Will audiobooks show paper books "The Way?" Today's LJ features coverage of BEA and the Audio Publishers Association Conference on DRM and audiobooks. Apparently industry studies have confirmed everyone's suspicion that DRM is a "speedbump," and that many people will go ahead and purchase (or lease) an audiobook without illegally ripping it.
That's not exactly what UIP's experience in making books available as webpages showed. Instead, making the digital copies available on our website seemed to erase demand of the paper copies. Of course, people were just linking and reading those books, not making their own copies. That might be the point on which the GSU e-reserve result hinges (discussed in a post earlier today). If libraries are making copies to post on their in-house webpages, it is most likely a clear violation of copyright. If they are creating pages of links to materials that they own in digital format, I can't see how that is a violation. We'll see.
Showing posts with label open access. Show all posts
Showing posts with label open access. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Monday, June 9, 2008
Guttenberg-e went Open Access
I don't remember seeing this announcement back in February.
The titles are pretty standard low-print-run monographs. It sounds as though they're going ahead with new titles, even though the original Gutenberg-e funding has dropped off, and the press release states that the open-access model is not sustainable without outside funding.
It always surprises me when other professionals are surprised when professional publishing (not these bloggy things) costs real money. Computers, buildings, personnel (no matter how little we work for) are not free. That said, good on them for freeing the books for other scholars and readers to use.
The titles are pretty standard low-print-run monographs. It sounds as though they're going ahead with new titles, even though the original Gutenberg-e funding has dropped off, and the press release states that the open-access model is not sustainable without outside funding.
It always surprises me when other professionals are surprised when professional publishing (not these bloggy things) costs real money. Computers, buildings, personnel (no matter how little we work for) are not free. That said, good on them for freeing the books for other scholars and readers to use.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
LJ Interview with Harvard's OA Architect
LJ's Academic Newswire today features an interview with Stuart Shieber, In New Job, Harvard Professor Downplays the Role of “Revolutionary”.
Highlights:
He is fostering a relationship with Harvard University Press in an effort to support the mandate. HUP is in the process of starting up an "open-access, faculty-edited journal,The Journal of Legal Analysis.
Ambiguous quote: "Authors don't get underwriting help from the library when they publish in OA journals, while they do from publishing in subscription-based journals," he explains. To put OA and subscription journals on a "level playing field," he suggests, "you'd want to underwrite OA journals just as you do subscription journals." Wouldn't a library (or journal otherwise underwritten by readers) be a subscription journal? I realize advertising, author fees, and donations are also forms of underwriting, but I found the quote confusing.
Highlights:
He is fostering a relationship with Harvard University Press in an effort to support the mandate. HUP is in the process of starting up an "open-access, faculty-edited journal,The Journal of Legal Analysis.
Ambiguous quote: "Authors don't get underwriting help from the library when they publish in OA journals, while they do from publishing in subscription-based journals," he explains. To put OA and subscription journals on a "level playing field," he suggests, "you'd want to underwrite OA journals just as you do subscription journals." Wouldn't a library (or journal otherwise underwritten by readers) be a subscription journal? I realize advertising, author fees, and donations are also forms of underwriting, but I found the quote confusing.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
LJ @ IDPF
Library Journal has a short item today on the International Digital Publishing Forum meeting last week.
I blogged about the announcement last month about Digital Book 2008 (the name of the conference). It turns out that the .epub is XML based, to support page-readers, but will reformat depending upon the reader. (Obviously we'll have to give up page numbers as a reference point.)
Today Wendy Davis blogged on MediaPost's OnlineExaminer that Napster is opening a DRM-free music store.
I still hold with my earlier comments that most publishers need to jump in to the eBook with little or no DRM. I think us small fishes could end up shelling out money for scalable walls that should go towards creating better, viable online content.
I blogged about the announcement last month about Digital Book 2008 (the name of the conference). It turns out that the .epub is XML based, to support page-readers, but will reformat depending upon the reader. (Obviously we'll have to give up page numbers as a reference point.)
Today Wendy Davis blogged on MediaPost's OnlineExaminer that Napster is opening a DRM-free music store.
