Here are a few stats included in the post:

+ The New York Public library currently offers over 17,000 eBook titles, just a fraction of their 800,000 circulating print titles. Comparing these numbers, it’s obvious that eBook acquisitions still represent a small percentage of their budget.

+ eBook circulation is expanding at an amazing rate. eBook checkouts have increased to more than one million in 2009, up from 600,000 in 2007, according to OverDrive.

There is also discussion of issues confronting libraries and eBook usage. Two issues in particular:

1) Trying to keep up with new readers [This Might Help]

2) Publishers

Access the Complete Project Gutenberg News Article

Source: Project Gutenberg News

See Also: Facts and Figures: A Comprehensive Matrix of eBook Reader Info

See Also: October Rankings Published: The Most Popular Downloaded eBooks and Audiobooks from Libraries Using OverDrive

See Also: eBooks and eAudiobooks Becoming More Popular With the Public (New York Times, October 14, 2009)

Source: Project Gutenberg News

Here’s an interesting passage when Kobeskzo asks Hart about how Project Gutenberg has evolved over the years (PG began in 1971). Hart says:

Believe it or not people were still saying eBooks were never going to make it just a few years ago. Look for a quote in the Wall St. Journal: “Ebooks are never going to make it.” Before that the NY Times: look for: “twitchy” screen. However now that it’s obvious they are moving eBooks on their own, but I can’t tell how serious they are. They may just be following the rule of simple reporting: “Follow The Money.” If eBooks fall flat will they all just move on and pretend there was never any interest?

The first goal of PG was just to prove eBooks feasible. My own estimations were that it would take about 10,000, and that seems to have proved correct as Google called me in to advise them ASAP after we hit 10,000, and we went to do just that on December 14, 2003: and they announced they had invented eBooks and eLibraries December 14, 2004. However, they did the opposite, or rather exact opposite of what I said they should do and look what happened. Most of the big legal fray is because they were more money oriented, and as such may have intentionally played the copyright cards that got them in the big legal hassles. If they had started out by emphasizing the public domain it probably would have worked out a lot better for them in the press as the good will they would have built up would have gone a long way.

Personally, I am OK with nearly any eBook format that is compact and search quote friendly.

Access the Complete Interview

From the Glossary:

The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) created the Talking Glossary of Genetic Terms to help everyone understand the terms and concepts used in genetic research. In addition to definitions, specialists in the field of genetics share their descriptions of terms, and many terms include images, animation and links to related terms.

Linked information explains how to cite a term from the Glossary in a reference paper. Another link allows you to suggest a term currently not in the glossary that you feel would be a valuable addition. And there is a link to email any of the 200+ terms to a friend.

Source: National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI)

So, make sure to take a look at the MobileRead Wiki E-Book Reader Matrix. It’s loaded with facts (e.g. the formats a reader can handle) and figures (e.g. battery life) about A LOT of eBook readers.

Source: MobileRead Wiki (A Part of the MobileRead Web Site)

See Also: An Excellent Resource for the Latest eBook News and Info is TeleRead.org.

See Also: New: MetaEbooks.com
Metasearch multiple ebook providers including free service like Project Gutenberg. A new service from AddALL Book Search.

Note to MetaEbooks: Why not add the 1.7 million titles from the Internet Archive ? The same goes for titles available from The World Public Library,, International Children’s Digital Library, and the more than 20,000 free titles (recently published titles) from ebrary Discover.

See Also: AddALL Book Search
Compare availability and pricing by searching 40 databases simultaneously.

Here’s an iPhone/iTouch app that some people have been asking for.

It’s a “very simple” front-end for Google Wave from company named Waveboard. It’s not an official Google product.

The price? 99 cents. So, if you don’t like the app and/or don’t see a need for it (or Google Wave in general), you’re not out a great deal of $$$.

