Right-Pricing Digital Content
I love living and working in rural Western New York, but the schools and libraries in my geographic area are facing daunting challenges in the shift to digital content. E-content is often priced on a...
View ArticleKindle Fire Adds Accessibility Features
Accessibility is one of those issues that often needs a headline to grab attention. Too often, the headlines we see are about public institutions that didn’t heed warnings and are facing litigation...
View ArticleSimon & Schuster Ebooks Can’t Resist Persistent Iowans
I had the honor of delivering the opening general session address at the Iowa Library Association conference in October, and I was certainly impressed by the persistent power of Iowa librarians (as...
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Patron Privacy in a Digital World
As content and patron interactions go online, there are a whole slew of new regulations to consider. There are the usual Section 508 compliance requirements to make resources accessible to people with...
View ArticleBeyond Ebooks: A Question of DVD Streaming
By Christopher Harris As a former AV geek during my high school and college years, I can assure you that schlepping movies (or worse, TVs) across a campus gets old pretty fast. In analog days, the...
View ArticlePew’s Latest Library Report Looks at Services
The latest report on public library services from the Pew Internet and American Life Project takes a hard look at the future of library services. Most importantly, the survey explores roles for the...
View ArticleThe Disappearing Library Discount
What would it mean for libraries if one of the ideals that we commonly hold to be fundamental to our existence suddenly ceased to be true?read more
View ArticleOne Ebook to Prove Them All
By Eric Hellman There’s a lot of data suggesting that exposure to books in libraries increases sales for those books.read more
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Ouya: A Game-Changing Game System
Book publishing has the big six; console gaming has the big three. As the only major survivors from the more robust console ecosystem of the ’90s, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft have dominated the...
View ArticleIndependent Bookstores vs. Amazon and the Big Six
In a lawsuit filed in New York last week, three independent bookstores are seeking relief from what they refer to as monopolistic practices by Amazon and the Big Six publishers regarding ebooks. At...
View ArticlePiggyback Technology
Confusing as it may sound, this is what is playing out in the larger publishing world right now. Publishers are upset because Amazon is becoming a successful publisher. So Hachette, Penguin, and Simon...
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A Simple Digital License
One of the key characteristics of digital content is that it is licensed under contract law as opposed to being purchased with first sale rights from copyright law. While being the cause of great pain...
View ArticleMarch DCL Ebook Price Report: The Rise of the Independents?
For the March 2013 edition of the ebook price report, Douglas County (Colo.) Libraries went back to look at the New York Times bestseller list.read more
View ArticleRealizing the Scope of Digital Change
Sometimes you just have to stop and marvel at the incredible pace of technological change. It helps if you are sitting down, because when the scope of the change finally hits you, things might go all...
View ArticleDoes Piracy Impact Sales? Not How You Might Think!
Those dirty thieves pirating digital music are killing the whole music industry—or at least that is the reality that the music industry would have you believe. But can the music industry actually back...
View ArticleApril Ebook Report from DCL
For April, the Douglas County (Colo.) Libraries ebook price report turns back to the top 25 bestselling ebooks from Digital Book World. Overall, libraries fare better in this comparison, with 11 of the...
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James LaRue speaks at “Imagine. Create. Innovate.” conference
By Christopher Harris I’m writing this from the Monroe County (N.Y.) Library System’s Central Library of Rochester and Monroe County, which is hosting “Imagine. Create. Innovate.” The technology...
View ArticleSeattle’s Jim Loter Reveals His Library’s ReadersFirst Strategy
On Day Two of the “Imagine. Create. Innovate.” conference, Jim Loter, director of information technology at Seattle Public Library, discussed his library’s digital content strategy and the ReadersFirst...
View ArticleApple Didn’t Censor Comic After All
The kerfuffle spread quite fast across tech and library blogs; Apple was censoring a comic because of some minor sexual content.read more
View ArticleSimon & Schuster Launches Library Ebook Pilot
The last holdout from the major trade publishers, Simon & Schuster, this morning announced the start of an ebook pilot (PDF file) with New York City public libraries.read more
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