Tag: e-books

Weekend Digital Catalog Suggested Reading, Viewing & Listening

Linda Reimer

Here is the list of suggested digital reading, viewing and listening titles for this weekend!

Suggested E-Books:

The Armageddon Rag by George R.R. Martin: Onetime underground journalist Sandy Blair has come a long way from his radical roots in the ’60s–until something unexpectedly draws him back: the bizarre and brutal murder of a rock promoter who made millions with a band called the Nazgûl. Now, as Sandy sets out to investigate the crime, he finds himself drawn back into his own past–a magical mystery tour of the pent-up passions of his generation. For a new messiah has resurrected the Nazgûl and the mad new rhythm may be more than anyone bargained for–a requiem of demonism, mind control, and death, whose apocalyptic tune only Sandy may be able to change in time . . . before everyone follows the beat.

Edwin of the Iron Shoes: Sharon McCone Mystery Series, Book 1 by Marcia Muller: The book that launched the massively popular series! It’s Sharon McCone’s first case as staff investigator for All Souls Legal Cooperative. She knows nothing about antiques, yet she has an affection for Salem Street with its charming mix of antique and curio shops. Now elderly dealer Joan Albritton has been found dead, stabbed with an antique dagger. Her neighbors are shocked. Recurring vandalism has them frightened. And McCone’s introduction to Lieutenant Gregory Marcus doesn’t help matters. Ferreting out the facts will take Sharon from the chaotic jumble of the junk dealer’s establishment to a museum where San Francisco’s most elegant socialites gather.

Silverlock: Silverlock Series, Book 1 by John Myers Myers: Clarence Shandon was just an MBA from Wisconsin before a shipwreck transported him to the shores of the fantastic Commonwealth of Letters. He journeys through history and myth, meeting unforgettable names from Circe to Robin Hood along the way. But the journey changes him from the studious, conceited academic to a legend in his own right: Silverlock.

Suggested Album:

Almanac Singers: Talking Union (1941-1942) by various artists including Millard Lampell, Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, et. al. (Note: this is classic American folk music!)

Digital download includes the following songs:

1 The Strange Death of John Doe

2 Plow Under

3 Ballad of October 16th

4 Liza Jane

5 Billy Boy

6 C for Conscription: ‘C’ for Conscription

7 Washington Breakdown

8 Talking Union

9 Union Train

10 Which Side Are You On?

11 Get Thee Behind Me, Satan

12 Union Maid

13 All I Want

14 Song for Bridges

15 Babe O’ Mine

16 Dear Mr. President

17 Belt-Line Girl

18 Round and Round Hitler’s Grave

19 Side by Side

20 Deliver The Goods

21 The Sinking of the Reuben James

Suggested Audio Book:

Argo: How the CIA and Hollywood Pulled Off the Most Audacious Rescue in History (unabridged) by Antonio Mendez, Matt Baglio, Dylan Baker: “The true account of the 1979 rescue of six American hostages from Iran

On November 4, 1979, Iranian militants stormed the American embassy in Tehran and captured dozens of American hostages, sparking a 444-day ordeal and a quake in global politics still reverberating today. But there’s a little-known footnote to the crisis: six Americans escaped. And a midlevel agent named Antonio Mendez devised an ingenious yet incredibly risky plan to rescue them. Armed with foreign film visas, Mendez and an unlikely team of CIA agents and Hollywood insiders—directors, producers, and actors—traveled to Tehran under the guise of scouting locations for a fake film called Argo. While pretending to find the perfect scenery and backdrops, the team succeeded in contacting the escapees and smuggling them out of Iran without a single shot being fired.

Antonio Mendez finally details the mind-bogglingly complex and dangerous operation he led more than three decades ago. A true story of secret identities and international intrigue, Argo is the gripping account of this history-making collusion between Hollywood and high-stakes espionage.”

Suggested Video:

The Lost World (1925): A world wide sensation when it opened on February 15, 1925, “The Lost World” is a story of living dinosaurs from the Jurassic age written by the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and starring a cast of stegosaurus, allosaurus, brontosaurus, triceratops, and pterodactyl under the technical direction of Willis H. O’Brien (King Kong, Mighty Joe Young) and a cast of actors under the direction of Harry O. Hoyt.

The STLS Digital Catalog may be found on the library’s homepage of SSCLIBRARY.ORG

Or via the following link:

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/FE5904CF-8A91-4688-A592-7A046C7988D3/10/536/en/Default.htm

And if you have an app device look for the OverDrive Media Console app in your app store – it is the app that will allow you to check out free library e-books and audio books.

Digital Catalog music and video titles must currently be downloaded to a Windows computer to enjoy.

Have a great weekend!

Linda R. 

New Flipboard App Update Allows You To Create Your Own Magazines & Penguin Decides To Allow Public Libraries To “Buy” Their E-Books Again – With A Catch

Linda Reimer

New Flipboard App Update Allows You To Create Your Own Magazines: Flipboard, which was already a really cool news app available for both Apple and Android devices, just got even cooler! If you’re not familiar with it Flipboard is an app that allows you to customize the news stories you see – you can select categories like sports, business, food and dining, books or technology or specific journals or news sites like Forbes Sports and Money, CNET or Bloomberg news. So in essence you select only the categories and or journals that you want to see stories from – so if you love to read business and sports articles but aren’t in the least interested in articles on interior design or cooking you can tailor the app so that  you’ll only see stories in categories that you like. For example, being a fan of technology, books and history I’ve got categories on my version of Flipboard for history, CNET, Mashable and NPR Books but since I’m not in the least interested sports (apologies to the incredulous sports fans out there!) you won’t find any sports stories in my version of Flipboard.