According to the iPhone/iTouch home page for Waveboard is allows you to:

+ Shake your phone with the app running will provide access to reload or logout features.
+ Have website links shown in an integrated browser
+ Allows pages can be “handed off” to Safari
+ Have the option to use landscape view

Perhaps the most interesting and useful feature in this release is push notifications. This page and the embedded video shows that it’s a fast and simple operation to get everything running.

Here’s an overview:

From the outset, Google Wave “push” is only available if you use the Mac version of Waveboard (free)

You’ll need

1) An app named Prowl which can do a bunch of things beyond Waveboard installed on both your iPhone.The Prowl home page shows many positive comments from well-known iPhone app reviewers. It costs $2.99 and even if you give up on Waveboard, as we said a moment ago, Prowl has several other uses.

2) You’ll also need either Growl (for Macs) or Growl for Windows. Both applications are free.

So, if you just want to test Google Wave on iPhone/iTouch you can spend $.99 and be up and running in no time. Of course, you’ll also need one a Google Wave login.

If you want to enable Google Wave push notifications (only available at this time for Mac), it’s another $2.99 and a few more minutes of your time. It’s really not difficult.

This is very cool! Push notifications (using Prowl and Growl) are also available for Google Voice (1), Google Voice (2), and Twitter.

Today, something new. Now, it’s time for the NASA Images app with content coming from the nasaimages which is an effort to bring all NASA imagery and video together in a single location. nasaimages.org is a “co-production” between NASA and The Internet Archive.

NASA Images is a free app from Tomute Software

Key features:

+ Search and view media from nasaimages.org

+ View images with an interactive zoom

+ Watch NASA programs and mission video

+ Bookmark URL’s

+ Send e-mail with URL’s of favorites.

Direct Link to NASA Images (via iTunes)

Source: nasaimages.org

NARA has completed two of five planned increments of ERA, but has experienced schedule delays and cost overruns, and several functions planned for the system’s initial release were deferred. Although NARA initially planned for the system to be capable of ingesting federal and presidential records in September 2007, the two system increments to support those records did not achieve initial operating capability until June 2008 and December 2008, respectively. In addition, NARA reportedly spent about $80 million on the base increment, compared to its planned cost of about $60 million. Finally, a number of functions originally planned for the base increment were deferred to later increments, including the ability to delete records and to ingest redacted records. In fiscal year 2010, NARA plans to complete the third increment, which is to include new systems for Congressional records and public access, and begin work on the fourth.

Source: Government Accountability Office (David A. Powner, director, information technology management issues, before the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform)

Today, the United States Senate voted to confirm David Ferriero as the 10th Archivist of the United States. Mr. Ferriero was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries and is a leader in the field of library science. Mr. Ferriero, who was nominated by President Obama on July 28, 2009, will succeed Professor Allen Weinstein who resigned as Archivist in December 2008 for health reasons. Deputy Archivist Adrienne Thomas is serving as the Acting Archivist until Mr. Ferriero assumes his duties.

As the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL), Mr. Ferriero was part of the leadership team responsible for integrating the four research libraries and 87 branch libraries into one seamless service for users, creating the largest public library system in the United States and one of the largest research libraries in the world. Mr. Ferriero was in charge of collection strategy; conservation; digital experience; reference and research services; and education, programming, and exhibitions.

The announcement goes on to provide additional information about Mr. Ferriero’s as well as background about NARA.

Source: NARA
Hat Tip: Debra Bade

The improvement won’t be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results.

Trending topics on Twitter can be found on the Twitter home page or, if you’re logged in, you can find them in the right column below the search box.

Remember, today’s blog post is specifically about Twitter’s own search engine.

Source: Twitter Blog
Hat Tip: Search Engine Land

Don’t Forget

Many other Twitter search tools are available. Four examples are Collecta, OneRiot,tweetzi, and the new Twitter search tool from Bing.

Web content changes all the time. If we don’t save that content before it disappears, a major part of our cultural history will be lost.

The Library of Congress is working to provide permanent access to web content of historical importance. It selects websites for collection, requests permissions from the website owners, addresses the technology of collecting websites and preserves the websites and makes them available.

