Ray Bradbury’s Library Closes
From the New York Times, via Boing Boing:
Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries, because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.
URL shorteners working with Internet Archive for long-term preservation
301Works.org launches today:
The Internet Archive and founding companies announce today the launch of 301Works.org, a service to archive shortened Universal Resource Locators (URLs). This will enable redirect services to incorporate these shortened URLs when a member company ceases business activities.
The use of shortened URLs has grown dramatically due to the popularity of Twitter and similar micro-streaming services where posts are limited to a small number of characters. Millions of shortened URLs are generated for users every day by a wide variety of companies.
The list of participating services includes abbrr.com, Adjix.com, AppsFire.com, awe.sm, bit.ly, buk.me, Cli.gs, Delivr.com, ham.org, idek.net, Jdem.cz, Lin.cr, u.mavrev.com, trcb.us, Twurl.nl, ur1.ca, URLizer, urlShort.com, Xrl.us, youific.com, and Zip.li.
NASA Images iPhone App
From the NASA Image blog:
Check out the free NASA Images iPhone App, a window to the content available on nasaimages.org. With the app you can access the entire NASA Images library from your iPhone along with the metadata for each image, video, and animation.
The NASA Images app delivers the following features:
- Search and browse media from nasaimages.org
- View images with interactive zoom (zoom images by double taps)
- Watch NASA programs and mission footage
- Bookmark Favorites
- Send email with URLs of favorites
The NASA Images iPhone App was developed by Hajime Hirose from Tomute Software. Hirose has developed other iPhone Apps such as NASA Checker, and Whitehouse Checker. If you like the app make sure to rate it or write a review!
NASA Images was created through a partnership between NASA and the Internet Archive to bring public access to NASA’s image, video, and audio collections
read.gov launches with open-source IA BookReader
The Library of Congress has launched read.gov, and they are using the Internet Archive BookReader! The BookReader is an open-source project that you can use on your own website!
From the Open Library blog:
We were thrilled to see our BookReader on the read.gov site today. The Library is using it to showcase of some gorgeous books from their Rare Book Collection, like “A Wonder-Book for Girls & Boys,” “The Baby’s Own Aesop,” and “A Christmas Carol.”
You might also be interested to follow along with a “book in progress” called The Exquisite Corpse Adventure, “an episodic progressive story game” with more than 20 contributors.
There’s information about the BookReader software on the Open Library site if you’re code-y too. We love it when the BookReader gets used!
Internet Archive Launches BookServer Project
The Internet Archive has launched the BookServer project: an open system for finding, buying, and borrowing digital books over the Internet.
At our launch event on Monday, the Internet Archive demonstrated how the BookServer ecosystem could be used to deliver books several e-book readers, including the OLPC laptop, the Amazon Kindle, the iPhone, the Sony Reader, and the Humanware VictorReader Stream, a talking eReader for the blind and print-disabled.
The Internet Archive also announced it was making all 1.6 million public domain books on archive.org available in EPUB and Daisy talking book formats, to better support e-book devices.
To help develop BookServer, the Internet Archive partnered with OLPC, Aldiko, ThreePress, Pixel Qi, Inkmesh, FLOSS Manuals, University of Toronto Libraries, LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, Shortcovers, Feedbooks, O’Reilly Media, Adobe, Bluefire Productions, Humanware, Ingram, Lexcycle, author Katie Hafner, and many others.
We were pleased that so many partners could join us on Monday for the BookServer launch party. For those who couldn’t attend, the Follow the Reader blog has an excellent article detailing the BookServer launch.
Resource Shelf has an extensive overview of BookServer media coverage. Thanks to everyone who helped develop and launch the BookServer ecosystem! If you are an author, publisher, book seller, device maker, library, or a reader, please help us in building an open ecosystem for online books!
Liveblogging Day 2 of the “Making Books Apparent” meeting
George Oates, IA, Open Library:
OpenLibrary.org redesign going live in 1-2 months!
SJ Klein, One Laptop Per Child:
As of last week, all 400,000 school children in Uruguay have OLPC Laptops! They are carried in bags like this:
After collecting 2.5-3 years of data, Uruguay estimates TCO of an OLPC XO laptop to be $280 for four years of use. The hardware cost is about $190 of this, the rest is maintenance cost.
BookServer Use Cases:
- Collaborative writings
- InfoSlicer: OLPC wikipedia mashup activity
- Reading books, now with EPUB support, soon with direct editing
- “Get IA Books” activity was one of the first BookServer software clients!
Showing the Rural Design Collective’s prototype topic browser for books on the OLPC:
Minh Truong, Aldiko:
Beta version of Aldiko showing IA Bookserver integration!
Liza Daly, ThreePress, Ibis Reader:
Ibis Reader: “The ereader designed for readers first!”
Standards-based cloud iPhone reader with offline support, and non-drm purchasing.
Uses standards all the way: BookServer, OPDS, EPUB, and HTML5.
Adam Hyde and Douglass Bagnall, FLOSS Manuals, and Booki:
Booki is a “book wiki”: an open-source online writing and publishing engine.
Booki Developers
- We are not publishers
- As artists we have come to know and love free (LIBRE) technology and free (LIBRE) content
- We have founded, work with/in, mentored, and grown the FLOSS Manuals community for 2+ years
INCREDIBLE demo:
Booki being used to ingest EPUB from archive.org, correct OCR mistakes, and then re-upload to archive.org!