I still hold with my earlier comments that most publishers need to jump in to the eBook with little or no DRM. I think us small fishes could end up shelling out money for scalable walls that should go towards creating better, viable online content.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Who makes a book? (Idealist version)
Yesterday I was a bit harsh in my evaluation of a couple of new models for writing, authoring, and publishing books. Today several other new ideas caught my attention that don't push my "bullshit" button.
Foreword This Week reported that The Wall Street Journal reported that HarperCollins has announced an as-yet-unnamed imprint that will not accept returns from buyers, nor will they pay authors advances. Okay, so this is just a bit late for rumor that smacks of a late April Fool's Day joke. Maybe the new imprint will be graphic novels, and will be eased by the existing no-returns, no-exchanges comic book sales model.
Forward also announced "Digital Book 2008." Wow, standards for digital books. One of the sponsors listed is Adobe, so maybe they can actually make this work. DRM in music is failing, and books cannot be performed live (most, anyway). What is the future of a true digital book? A DRM-based Kindle, or the ubiquitous PDF? Given the disposable nature of mass market paperbacks, an advertising-based model could work (chapter headers, rather than embedded, I hope). Long disquisitions won't be such an easy sell. But those might be worth paper, outside class use.
Boing Boing reports on We Tell Stories: web-native storytelling from Penguin. These look pretty good, and, if not exactly innovative, it is certainly innovative for a mainstream "classics" imprint to be making these available. I read the first "chapter" of "The 21 Steps" and will probably read the next. Slick.
And, Todd Bryant at Academic Commons announced Sophie 1.0, a "multimedia authoring tool released under a creative commons license." The comments indicate that the tool is definately a 1.0 version. Looks like something I might check out at 1.5 or 2.0. I hope it will last that long.
Goodnight
Foreword This Week reported that The Wall Street Journal reported that HarperCollins has announced an as-yet-unnamed imprint that will not accept returns from buyers, nor will they pay authors advances. Okay, so this is just a bit late for rumor that smacks of a late April Fool's Day joke. Maybe the new imprint will be graphic novels, and will be eased by the existing no-returns, no-exchanges comic book sales model.
Forward also announced "Digital Book 2008." Wow, standards for digital books. One of the sponsors listed is Adobe, so maybe they can actually make this work. DRM in music is failing, and books cannot be performed live (most, anyway). What is the future of a true digital book? A DRM-based Kindle, or the ubiquitous PDF? Given the disposable nature of mass market paperbacks, an advertising-based model could work (chapter headers, rather than embedded, I hope). Long disquisitions won't be such an easy sell. But those might be worth paper, outside class use.
Boing Boing reports on We Tell Stories: web-native storytelling from Penguin. These look pretty good, and, if not exactly innovative, it is certainly innovative for a mainstream "classics" imprint to be making these available. I read the first "chapter" of "The 21 Steps" and will probably read the next. Slick.
And, Todd Bryant at Academic Commons announced Sophie 1.0, a "multimedia authoring tool released under a creative commons license." The comments indicate that the tool is definately a 1.0 version. Looks like something I might check out at 1.5 or 2.0. I hope it will last that long.
Goodnight
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Must remember . . .
It's impossible to read everything I feel that I need to, let alone everything I want to. Add blogging, or writing, or otherwise keeping track of the reading and my thoughts about what I've read and . . . I really admire people who can do it regularly.
More things I haven't kept up with, but think are important:
--Charles W. Bailey has updated his Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, as posted to COLLDV-L (a collection development listserv) . A well-developed list of more things that I should read! Actually, I've probably read about a third of it. Okay, maybe a quarter.
--With possibly the worst "well, duh," headline ever, the New York Times declared, Tech's Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True." Since the article appeared in the same week that I finally broke down and replaced my perfectly good seven-year-old Compaq with a new computer, it managed to make me feel less guilty about holding on to the old machine for so long (because it still works!), and about finally abandoning it due to the uncomfortable work-arounds necessary to actually use it. It's one thing to keep a TRS-80 as a perfectly good word processor--as a customer actually did in the mid-90s when I was working at Radio Shack. It's another to try to use an orphan program on a networked computer. Good-bye, Netscape (which I deleted a few weeks ago) .
