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The Complete Archive of National Geographic Magazine on Six DVD’s

Sunday, November 1st, 2009

Every now and then a fee-based product comes around that we believe deserves your attention. The following is one of them.

Chris Pendleton on the Bing Blog reminds us that a major digitization project, every issue ever published of National Geographic from 1887-2008, is now available (it was officially released yesterday according to this media announcement) on 6 DVD’s or an external hard drive. That’s right, all of the writing, the legendary imagery, the supplement , even the advertisements are included. For many topics, Nat Geo magazine is a resource that documents people, places, and events, on a global scale. In other words, for all of the reasons just mentioned and many others, makes the magazine an important part of the historical record.

By the way, the reason it was mentioned on the Bing Blog is because Bing is providing some the technology that powers the digitized version this recently released collection.

From the Blog Post

Nat Geo uses Bing Maps in their Geobrowse functionality which allows you to browse a map anywhere in the world to find locations where relevant articles are referenced using geographic metadata.

Yes, we still love paper and those massive collections of past issues of the print version of National Geographic Magazine many people own (where are yours)? They’re also important.

That said, we also hear and read that for today’s student, it’s all about digital access. Yes, of course, that’s rather sad. However, a digitized archive of this size and scope can truly demonstrate the power of digital info technology for people of all ages and turn 120 years of content into important research and learning resources.

Another digitized archive of the magazine was released seven years abut this 120 year collection is the most complete version ever published with more content, more search options, saving/sharing tools, interactive maps, and more. One thing we noticed right of the bat is the that the new version is available for both PC and Mac. The “112 year version” was PC only.

Here are a few fast facts about the new collection. They were gleaned from Nat Geo site (including the video overview) and news release.

+ All Issues from October, 1888-December, 2008 are included

+ Six DVD’s include more than 200,000 pages; 300 wall map supplements, more than 8,400 articles; more than 250,000 photographs

+ All images scanned in high-resolution

+ Flip one page at a time, zoom, print

+ Geobrowse

A new Geobrowse function powered by Bing Maps that allows users with Internet access to search nearly 5,000 locations on a globe that are featured in the magazine’s archive of articles and maps.

+ Search by keyword, date, contributor, and topic; refine by date or content type

+ Browse by month or year

+ Create personalized reading lists; share these lists with other users in the Nat Geo community

+ Pre-loaded “favorite article lists” compiled by experts

National Geographic is selling the DVD’s for $69.95/US and the hard drive version for $199.95/US.

The lowest price we found as of Sunday November 1st was $42.78 from an Amazon.com Merchant. The DVD’s directly from Amazon.com are $44.99/US.

We’ve ordered a copy of the DVD’s and after spending some time with them we will report back.

Posted in Digitization Projects, Geographic, Information Industry, Print Publications | No Comments »

E-readers: To Bo Open or Not to Be Open — That is the Question

Friday, October 30th, 2009

From an Article by Matt Hamblen:

LibreDigital Inc. is previewing its AllAccess content delivery platform to allow publishers, authors and book resellers to offer book readers the option of downloading and reading e-books they purchase on virtually any device, such as a desktop computer, Apple iPhone, Amazon Kindle or Sony Reader.

AllAccess will be available sometime in the first half of 2010, a spokesman for LibreDigital told Computerworld today.

[Snip]

Customers will pay for the books, textbooks and periodicals that they receive via AllAccess at prices set by publishers and resellers. LibreDigital will take a percentage of that cost, an amount still not determined, the spokesman said.

AllAccess is also supporting a wide variety of open e-book publishing standards, including ePub. In addition, LibreDigital is offering the ability to enhance and optimize book art and text for all the devices it will run upon, the LibreDigital spokesman said.

Anyone with Web access can get a preview of an actual book with the AllAccess tool through the Texas Book Festival Web site.

Source: Computerworld

See Also: Learn More about Libre Digital via Their Web Site

See Also: Keep Current With LibreDigital via their Twitter and/or RSS Feeds

See Also: Teleread, the expert site in eBooks, has more in this post.
Make sure to note the demo link.

