentes and Stephanie Thomas, published by Elsevier (2007).

+ The Shape of the Scientific Article in the Developing Cyberinfrastructure
by Clifford Lynch
From the intro:

For the last few centuries, the primary vehicle for communicating and documenting results in most disciplines has been the scientific journal article, which has maintained a strikingly consistent and stable form and structure over a period of more than a hundred years now; for example, despite the much-discussed shift of scientific journals to digital form, virtually any article appearing in one of these journals would be comfortably familiar (as a literary genre) to a scientist from 1900. E-science represents a significant change, or extension, to the conduct and practice of science; this article speculates about how the character of the scientific article is likely to change to support these changes in scholarly work. In addition to changes to the nature of scientific literature that facilitate the documentation and communication of e-science, it’s also important to recognize that active engagement of scientists with their literature has been, and continues to be, itself an integral and essential part of scholarly practice; in the cyberinfastructure environment, the nature of engagement with, and use of, the scientific literature is becoming more complex and diverse, and taking on novel dimensions.

Source: CTWatch Quarterly

Another UK research funding body, the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has issued a deposit mandate for all research papers resulting from AHRC fundings. Now 6 of the 7 UK Research Councils have mandates in place. (See the up-dated table) describing the positions of each Research Council.)
Source: SPARC Europe

+ To Read: International Council on Archives Strategic Vision (Draft)
http://www.ica.org/en/node/38472“>Direct to SV paper.
5 pages; PDF.

+ Bradley on Changes at Google Book Search: Google Book Search Improved(?)
Like Phil Bradley is famous for, this post offers crisp and incisive analysis and opinion. What follows some might consider a sidebar.

We would suggest knowing about and using more than one online book services. A searcher has plenty to choose from. This is no different than using more than one web search engine.

Here are just a few other favorites ResourceShelf favorites we’ve compiled.

+ Amazon’s “Search Inside the Book” (new books) and MSN’s Book Search (both old and new) are two candidates. We’ve found it’s often the case that a preview (the ability to “search inside” is available on one service but not the other. Battelle’s, The Search is one example. A || G. We also like the interesting stats Amazon often provides.

Live Book Search also will show how much (all, 10%, 20%, 40%, words around search terms) can be viewed online. Like other services, books that offer 100% of their content online (primarily titles where the copyright has expired) can often be downloaded as PDF files at no charge.

The Online Books Page is the place to begin for freely accessible full text books online. Don’t forget to review the new listings page with hundreds of books listed weekly (including Gutenberg and Google Library Program titles, RSS feed, too!)

ebrary Discover offers over 20,000 NEW full text books for free (pay only to print or copy, about $.25 cents/U.S.).

The World Public Library offers more than 500,000 full text titles.

The International Children’s Digital Library is amazing for both kids and older children.

Full text books and cool technology from the Turning the Pages service at The British Library.

A number of full text collections from The Internet Archive.

NetLibrary is a service that many libraries offer at no charge, for free, without having to visit the library. Full text, full image without a limit on how much you can read, annotate, etc. The same goes for Safari Tech Books and Books24×7. The latter two services also offer individual subscriptions.

Finally, the Digital Book Index lists over 137,000 online books with nearly 100,000 available free.

See Also: About a year ago, we compared a bunch of classic titles using both Amazon and Google focusing on titles that could be previewed online.

UPDATE: Here’s an example of a book where the full text is available from Live Book Search but not available via the Google Book Search database. Of course, plenty of examples can also illustrate the opposite of this scenario.

UPDATE: LISNEWS.com on the Release of a New German Book Service

+ Elsevier launches DoctorPortal, the independent online voice of UK doctors (via Elsevier)
Direct to DoctorPortal.

Paper: Electronic Books in the USA - their numbers and development and a comparison to Germany
by Peter Just

Abstract: This article will provide data to specify the problem of low e-book-supply. First the total number of commercially available English-speaking e-books in the US-market is stated. Then the growth of the title supply over the last twenty years is reviewed. Third the growth of the publishing-activities in the e-book-market is set in relation to the developments in the hardcover-market. Finally these numbers of the English-speaking market are compared to the numbers for the German-speaking market.

Source: Library Hi-Tech (via E-LIS)

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe: Free Searchable Version

Search and analyze The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe in English and French translation. The Raven is Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous work and one of the most famous poems of all time. The Raven is a narrative work first published in 1845. The first publication of “The Raven” on January 29, 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror made Poe widely popular in his day. The text is extremely useful in a searchable eBook.

