Publishers need to do their homework to really understand the impact of piracy, because it may not be all bad, writes Dan Misener.

A book is a self-contained story, argument, or body of knowledge that takes more than an hour to read. A book is complete in the sense that it contains its own beginning, middle, and end. In the past

Good illustration!

Patron-driven acquisition vs. packages in ebook acquisitions. Packages win, so far, and usage is high.

John Scalzi put together a bingo card of hackneyed arguments for electronic publishing. I figure it's only right to return the favor...  Two squares are the same on both cards. I thought it was worth stressing that both sides use them.  Lest anybody think I'm descending into satire with the Shakespeare square, it was in the New York Times. I admit that it's otherwise so obviously contrary to fact that I'd feel silly including it at all.  (For those who don't know me, I am a professional copyeditor, and I love my career. Almost all my work comes from traditional publishers. This is why I care about well-meaning but misguided arguments that damage my own industry.)

Let us speak plainly.   Ebooks are the proverbial iceberg on the horizon of libraries. If the library profession doesn't act appropriately, ...

Because someone had to do it, and why not me. For those of you unfamiliar with the “Bingo Card” concept, basically, if you see one or more of your favorite arguments for how ZOMG EPUBBI…

As scholarly monographs shift from primarily print to electronic, the NC State University Libraries seeks to engage both the publishing and library communities in shaping the future of the scholarly e

Yesterday I received an email from OverDrive with an attachment titled “OverDrive Partner Library Update from Steve Potash”, I glanced at it and filed it away in my to-read pile for a l…

Technology is changing how we get books and how books find us. Lamentations for the bookstore are the background music of our time, but the picture is more complex.

Website of librarian, writer, speaker, consultant and LIS educator, Meredith Gorran Farkas. Includes the popular Information Wants to be Free blog.

The advent of eBooks has pushed the publishing industry to adopt software and UX design practices.

Can we create a National Digital Library? That is, a comprehensive library of digitized books that will be easily accessible to the general public. Simple as it sounds, the question is extraordinarily complex. It involves issues that concern the nature of the library to be built, the technological difficulties of designing it, the legal obstacles to getting it off the ground, the financial costs of constructing and maintaining it, and the political problems of mobilizing support for it.  Despite the complexities, the fundamental idea of a National Digital Library (or NDL) is, at its core, straightforward. The NDL would make the cultural patrimony of this country freely available to all of its citizens. It would be the digital equivalent of the Library of Congress, but instead of being confined to Capitol Hill, it would exist everywhere, bringing millions of books and other digitized material within clicking distance of public libraries, high schools, junior colleges, universities, retirement communities, and any person with access to the Internet.

What does this mean for libraries?