Posted in E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »

Book War Continues: It’s Time to Ration Titles

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Remember the book war that broke out two weeks ago between Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target and continues today? All three stores continue to sell the same 10 books (preorders) from major authors or personalities. Each book is selling for $9 (Amazon), $8.99 (Target) and $8.98 (Wal-Mart) and only available (for Wal-Mart and Target) online.

Now things are changing, the books are being rationed.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The limits will stop other booksellers from scooping up cheap copies in large quantities and reselling them.

[Snip]

The retailers are losing money on each copy sold because publishers charge them about 50% of a book’s hardcover price. The prices for the 10 books involved in the promotion are also lower than the wholesale price independent booksellers pay for the merchandise.

Arsen Kashkashian, head buyer at the Boulder Book Store, in Boulder, Colo., said he had intended to buy as many as 70 copies of Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Lacuna” from Walmart.com, Target.com or Amazon, because their prices are “more than $5 cheaper than what we can get it for from the publisher, Harper.

[Snip]

On Walmart.com, customers can preorder two copies of Mr. Koontz’s “Breathless,” while they can buy three copies on Amazon, and five on Target.com. A spokesman for Walmart.com said the retailer has “always limited the number of preorder book titles to two units per title.” An Amazon spokesman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for Target.com said the retailer “always reserves the right to limit the number of items that are purchased.”

Source: Wall Street Journal

Access the Complete Wall Street Journal Article

See Also: American Booksellers Association Sends Letter to Feds Re: Book Price Wars from Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target

Posted in Information Industry, Print Publications | No Comments »

New ELI 7 Things… Brief Explores Google Wave

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Access the Document (2 pages; PDF)

From the Summary:

Google Wave is a web-based application that represents a rethinking of electronic communication. Users create online spaces called “waves,” which include multiple discrete messages and components that constitute a running, conversational document. Users access waves through the web, resulting in a model of communication in which rather than sending separate copies of multiple messages to different people, the content resides in a single space. Wave offers a compelling platform for personal learning environments because it provides a single location for collecting information from diverse sources while accommodating a variety of formats, and it makes interactive coursework a possibility for nontechnical students. Wave challenges us to reevaluate how communication is done, stored, and shared between two or more people.

Source: EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative

A Brief Comment From Gary:
I’ve been using Google Wave for about a month and I’m still unsure if this is going to be the next big thing. It’s a potentially powerful tool and might be extremely useful where and when instant collaboration needs to take place between people at different locations. Yes, many of these things can be done with any IM client and that’s how I think of Google Wave as of today (remember this is not even a beta release, it’s a preview) as IM on steroids. If developers are able to integrate compelling and useful applications into the Google Wave service, then it might be a home run. The other challenge Google could face if they expect the masses to use Wave is the learning curve. For many potential users, it will not be as easy to ue as is, let’s say, Google search is. Just type and press search. There are a lot of bells and whistles and without using some of its many features these users might stay with tools they are familiar with like IM, SMS, e-mail, and/or one of the many collaboration tools the’re already familiar with. Of course, for many companies who pay for this type of service, the price point, free, might be a reason to retrain staff on how to best use the power of Google Wave.

Posted in Information Industry, Software and Web-Based Applications, Technology and Internet | No Comments »

OCLC Makes OAIster Records Available Through WorldCat.org; Separate OAIster Only Interface Arriving in January

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Today’s news comes from a partnership between the University of Michigan (home of OAIster) and OCLC that we posted about in late January, 2009.

From the Announcement:

The University of Michigan and OCLC today announced that they have successfully transitioned the OAIster database to OCLC to ensure continued public access to open-archive collections, and to expand the visibility of these collections to millions of information seekers through OCLC services.

OAIster records are now fully accessible through WorldCat.org, and will be included in WorldCat.org search results along with records from thousands of libraries worldwide that add their holdings to WorldCat. [Our emphasis] OCLC plans to release a freely accessible, discrete view of the OAIster records in January 2010 through a URL specific to OAIster. OAIster records will also continue to be available on the OCLC FirstSearch service to Base Package subscribers, providing another valuable access point for this rich database and a complement to other FirstSearch databases. OCLC will continue to develop and enhance access to open archive content.

OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources hosted at the University of Michigan since 2002. Launched with grant support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, OAIster was developed to test the feasibility of building a portal to open archive collections using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). [Our emphasis] OAIster has grown to become one of the world’s largest aggregations of records pointing to open archive collections with more than 23 million records contributed by over 1,100 organizations worldwide.

OCLC plans to release a freely accessible, discrete view of the OAIster database in 2010 that will be updated regularly. This will allow WorldCat.org searchers to view only items harvested through OAIster.

Right now, OAIster.org redirects to http://www.oclc.org/oaister/ a site that’s home to a number of facts about OAIster; an alphabetical list of metadata contributors (over 1,100); a brief history of the OAIster project; how to become a contributor to the database; how to access OAIster;; containing index labels and expert search examples. and the OAIster FAQ.

Source: OCLC

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry | No Comments »

Open Book Alliance Co-Founder Peter Brantley Visits Spain to Talk About the Alliance and Google Book Search

Friday, October 30th, 2009

Brantley is attending meetings in Spain and discussing the OBA and Google Book Search. He’s been interviewed by two newsapers, El Pais and Publico.es.

Here are links to both interviews in Spanish along with mechanically generated translations from two services.

1) “Google no ve libros, se limita a ver datos” (via El Pais)

+ Translation by Google: “Google does not see books, is limited to viewing data” (via El Pais)

+ Translation by Systran: “Google does not see books, is limited to see data” (via El Pais)

2) El bibliotecario que se enfrentó a Google (via Público.es)

+ Translation by Systran: “The Librarian Who Faced Google” (via Público.es)

+ Translation by Google: “The librarian who challenged Google” (via Público.es)

Posted in Digitization Projects, Information Industry, Intellectual Property | No Comments »

Google’s Enhanced Music Service; Real Estate Listings on Google Maps

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

We said yesterday in our post about Google Navigation Mobile, that it seems lately a day doesn’t go by with something new or enhanced from Google. Today is no different. Matt McGee from Search Engine Land tells us about a new layer in Google Maps containing real estate listings and the emusic service that launched last night.

First, real estate listings are now more visible in Google Maps with the new real estate “layer”. To access the listings, click the “More” button at the top of a map (near the satellite imagery or terrain maps buttons) and select real estate. Immediately, the listings become visible on the map. Click any red “pin” and you’ll see the address, get driving directions, etc. Click the “more info” link to see all the information about the property. Here’s a view of properties for the Zip Code 90210. Now you can zoom in and out and move the around the maps like you’ve always done.

Also, note the listings located on the left side of the page. Here, you can find basic info about each property and find a link to click and get all the available info. You can also refine your results here by:

+ Price Range
+ Listing Type
+ Number of Bedrooms
+ Number of Bathrooms
+ Area Range (in Square Feet)

It’s possible to only search to real estate listings by selecting “Real Estate” in the drop down menu located next to the search box at the top of the page.

Next, Matt introduces the new, improved, and enhanced Google Music Search. Google has offered a music “one box” located at the top of a results page for since December, 2005. Here’s an article that Gary wrote about music search at that time.

This is a major enhancement to the music search.

Matt writes:


According to today’s announcement [this story and news release are from late Wednesday afternoon], searches for the name of an artist, album, or song will show the new OneBox in Google’s main search results.* If you search for an artist or album name, the OneBox will include a set of four songs that are chosen algorithmically by the partner music site*, not by Google. Each song will be linked to an audio clip that will play in a Flash-based pop-up window provided by the partner site. In some cases, the partner may provide one full play of the song before defaulting to a 30-second preview.

Matt points out that the rumors about Google selling music are not true (at least for now).

Google’s RJ Pittman told us today that, while some of their music partners have a commerce element, the focus of Google’s new music search is information, not selling digital songs. In fact, there’s no commercial arrangement at all, we’re told, between Google and the music partner sites included in this launch.

Finally, the article correctly notes that Yahoo Music has been available for years and they
continue to offer music info and the ability to preview music/watch videos, link to the official site, get lyrics, photos, videos, etc. from a box at the top of web pages when a group or solo artist triggers the database.

He also points out (this is cool) that in some cases, if you enter song lyrics into the search box, youll get back the song info as a “one box” result. Here’s an example.