This video examines those four challenges.

Access the Video (embedded here)

A text transcript is also available (PDF)

Source: National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program

There are six lists available. The primary list is Agenda Setters. Other lists can be accessed via the down menu at the top of each list.

+ Top Agenda Setters (The Primary List) (Sir Tim Berners-Lee #1)

+ Top Business Leaders (Steve Jobs #1)

+ Top Entrepreneurs (Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams #1)

+ Top Politicos (Richard Thomas #1)

+ Top Techies (Werner Vogels #1)

+ Top Visionaries (Sir Tim Berners-Lee #1)

Each entry also contains a profile.

Lists from previous years can be found on the about half way down on the right side under the header, “Agenda Setters Past.”

Source: Silicon.com

The interview runs three pages. Here are a few points that we found to be most interesting. However, the entire interview is a “must read.”

+ “One of the things that’s important to know about Wikipedia is that the entries that are edited by hundreds of people are really anomalies.”–Jimmy Wales

+ This small group mentality can be a blessing when editing articles but it is also one of the site’s biggest weaknesses: Wikipedia’s pool of contributors can tend towards the homogenous – or “a certain type of person”, in Wales’ words.

+ “Right now a lot of the Wikipedia editing is done by people who are very technologically savvy,” he says. “What we see is 20s and 30s computer geeks, mostly male – tragically 85 per cent male.

+ “We know there are geeks who aren’t computer geeks,” he adds. “We know there are people who are really knowledgeable about poetry, who might not really feel comfortable editing a template or figuring out our table syntax… but who have a tonne of knowledge that they would be happy to share with people, and they would love to meet other people from their community who are interested in discussing and putting up some knowledge and we sometimes aren’t addressing their needs very well so that’s one of the things we’re focused on.”

+ To this end, there will be a small grant of almost $900,000 from the US-based Stanton Foundation to improve Wikipedia’s writing and editing processes for first time users to help boost usability and accessibility.

Access the Complete Interview (via Silicon.com)

Source: Silicon.com

See Also: Rankings: Top 10 Countries by Engagement (Average Minutes Per Visitor Spent on Wikimedia Foundation Sites)

See Also: Complete List of Wikimedia Foundation Sites

See Also: Jimmy Wales Interviewed by Yale Daily News (October 9, 2009)

Poetry of September 11 is a guide to print and online poetry about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The guide is divided into the following sections:

+ Print Publications

+ Online Resources
+++ Selected Individual Poems
+++ Collections of Poetry

+ Finding Additional Poems Through Your Library

See Also: A Complete List of Web Guides

See Also: Library of Congress Bibliographies, Research Guides and Finding Aids

Source: Virtual Services, Digital Reference Section @ Library of Congress

The primary attraction for the new Wall Street Journal Professional Edition [an online resource] lies in its incorporation of Factiva content. The service will integrate content from 17,000 Factiva sources with WSJ.com content to create news flows covering key industries, companies, etc. Users will also be able to search a 1-year archive of Factiva and a 2-year archive of WSJ.com content. The price will run $49 a month or about $600 a year; that [our emphasis] will include access to full-text articles for no additional transactional pricing, unlike the $2.95 per article paid under most other Factiva subscriptions. The product has already launched with enterprise customers and will launch for consumers in January 2010.

Much More in the Complete Article including a Screenshot of the WSJ Professional Edition

Source: Info Today NewsBreaks

The Modern Language Association (MLA) has signed an agreement with Serials Solutions, a business unit of ProQuest, to include [its] MLA International Bibliography in the Summon web-scale discovery service. The agreement enables the Bibliography to be discoverable through the Summon service…

The MLA International Bibliography provides a subject index to print and electronic books, articles and web sites published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. Coverage includes literature from all over the world–Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America. Folklore is represented by folk literature, music, art, rituals, and belief systems. Linguistics and language materials range from history and theory of linguistics, comparative linguistics, semantics, stylistics, and syntax to translation. Other topics include literary theory and criticism, dramatic arts (film, radio, television, theater), history of printing and publishing, rhetoric and composition, and teaching. Compiled by the staff of the MLA Office of Bibliographic Information Services with the cooperation of more than 100 contributing bibliographers in the United States and abroad, it presently includes over 2.2 million records with 72,000 books and articles added annually.