Source: askSam

All of askSam’s free searchable ebooks and databases

From the news release:
The eBooks on ScienceDirect program will, for the first time, make virtually all of Elsevier’s Science and Technology academic publication catalogue of books fully searchable. EBooks will be linked not only with other referenced book series, handbooks and reference works, but also the world’s largest repository of full-text journal content. This development offers researchers a significantly broader perspective of their field of study, from a single industry leading interface.

ScienceDirect plans to add approximately 700 newly published titles each year. To review the list of titles available, or to inquire about signing up for eBooks on ScienceDirect, please visit www.info.sciencedirect.com/books.

+ Google Book Search Adds My Library, Popular Passages, Embedded Quotes & More (via Search Engine Land)
Some cool stuff. In addition to Barry Schwartz’s post, Gary has added some comments to this post about other full text book services both free and fee-based offering both new and out of copyright materials. He also offers a brief overview of the Shakespeare Digital Library.
Btw, Dave Mattison’s collection of Digital Libraries by topic is outstanding.
UPDATE: Another Article About E-Books from the NY Times but no mention of NetLibary, eBrary, etc.

+++ Amazon.com now offers a simple “cursor over” feature that makes finding reviews easier. This might not only be of interest to info pros but would make for a useful web feature to show at demos. Here’s an example:
1) Search, browse and find a book. Then, go to it’s Amazon.com entry page.
Example: The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman.
2) Directly below the bibliographic info look for a stars and the total number of reviews
3) Place your cursor on the stars image and a pop-up box will appear.
4) In that box look for user reviews broken down by stars (1-5) and then hyperlinked. Simply click the desired star rating and go directly to the reviews.
5) Since this specific book offers “Search Inside,” a lot of data about the book is available. From Key Phrases to a Concordance to Readability Indices to Words per Dollar.

We’ve talked about The Online Books Page compiled by John Mark Ockerbloom MANY times on ResourceShelf. It’s one amazing and essential resource.

However, in the past couple of weeks I’ve been asked the same question (or close to it) by several people. They asked about where to learn about new full text books (the free stuff) as they become available). The answer is The Online Books Page. In fact, an RSS feed is also available. When you head to this page: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/new.html

You’ll quickly see the volume of content Ockerbloom adds each day/week from different sources including Project Gutenberg, Google Library Project, and many many other sources.

It’s easy to forget that numerous organizations are digitizing content and doing it for a long time. For example, Project Gutenberg has been around for 36 years.

The RSS feed for this “What’s New” info can be accessed at:
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/newrss.xml

Another source for online books is the Digital Book Index. It contains over 137,000 titles with about 97,000 of them available for free. We were unable to find a “new book list” but after the simple and easy registration this is a “must have” resource.

Finally, what about books for kids? Well, we’ve also mentioned the International Children’s Digital Library many times on ResourceShelf. All of the content is free, available in several languages and looks good. The basic search interface is appealing, useful and dare we say, fun, for both for children and even “older kids” like the editors of ResourceShelf.

When new books are added to the database you can find them listed here.

Postscript 1: Another full text book service is ebrary. They not only license content to companies and libraries but also offer a free service, Shop.ebrary.com. Over 20,000 titles all free to browse, search, and read online. You only pay to copy or print a page (about 25 cents per page).

Postscript 2: Of course, we do our best to include several new titles each week on DocuTicker and ResourceShelf. However, the titles and URLs we list are just the tip of the iceberg. For more in-depth coverage, we suggest taking advantage of the sites listed above.

The Real Mother Goose

Search the lyrics of more than 300 Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes.

Find the words to more than 300 different rhymes from literature’s most beloved authors - Mother Goose. Search by title or any word within the text of a rhyme. online.

Source: askSam Systems

See also: All of askSam’s free searchable eBooks & Databases

Full Text e-Books: PublicLiterature.org

+ Online Books List

+ Some audiobooks are also available. You can also embed audio books on a web page.

See Also:

+ Online Books Page
What’s Been Recently Added to the Online Books Page

+ World Public Library

Portico conducts E-Book Preservation Study
From the intro:

The purpose of this study is to develop a robust solution for the long-term preservation of e-books that addresses the technological preservation requirements of the genre, offers an economic model able to support and fairly distribute the costs of preservation, and which garners the support of the scholarly publishing and academic library communities…n response to several requests from publishers and libraries, Portico is conducting a study in order to assess how to extend its archival infrastructure and service to respond to the emerging need to preserve e-books. During the study we will analyze the structure and preservation needs of e-books and determine what adjustments to Portico’s existing, operational and technological infrastructure and the economic model developed to support e-journal preservation might be required in order to respond to this new genre.

Source: Portico

See Also: Interview with Eileen Fenton, Executive Director of Portico
You’ll also find links to papers, presentations, and news from the organization.