Speaking of song lyrics, a few weeks ago we posted about a searchable song lyric service, LyricWiki, being acquired by Wikia, an online community of wikis and content hubs that was started by Wikipedia co-founder, Jimmy Wales.

* Partners include: MySpace, Pandora, Lala, imeem, and Rhapsody.

Source: Search Engine Land

Posted in Information Industry, Multimedia Search, Search Tools, Web Search | No Comments »

Google Releasing Free and Robust Mobile Navigation Tool

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

Lately, it seems like each day brings another new product announcement from Mountain View. Today, is no different.

Google is getting into the mobile navigation/turn-by-turn directions business and making the product available for free.

On launch day (November 6th), users will be able to access the service from only one phone, a new phone, the “DROID” from Motorola, and from one carrier, Verizon.

Obviously, more Android-based phones running Android 2.0 from Verizon as well as other carriers will soon begin to hit the streets along with users who can* upgrade their current Android phone.

* “Google is not sure whether Google Maps Navigation will work on older Android phones that will get upgraded to Android 2.0. That depends on the carrier and phone maker, [vice president of engineering at Google for mobile and developers. Vic] Gundotra said.” (CNET)
Greg Sterling from SEL guesses most pre 2.0 phones will be upgradable.

Google is also interested in the iPhone as well as other smartphone platforms but made no commitment as to when the navigation program might be available.

Using the official blog announcement as well as articles from Greg Sterling at Search Engine Land (SEL) and Tom Krazit at CNET, let’s compile some fast facts about the product and its many features:

+ Google Maps for Mobile Has Been Very Successful
Over 50 million global users (SEL).

+ Most Requested Feature Was Was Turn-by-Turn Navigation (SEL)

+ Products Official Name is Google Maps Navigation (Beta)

+ Seven Key Features
1) Automatically updates with new and updated maps. Google now provides their own data for maps in the US.

2) Search by entering text, even just a small amount, and then focus your results.

3) Search by voice (e.g. drive to San Francisco International Airport).

4) Current traffic conditions.

5) Search along a route (e.g. on your current route find the nearest drug store). You can also search by business name.

6) Satellite View provides a 3-D view of the route.

7) Street View. See what the street looks like (landmarks, etc.) before you get there.

This page provides a video overview of Google Maps Navigation as well as separate videos demonstrating each feature.

Much More After a Click
(more…)

Posted in Geographic, Information Industry | No Comments »

Univerisity of Illinois Press Signs Agreement With JSTOR

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

From the Announcement:

The University of Illinois Press, the not-for-profit publishing division of the University of Illinois, and JSTOR, the preservation archive and research platform that is part of the not-for-profit ITHAKA, announced an agreement today to make leading journals from the Press available worldwide as part of the Current Scholarship Program.

The Current Scholarship Program is a new collaboration initiated by University of California Press and JSTOR and first announced on August 13, 2009.

[Snip]

Current and historical content from at least ten University of Illinois Press-published journals will be available on a re-designed JSTOR in 2011. This will offer faculty and students around the world access to current issues alongside back issues and a growing set of primary source materials from libraries easily and seamlessly. JSTOR’s nearly 6,000 library participants worldwide will be able to license the Press’s current journals, either individually or as part of current issue collections, together with JSTOR back issue collections in a single transaction. University of Illinois Press-published journals available as part of the Program will include American Journal of Psychology, American Music, Journal of Aesthetic Education, and Journal of American Ethnic History among others. The journals will also be preserved in Portico, the digital preservation service that is also part of ITHAKA.

Source: ITHAKA

Posted in Digital Repositories, Information Industry, Scholarly Publishing | No Comments »

An In-Depth Look at the Proposed SLA Name Change

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Cindy Shamel Writes:

Last week, Special Libraries Association (SLA) leadership announced that members will soon vote on a new name. After 100 years as SLA, research now shows that this name does not convey the value that librarians and information professionals bring to their organizations. The proposed name, Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals, has unanimous support of the board. Members, however, give it mixed reviews.

[Snip]

Speaking to SLA’s Texas Chapter, board member Tom Rink stated that the goal of a name change is to “get a name that resonates with everybody, but especially with those who make hiring and firing decisions.” Criteria used to narrow the list included eliminating names used by or too close to other organizations, those containing unpopular or confusing terms, input from attorney due diligence, direct member input and postconference discussions, and a preference for short names with strong acronyms.