--And this Inside Higher Ed piece is likely to be revisited at a later date: Abandoning Print, Not Peer Review. This is an article about Indiana Library's new online-only journal, Museum Anthropology Review. With a super-organized editor at the helm, it sounds like it's doing well. What the article doesn't mention is the structure and the organization, not just copyeditors and graphic designers, that a University Press or other publisher brings to the table. There is an entire department at UIP that has several people who spend a good portion of every day tracking articles, making sure that changes are made, drafts are turned in, and that everything is organized by arbitrary deadlines that ensure that Indiana University and other libraries, organizations, and individuals receive their online or print scholarship in a timely and coherent manner. Like most people in publishing I love academia, and have great respect for academics, but I have no illusions about the quality or timeliness of the writing that will frequently be the result when publishers are taken out of the equation. More power to Jason Baird Jackson, the intrepid editor.
More things I haven't kept up with, but think are important:
--Charles W. Bailey has updated his Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, as posted to COLLDV-L (a collection development listserv) . A well-developed list of more things that I should read! Actually, I've probably read about a third of it. Okay, maybe a quarter.
--With possibly the worst "well, duh," headline ever, the New York Times declared, Tech's Late Adopters Prefer the Tried and True." Since the article appeared in the same week that I finally broke down and replaced my perfectly good seven-year-old Compaq with a new computer, it managed to make me feel less guilty about holding on to the old machine for so long (because it still works!), and about finally abandoning it due to the uncomfortable work-arounds necessary to actually use it. It's one thing to keep a TRS-80 as a perfectly good word processor--as a customer actually did in the mid-90s when I was working at Radio Shack. It's another to try to use an orphan program on a networked computer. Good-bye, Netscape (which I deleted a few weeks ago) .
--And this Inside Higher Ed piece is likely to be revisited at a later date: Abandoning Print, Not Peer Review. This is an article about Indiana Library's new online-only journal, Museum Anthropology Review. With a super-organized editor at the helm, it sounds like it's doing well. What the article doesn't mention is the structure and the organization, not just copyeditors and graphic designers, that a University Press or other publisher brings to the table. There is an entire department at UIP that has several people who spend a good portion of every day tracking articles, making sure that changes are made, drafts are turned in, and that everything is organized by arbitrary deadlines that ensure that Indiana University and other libraries, organizations, and individuals receive their online or print scholarship in a timely and coherent manner. Like most people in publishing I love academia, and have great respect for academics, but I have no illusions about the quality or timeliness of the writing that will frequently be the result when publishers are taken out of the equation. More power to Jason Baird Jackson, the intrepid editor.
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
"The Sky Will Not Fall"
Library Journal's LJ Academic Newswire today reports on the passing of the NIH mandate bill. Most of the comments are summed up, oddly enough, in the UK blog from the Research Information Network.
I don't think the big STM publisher's predictions of doom and gloom will come to pass. At worst, they will need to adjust their business practices to account for the drop in use of articles after the twelve-month window. As they charge for database search use as well, costs are unlikely to decrease, though small libraries, societies and companies will probably continue to cut access to that 12-month window as they are priced out of the market. However, as this is a continuing trend, it will be difficult to blame it solely on the NIH mandate--though I'm sure corporate shills will try. This new mandate is a needed balance to the ridiculous rate for-profit publishers' journal costs have been increasing over the past twenty years, a move in favor of the public and government greatly needed to counter the tyranny of these corporations. The quote in LJ Academic Newswire from SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph sums it up best, "The sky will not fall."
I don't think the big STM publisher's predictions of doom and gloom will come to pass. At worst, they will need to adjust their business practices to account for the drop in use of articles after the twelve-month window. As they charge for database search use as well, costs are unlikely to decrease, though small libraries, societies and companies will probably continue to cut access to that 12-month window as they are priced out of the market. However, as this is a continuing trend, it will be difficult to blame it solely on the NIH mandate--though I'm sure corporate shills will try. This new mandate is a needed balance to the ridiculous rate for-profit publishers' journal costs have been increasing over the past twenty years, a move in favor of the public and government greatly needed to counter the tyranny of these corporations. The quote in LJ Academic Newswire from SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph sums it up best, "The sky will not fall."
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