MLA is part of a burgeoning movement of information providers who are choosing to make their content more discoverable to researchers, students and faculty via this groundbreaking service. Each new participant adds to the service’s ability to fully represent the library collection.

The Summon service has already been tested for its content scope and comprehensiveness by libraries around the world. For example, at Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, the first commercial adopter of the Summon™ service, Ron Berry, the library’s Director of Technology and Information Resources looked at the library’s top 100 downloaded titles from EBSCO’s Academic Search Premier and compared them against the Summon™ list of content. The results: 99% coverage. He then compared the top 50 JSTOR titles and top 50 titles from its OCLC databases. “In both cases all of the titles were indexed in Summon. This was compelling evidence to the power of a unified index and the ease of which our users could gain access to core academic titles,” says Mr. Berry. “I’m absolutely confident that we are providing access to the breadth of our collection. All it takes is five minutes of searching to see how many of our licensed resources are being utilized in the Summon result sets.”

The Summon™ Service launched worldwide beta testing in January with key content providers ProQuest and Gale, plus key contributors such as Springer, Taylor& Francis, and SAGE. Since then, the program has continued to accelerate with major publishing additions such as Ingram Digital, LexisNexis®, Publishing Technology – provider of the scholarly research platform IngentaConnect™ – ThomsonReuters ISI Web of Science®, ABC-CLIO, IEEE, Emerald, Scitation publishers, the Royal Society, scores of scholarly publishers and university presses, and more. The service is now available commercially and has been adopted by dozens of universities on three continents.

The Summon™ service is built with all-new technology aimed at addressing a fundamental barrier between libraries and users: the lack of a simple, obvious starting point for library research. This web-scale discovery service overcomes that obstacle, by allowing users to enter a search term in a library-branded search box, triggering an instant single search against its massive content store and the library’s local catalog. It then rapidly delivers relevancy-ranked results in one integrated list. The Summon™ service provides simplicity and portability (with a new mobile app) for users and exposes the breadth of the library’s content, allowing more resources to be discovered – a boon for libraries, who want to get more from collection investments, and publishers, who want to drive greater usage.

Source: ProQuest

From the Web Site:

Open Images is an open media platform that offers online access to a selection of audiovisual archive material to stimulate creative reuse.

As part of Images for the Future, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland are developing Open Images. [Our emphasis] The aim of this project is to offer online access to a selection of archive material to stimulate creative reuse. Reuse includes remixing of archive footage in new videos. Open Images also supports interlinking with other data sources (like Wikipedia), allowing the easy creation of mashups. Access to the content will be based on the Creative Commons model, which proposes a middle way to rights management, rather than the extremes of the pure public domain or the reservation of all rights. The ‘open’ nature of the project is underscored by adapting open formats and using open source software for its infrastructure. Software resulting from Open Images will also be released under an open source license.

The Media Page

At the present time, 371 films are available. Look for images and audio to be added going forward. The database offers numerous ways to find what you’re looking for.

For example you can search by:
+ Keyword
+ User
+ Source
+ Length
+ Language
+ License.

You can refine results by the same criteria.

An API is also available (Documentation is in Dutch).

Source: Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and Knowledgeland
Hat Tip: AMIA News Briefs

Access to this database and its data is free of chage and contains data grouped into three categories:

Labour market outcomes

+ Unemployment rates, employment to population ratio and labour force participation rates
+ Unemployment, employment, labour force and population of working age (15-64)
+ Unemployment duration+
+ Discouraged workers

Jobs quality

+ Job duration
+ Incidence of temporary employment
+ Working time
+ Incidence of part-time employment
+ Involuntary part-time workers
+ Economic short-time workers
+ Gross earnings of full-time employees by age group
+ Distribution of gross earnings of full-time employees

Labour market policies and institutions

+ Expenditures on and participants to labour market programmes
+ Strictness of employment protection
+ Statutory minimum wages in 21 OECD countries
+ Union members and employees

Each link will take you to definition of the statistic and then direct links to access the data.