Names tested were Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals (ASKPro), The Knowledge Society, and Knowledge and Information International Association, with results pointing to Association for Strategic Knowledge Professionals. The SLA board announced the proposed name to the members on Oct. 14 following a unanimous vote on Oct. 8. SLA registered the domain name ASKPro.net that same day.

Much More Including Reaction to the ASKPro Name in the Complete Article

Source: Info Today NewsBreaks

Posted in Information Industry, Libraries and Librarianship | No Comments »

Here they Come Again? Microsoft Research Launches Academic Search Database (Beta)

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Well, well, well. It’s time to say hello to a new database (it’s also a “test bed) from a company that once offered something similar.

Here’s a new “Academic Search” database (beta) from Microsoft (technically, it’s from Microsoft Research) that, according to its homepage, allows you to search over 3.3 million academic papers in the computer sciences.

Background

Microsoft’s previous effort in this area, Windows Live Academic was launched in April, 2006 and was gone by May, 2008.

Here’s a copy of the Live Academic Home Page via The Wayback Machine to get you started if you want to start comparing with the defunct Windows Live Academic service.

With the caveat that it’s the first day and there is no documentation available. I think MS Research is off to a solid start especially when you compare it with the Live Academic product. That said, they still have a lot of work to do. Of course, all of this is moot if this is simply a technology test.

What the Help Page Tells Us

+ “A free academic search engine developed by Microsoft Research Asia, and it is also a test-bed for our object-level vertical search research.”
+ An brief explanation of how results are ranked
+ Academic papers about the technology used to build Academic Search (beta)
+ Search and result page help

The Home Page and Top-Ranked Papers

The Academic Search home page offers direct links to top-ranked papers (by two citation measures, in-domain citations and total citations) in more than 20 computer science domains. Here’s a link to the top-ranked papers (in this database) about Computer Education topics.

Btw, CiteSeer from Penn St. University offered subject-specific search engine for computer science and related disciplines for over 10 years. Now a new version of the service is in beta, it’s named CiteSeerX. Btw, we noticed many links to CiteSeer in the Academic Search.

Searching

The tabbed home page allows you to search for papers, by author, by conferences, and by journals.

Now, let’s look at each tab with some sample searches:

The papers tab is the default and searches words in the title and in the abstract. Here’s a search for the term “ethernet”. Search terms are highlighted in the snippets, lists of related authors, conferences, and journals can be found in the right rail. There are two boxes near the top of the page that allow you to refine your results by year.

An actual result includes the title, authors name(s), publication year, journal or source name, and the number of citations the paper has (in this database). It’s going to take someone like Dr. Peter Jacso to do some research and determine how accurate the citation counts are. He recently did this research with Google Scholar.

A result entry has a few clickable items:

+ Title
+ Author(s) Name
+ Citation Count

Clicking the author link runs an “author search” and takes you to a page for that specific author (an object detail page). There, you’ll find a listing all of that authors articles in the database, citation counts, a link to the authors home page, etc.

One of the most interesting parts of the database is the data visualization tool located “author pages”. Look for the “Visual Explorer” link on the top right of the page.

From the help page:

Microsoft Academic Search automatically summarizes the co-author information for each author. Through visual explorer, user can browse the top co-authors of authors by clicking one author in the displayed graph.

Here’s an example of Visual Explorer for Vint Cerf (now at Google, the author page says something else)

Selecting the title or citation count links moves you to a page with a complete abstract, links to download the full text of the paper, In some cases, they are to a fee-based digital library while at other times they are free. Also, each paper has a hypertext list of a papers references that are listed in the database.

Question. If MS expands this project will they consider a link resolving service for libraries?

Other Searches

An author search allows you to either enter an authors name (just a last name will also work) and get a list of results. Note: We were also able to enter a few search terms get results. In other words, it searches more than the authors name.