Above, using Booki to correct typos in IA’s Tom Sawyer EPUB!
Bill Janssen, PARC:
UpLib is an open-source personal digital library system:
Michael Tamblyn, Shortcovers:
“Your whole reading life, always with you.”
“How OPDS can help”, in the form of a screenplay:
OPDS needs to address Territorial Rights problems.
Cartwright Reed, VP Product Development, Ingram:
- It cost Ingram $6 to print a book and $0.50 to deliver. This cost is $0 and $0.01 for an ebook.
- Transition from physical to digital is happening faster than most people in the industry were expecting.
- DRM is dud. It just takes one person to copy and share a file.
- Music lead the way in transition from analog to digital, and is leading the way again in the transition from DRM to DRM-Free
- Production, distribution, and discovery are nearly free.
- Creation, curation, and community are not free.
- The digital space is the exciting one.
- As long as content is static, it doesn’t accrete value.
- Physical book sales 1.5 years ago (estimate)
Current distribution chain:
Author -> Publisher -> Distributer -> Reseller -> Consumer
BookServer allows you to go straight from Author->Consumer, or any other iteration in the above distribution chain.
Liveblogging the “Making Books Apparent” meeting
Brewster Kahle, IA:
- 1.6 Million public domain books on archive.org
- 20 Scanning centers in 5 countries
- 150 contributing libraries
- 20th century books not well-represented online
- IA is starting to receive and own physical books
- Today, IA will launch the BookServer project, and demostrate loans of 20th century works
- BookServer will integrate publishers, libraries, booksellers, and readers in in an open, robust system.
Peter Brantley, IA:
- We need a web of books that will permit people to find, buy, download, and read books on any device.
- Will be based on Lexcycle’s Stanza iPhone app
- The data interchange will be based on Atom
- BookServer will work with any e-book format. EPUB will be the common format.
Terminology:
- “Bookserver” is the architechture.
- “OPDS” is the technical specification.
- “Catalogs” are made using OPDS.
- “Atom” is the XML scheme for OPDS.
Ecosystem:
- Any web site can run a bookstore.
- Libraries, bookstores, and publishers can join in
- Search engines can server as book gateways
- Aggregators can harvest multiple catalogs
- New uses will be emerging
New NLS Digital Talking Book Player for the Print Disabled:
Keith Fahlgren, O’Reilly Media:
” I really like to create the future I want to inherit.”
How:
- Distributors
- Aggregators
- Readers (both people and devices)
Marc Prud’hommeaux, Lexcycle:
Showing demo of how 1.5M IA EPUBs in Stanza, through BookServer ecosystem:
Hadrien Gardeur, Feedbooks:
Subscriptions in OPDS:
A Hulu for Magazines and Newspapers through OPDS? Sure, we can do it!
Michael Ang, IA:
Open-source tools for creating OPDS catalogs at http://github.com/internetarchive
Books from the China-US Million Book Digital Library Project
Books from the China-US Million Book Digital Library Project (CADAL) are now being hosted at the Internet Archive:
Creating a universal free to read, open-source digital library containing over one million scanned books, with optical character recognition when possible to support full text searching, is the goal of the million book digital library project. Such a resource will lead to the democratization of knowledge by making available on the web, a unique library resource to scholars, students, and citizens around the world.
Film Noir collection featured on Boing Boing
Earlier this week I remarked on Twitter how much I enjoyed Stanley Kubrik’s 1956 movie about a race track heist, The Killing. Jack Shafer replied, “Okay, now you’re ready for Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer). It will change your life.”
I checked Netflix and learned that Detour isn’t available there. But I remembered that archive.org has a large collection of public domain movies, so I looked there and lo and behold, they had it.
Law & Order and the Wayback Machine — fun, and crime-solving!
LAW & ORDER SVU “Sugar” Season 11 Episode 2
Re-airing tonight 10pm Eastern!
A recent *Law and Order* featured the potential crime-solving abilities of a certain special archive.org feature we all know & love — the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine saved the day!
You can watch it replay again tonight, or get your-spoiler-alert-on with
http://www.daemonstv.com/2009/09/28/law-order-svu-sugar-season-11-episode-2/
for writeup and clips
or the full recap at :
http://allthingslawandorder.blogspot.com/
“Back at the SVU media area, a tech woman tells Benson and Stabler she could not find Emily on Tasty Sugar, and the detectives think since she was on their earlier that the web site took it down as if they were trying to hide something. The tech woman says it is not gone forever, and asks if they ever heard of the wayback machine and Benson says only the one that Sherman and Mr. Peabody used. The woman says this is no cartoon. It takes digit snapshots of the web to compile archives. She manages to find the site, and Benson says they can get Emily’s measurements from the morgue, she wants to know whom Emily was dating and decides to call ADA Paxton. But Stabler notices there is a note on the web page that says “Shy? I also double date with my BFF Pamela.” He tells the tech woman to click on Pamela’s name. Pamela’s video says she is looking for rich experiences. Stabler thinks Pamela can give them answers faster than they can get a warrant.”
The Law and Order SVU episode is playing again tonite on NBC, 10:00pm eastern – check your local listings, and set your dvr!