For Example:

1) Select Union members and employees

2) Read the definition

Union members and employees are expressed in units. Trade union density is defined as the percentage of employees who are members of a trade-union.

3) Select data on the number of trade union members and employees and/or Trade union density in OECD countries, 1960-2007. (a spreadsheet)

4) The number of trade union or members or employers data is provided by country, membership/employees and for the years, 1999-2007.

Most other the other data is provided in similar formats. Several lists can be limited by sex, age, and employment status

Direct links to each statistic on this OECD page.

Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
Hat Tip: Stuart Basefsky

Here’s the Blurb:

The American public has invested billions of dollars in the atomic energy and subsequent related programs. This investment has mostly been in the form of the printed page. OSTIs historical preservation is described.

Direct to “Printed Archive” Video (via YouTube)

Direct to OSTI YouTube Channel

Direct to OSTI Home Page

While print preservation is essential, OSTI is home to many free online databases including:

+ Science Accelerator
+ Science.gov (Content from Many Government Databases, Search Tecnology from OSTI)
+ WorldWideScience (Global in Scope)
+ Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information (Includes over 210K Full Text Documents)
+ DOE Data Explorer
+ Energy Citations Database
+ E-print Network
+ Several Others Linked on the OSTI Home Page

Source: OSTI

Access the Complete Document

Here is just a small portion of what you’ll find:

+ 23.2 million
The number of military veterans in the United States in 2008. Source: Table 508, Upcoming Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2010

+ 9.2 million
The number of veterans 65 and older in 2008. At the other end of the age spectrum, 1.9 million were younger than 35

+ 5
Number of states with 1 million or more veterans in 2008. These states were California (2.1 million), Florida (1.7 million), Texas (1.7 million), New York (1 million) and Pennsylvania (1 million).

+ 10.4 million
Number of veterans 18 to 64 in the labor force in 2008.

+ 15.8 million
Number of veterans who voted in the 2008 presidential election. Seventy-one percent of veterans cast a ballot, compared with 63 percent of nonveterans.

+ 2.9 million
Number of veterans who received compensation for service-connected disabilities as of 2008. Their compensation totaled $36.2 billion.

Access the Complete Document

Source: U.S. Census

All 22 Color Guides can be Accessed Here as PDF Files

The Subjects

+ Advertising Industry Guide [pdf 144KB]

+ Alcoholic Drinks Industry Guide [pdf 95KB]

+ Book Industry Guide [pdf 74KB]

+ Childrenswear Industry Guide [pdf 218KB]

+ Confectionery Industry Guide [pdf 165KB]

+ Construction Industry Guide [pdf 161KB]

+ Fashion Industry Guide [99.4KB]

+ Fast Food & Snacks Industry Guide [pdf 251KB]

+ Frozen, Chilled & Ready Made Foods Industry Guide [pdf 171KB]

+ Furniture Industry Guide [pdf 211KB]

+ Giftware Industry Guide [pdf 76KB]

+ Green and Ethical Business Opportunities [pdf 97KB]

+ Insurance Industry Guide [pdf 245KB]

+ Jewellery Industry Guide [pdf 109KB]

+ Organic Food Industry Guide [pdf 125KB]

+ Packaging Industry Guide [94.88KB]

+ Pharmacy Industry Guide [pdf 119KB]

+ Sports Industry Guide [pdf 203KB]

+ Toiletries and Cosmetics Industry Guide [98.16KB]

+ Toy and Game Industry Guide [pdf 133KB]

+ Travel & Tourism Industry Guide [pdf 83KB]

+ TV and Film Industry Guide [123.76KB]

Access Business and IP Centre Research Guides

Source: Business and IP Centre, British Library