A conference search will limit your results to only conference publications and proceedings. Clicking the conference title will give you a hypertext list of all of the papers in that specific volume along with a total citation count (all articles). Finally, you can limit your results by year, citation count, and rank. Wow, look at this. If you cursor over the word “rank” it actually provides a brief explanation. (-:

Last but not least, a search by journal (we need a journal list) allows you to enter search terms and then see all of the articles in the database from a specific journal. For example, here’s a search for GIS. A results list shows the journal title first. Click and you’ll see a list with the titles of all papers in the database from that specific publication independent of date. Again, you can sort by year, citations and rank.

The papers themselves appear to be coming from a wide variety of fee and free services. This article lists several locations to find the article for free.

There is also an advanced search interface that cannot be directly linked to. It allows you to simultaneously search several fields:

+ Keywords
+ Paper Title
+ Author
+ Conference
+ Journal
+ Year

Final Thoughts

As we said before, this is the first day the database is live. We have a lot of questions that need answering. One that we have mentioned to this point is MS Academic Search just a research project or something that the company plans on expanding over time by adding more disciplines. Again, we think this database has a much better feel than what MS used to offer. We would love to know precisely what the short and long term future holds for Academic Search

Stay Tuned!

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry, Scholarly Publishing, Search News | No Comments »

Are You Ready to Go to Googland?

Monday, October 26th, 2009

A day doesn’t go by that Google is announcing, updating, or just doing something they want to tell the world about. While sites like Search Engine Land, Search Engine Roundtable, and Search Engine Journal do a great job of not only presenting the news but also offering some perspective, they always don’t get to everything from the folks in Mountain View, CA.

Of course, the ResourceShelf team also tries our best to make sure you know about what Google is up to. But, like the others, we don’t get to everything.

That’s why Googland is so useful. Google usually makes their “official announcement” on one of many blogs. Googland aggregates content from many (not all) Google blogs into a single location (with an RSS feed, of course). After a few days of visiting the Googland you’ll be simply amazed at the number of posts that come from the ‘Plex.”

Access Googland

Posted in Information Industry, Web Search | No Comments »

Electronic Frontier Foundation and Other Groups Send Letter to Judge in Google Book Search Case

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

From a Blog Post:

EFF today led a coalition of authors, publishers, companies and nonprofit organizations in sending a letter to the judge overseeing the Google Book Search settlement urging the Court to ensure that those concerned about the settlement receive adequate notice of, and have sufficient time to study and comment on, any amended settlement agreement that Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers present.

Those following the twists and turns of the Google Book Search settlement will recall that the original Fairness Hearing scheduled for October 7, 2009, was put off because of what the Court called: “significant issues, as demonstrated not only by the number of objections, but also by the fact that the objectors include countries, states, non-profit organizations, and prominent authors and law professors.” The Court received over 400 submissions about the settlement, including the EFF-led coalition of authors and publishers concerned about reader privacy, as well as significant concerns raised by the Department of Justice.

Read the Complete Letter Sent to the Judge Denny Chin (4 pages; PDF)

The letter was signed by a large group of people and organizations including:

+ The Open Book Alliance*
+ Amazon.com
+ The Picture
+ Archive Council Of America
+ National Writers Union
+ Electronic Frontier Foundation
+ Pamela Samuelson (UC Berkeley Law Professor)
+ Microsoft
+ Washington Legal Foundation
+ The Internet Archive
+ Consumer Watchdog
+ Lyrasisk, Nylink and Bibliographical Center for Research Rocky Mountain, Inc.
+ Public Knowledge
+ Urban Libraries Council

+ The Special Libraries Association and the The New York Library Association are two of the members of the Open Book Alliance.

Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation

Posted in Digitization Projects, Information Industry, Intellectual Property | No Comments »

American Booksellers Association Sends Letter to Feds Re: Book Price Wars from Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

We’ve posted a couple of times already about Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, and most recently Target selling ten pre-order titles from major authors for as little as $8.98. Our first post compares the low price that the three stores are stores offering with Barnes & Noble and Powell’s.

Now, the American Booksellers Association has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice asking them to “investigate” the matter.

From the Letter:

As reported in the consumer and trade press this past week, Amazon.com, WalMart.com, and Target.com have engaged in a price war in the pre-sale of new hardcover bestsellers, including books from John Grisham, Stephen King, Barbara Kingsolver, Sarah Palin, and James Patterson. These books typically retail for between $25 and $35. As of writing of this letter, all three competitors are selling these and other titles for between $8.98 and $9.00.

Publishers sell these books to retailers at 45% – 50% off the suggested list price. For example, a $35 book, such as Mr. King’s Under the Dome, costs a retailer $17.50 or more. News reports suggest that publishers are not offering special terms to these big box retailers, and that the retailers are, in fact, taking orders for these books at prices far below cost. (In the case of Mr. King’s book, these retailers are losing as much as $8.50 on each unit sold.) We believe that Amazon.com, Wal-Mart, and Target are using these predatory pricing practices to attempt to win control of the market for hardcover bestsellers.

[Snip]

For our members — locally owned, independent bookstores — the effect will be devastating. There is simply no way for ABA members to compete. The net result will be the closing of many independent bookstores, and a concentration of power in the book industry in very few hands.

Source: American Booksellers Association

See Also: A List of the Ten Books (via Wal-Mart)

See Also: See Also: ABA Asks for Government Investigation of Price Wars (via Publishers Weekly)

See Also: Book Association Challenges Retailers’ Price Plan (via NY Times)

From the Article:

David Young, chief executive of Hachette Book Group — publisher of James Patterson, whose “I, Alex Cross” is included in the discounted promotions — said he wished that the United States would emulate France’s prohibition against booksellers’ pricing books below cost. “I do think this massive devaluation of the industry’s crown jewels could very quickly be extremely harmful,” Mr. Young said. “And I would not be alone in thinking that.”

Posted in Information Industry | No Comments »

WorldCat.org Expands as Elsevier Metadata is Added to Database

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

From an Email Newsletter:

Elsevier metadata for SCOPUS and ScienceDirect collections from 2006 to the present have now been indexed in WorldCat.org search results. This article-level metadata joins similar content such as the GPO Monthly Catalog, ArticleFirst, Medline, ERIC and the British Library Inside Serials. The ScienceDirect content corresponds to 1,800 journals, 150 book series and more than 1.3 million records.

Source: OCLC

See Also: A June, 2006 Review of Scopus by Peter Jacso

Posted in Databases, Directories, and Guides, Information Industry, Science | No Comments »

Getting to Know the HathiTrust Digital Library

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

Barbara Quint Writes:

With all the controversy still swirling around Google Books and its post-settlement offerings, an alternative route to the millions of digitized books and journals supplied by leading Google Book Search library partners has arrived. The HathiTrust (www.hathitrust.org) is a collaboration of 25 research libraries already participating in Google Book Search to produce a shared digital repository for preservation and access to a curated collection. By mid-November, the HathiTrust Digital Library will have a full-featured, full-text search service for 4.3-5 million items. The searches will retrieve bibliographic citations and page references, including those for in-copyright books. Content will extend beyond the digitized copies of books returned to early library partners by Google. HathiTrust is pushing to acquire other digitized special collections from its members, as well as making arrangements for opening access to university press books.

[Snip]

The new launch will open indexing to nearly 1.5 billion pages from well more than 4.3 million volumes with full-text searching by keyword or phrase. (Just between us, if you simply cannot wait until mid-November, go to

http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/ls.

[John] Wilkin, [associate university librarian at the University of Michigan and executive director of the HathiTrust], tipped me off that, [our emphasis] although this “experimental search” site claims to search only 500,000 documents, it actually includes the full 4.3-5 million volumes. Feedback options appear at the top and bottom of each search results page.) The system already had the equivalent of library cataloging searching, though they expect to upgrade even that kind of searching under a cooperative program with OCLC.

Much More in the Complete Article

Source: InfoToday NewsBreaks

Posted in Digital Preservation, Digitization Projects, E-books, Information Industry | No Comments »

China: Google Responds to Complaints Regarding Copyright Issues

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

It was just a few days ago when we posted that the China Written Works Copyright Society (CWWCS) was not happy with Google over copyright issues stemming from Google Book Search.

Today, in another Wall Street Journal blog post, we learn that Google has responded to CWWCS.

From the Post:

Here is the latest from Google:

“Today we have more than 50 Chinese publishers participating in Google Book Search, who together have authorized more than 30,000 books to be found through Google web search–and made available through a short preview. We also have some Chinese books that have been scanned by our Book Search library partners; in those cases, we only make the books available as a short snippet of text–as we do with web search–unless the rightsholder authorizes a greater use. We also honor rightsholders’ preferences if they ask not to be included.”

“Like all rightsholders, Chinese authors and publishers will be able to tell Google whether or not to display their books, and will be paid if the books are included in sales or subscriptions authorized under the settlement.”

Source: WSJ

See Also: Here’s How The Story Was Reported in the China Daily
Hat Tip: James Grimmelmann, The Laboratorium

Posted in Digitization Projects, Information Industry, Intellectual Property | No Comments »

Google Book Search: Video from D for Digitize Conference is Now Available Online

Friday, October 23rd, 2009

A few weeks ago the D for Digitize Conference took place. It was sponsored by the New York Law School and organized by Professor James Grimmelmann. The focus of the conference was Google Book Search (GBS). The list of speakers/panelists reads like a Who’s Who of people representing all sides of the many issues being debated at the conference and elsewhere.

Now, you can watch each session online (free). Even two pre-conference tutorials are included. A list of sessions and speakers along with links to the videos can be accessed here.

Finally, if you want to read about what was discussed during a session before viewing the video or just don’t have time to watch, no worries.
Peter Hirtle from the Law Library Blog provide excellent text summaries of each session.

Law Library Blog is a co-production between Peter and Mary Minow.

See Also: Law Library Blog also has a Twitter feed at:
http://twitter.com/librarylaw

Posted in Digitization Projects, Information Industry, Intellectual Property | No Comments »

First Bing and Now Google Makes Deal to Provide Twitter Results

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Just hours after Bing made an announcement that they’ll now offer Twitter results at: http://www.bing.com/twitter, Google has just announced that will also offer Twitter results.

From a Google Blog Post by Marissa Mayer:

At Google, our goal is to create the most comprehensive, relevant and fast search in the world. In the past few years, an entirely new type of data has emerged — real-time updates like those on Twitter have appeared not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and [our emphasis] we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months.

Btw, at the same time Bing announced their Twitter results engine, they also said that they have made a deal with Facebook to also include their results. That stream of content will be available at a later date.

Matt McGee is blogging Marissa Mayer’s panel at Web 2.0 (with several other big names). You can find the live-blogging here.

Posted in Information Industry, Social Media, Web Search | No Comments »

Bing Announces Does Deal to Amass and Search Twitter Data; Facebook Data Too!

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

UPDATE (6:30pm EDST): Google Will Also Offer Twitter Results, More Here.

UPDATE 1 from Gary) The new interface is now online at:

http://www.bing.com/twitter

+ Note the tag-cloud and the list of “hot topics” on the home page. Clink an item and you’ll see:

++ Most Recent Tweets about X

++Top Links Shared in Posts about X

+ Search results automatically refresh unless you hit the pause button (note other services do the same type of thing)

+ Clicking the RT button will take you to your Twitter page ready (with the info already in the box) to retweet. If you don’t have an account it will take you to a page to register (if you want to).

+ Some searches will trigger other results from the Bing engine. For example, note this result for #Chicago and how it shows links to other Bing content on the right side of the page.

+ When you see a shortened url from bit.ly for example, look to the right shortened and in parenthesis, you’ll see the domain of the url that’s being shortened. (Thanks Danny!)

UPDATE 2) In addition to the Search Engine Land post below, Danny Sullivan, will be updating with new data as it becomes available here.
It’s loaded with information and screenshots.

UPDATE 3) More in a Bing Blog Post

UPDATE 4) Matt McGee from Search Engine Land live-blogged Microsoft’s Qi Lu’s (Head of Microsoft Search) interview/presentation at the Web 2.0 Conference.

Here is Some of What We Learned:

+ Bing is using “Best Match” technology to dedupe results and then focus in on those results
+ Spam filtering is being used
+ What else effects Twitter results at Bing?
+

Quality – look at who’s tweeting and assign soicla relevance score popularity – look at the caption – length of comment, links, etc., affect quality and relevance usefulness – number of retweets affects results.

As noted above and elsewhere you might not see every “tweet” when using Bing.

Source: Search Engine Land

Posted in Information Industry, Social Media, Web Search | No Comments »

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