And customizing Flipboard to suit your taste and interests is already cool but Flipboard has just updated the app and made it cooler still because now you can create your own magazines based upon articles that you’ve read; basically you select articles that you like and place them in a magazine that you title whatever you wish and then you can read the magazine at your leisure and even share it with friends, family or other Flipboard users.

Here’s a link to a review of the new app by the Wall Street Journal personal tech columnist Walt Mossberg:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324105204578384512070576672.html?mod=WSJ_PersonalTechnology_LEADTop

Penguin Decides To Allow Public Libraries To “Buy” Their E-Books Again – With A Catch: As you may recall last year the Penguin, which is one of the largest publishers in the United States, discontinued offering their e-books for sale through the OverDrive platform. OverDrive is the largest e-book platform vendor for public libraries in the United States. Now it seems Penguin has reconsidered at least a little bit. As of April 2, 2013 Penguin will again start selling e-books to public libraries through two other content vendors 3M and Baker & Taylor but with a catch – these e-books really won’t be sold to public libraries that use those two content providers – they will be licensed at prices comparable to the hard cover list price of the same title – for a year. And after a year the public libraries will either have to pay Penguin again to license the books for another year or their patrons will lose access to those e-books.

Just of note in relation, the STLS Digital Catalog uses the OverDrive vendor to provide e-books and digital videos and audios for our patrons so at the present time we will not be able to purchase Penguin e-books for the Digital Catalog.

Here’s a link to a paidContent article on the subject titled Penguin will offer its new ebooks to libraries again as of April 2:

http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/28/penguin-will-offer-its-new-ebooks-to-libraries-again-as-of-april-2/

Have a great day!

Linda R.

P.S. just a quick reminder the library will be closed tomorrow, Friday, March 29 for a combination library cleaning and staff development day. We will also be closed on Sunday, March 31 in observance of Easter. However, we will be open our usual hours on Saturday, March 30 – 10 AM – 4 PM – so if you’re out and about on Saturday stop by the library for some spring break reading or viewing material.

References

Mossberg, Walt. (2013, March 27). New Flipboard: News and Posts Handpicked and Shared. Wall Street Journal. Online.

Owen, Laura Hazard. (2013, March 28). Penguin will offer its new ebooks to libraries again as of April 2. paidContent. Online.

New E-Books, Albums, Videos & Audio Books Available In Digital Catalog Today!

Linda Reimer

Hi everyone, just a quick FYI our new order of titles for the Digital Catalog has been placed and processed! So you’ll find new e-books, album, music and videos available in the Digital Catalog this afternoon.

Check them out!

Here’s a direct link to the catalog, which you can browse on your PC as well as via your tablet or smartphone (via the OverDrive Media Console app):

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/EAD73E20-5D6B-4230-8638-C1FE4AAF3812/10/50/en/Default.htm

If aren’t familiar with the Digital Catalog let me know!

If you’re interested in reading e-books in languages other than English – please let me know that too and I’ll check into what titles are available for the Digital Catalog.

Have a great day!

Linda R. 

Weekend Digital Catalog Suggested Reading, Viewing & Listening For The Weekend of March 22-24, 2013

Linda Reimer

If you haven’t checked out the Digital Catalog recently – the platform software has been updated and it has a whole new and more modern look so check it out!

And without further ado here’s the list of suggested listening, reading and viewing digital titles for the weekend.

Albums: Perfect relaxation tunes for the weekend!

Mad Men Music from The TV Series by Various Artists

Digital Audio Download Includes:

1. On The Street Where You Live (Vic Damone)

2. Volare (The McGuire Sisters)

3. Lipstick (David Carbonara)

4. P.S. I Love You (Bobby Vinton)

5. Botch-A-Me (2004 Digital Remaster) (Rosemary Clooney)

6. Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words) (Julie London)

7. Caravan (Instrumental) (1996 Digital Remaster) (Gordon Jenkins)

8. Manhattan (Ella Fitzgerald & The Buddy Bregman Orchestra)

9. I Can Dream, Can’t I? (The Andrews Sisters)

10. Shangri-La (Robert Maxwell)

11. Babylon (David Carbonara)

12. Mad Men Suite (David Carbonara)

13. A Beautiful Mine (Aceyalone & RJD2)

Symphonic Sixties by 101 Strings Orchestra

Digital Audio Download Includes:

1. Stop! In The Name Of Love (101 Strings Orchestra)

2. I Hear A Symphony (101 Strings Orchestra)

3. Mrs. Robinson (101 Strings Orchestra)

4. California Dreamin’ (101 Strings Orchestra)

5. Yesterday (101 Strings Orchestra)

6. Scarborough Fair (101 Strings Orchestra)

7. A Whiter Shade Of Pale (101 Strings Orchestra)

8. My Cherie Amour (101 Strings Orchestra)

9. Up, Up And Away (101 Strings Orchestra)

10. Wichita Lineman (101 Strings Orchestra)

11. Close To You (101 Strings Orchestra)

12. Good Vibrations (101 Strings Orchestra)

13. I Want To Hold Your Hand (101 Strings Orchestra)

14. Hawaii Five-O (101 Strings Orchestra)

15. Baby Elephant Walk (101 Strings Orchestra)

16. Spinning Wheel (101 Strings Orchestra)

17. Eleanor Rigby (101 Strings Orchestra)

18. The Sound Of Silence (101 Strings Orchestra)

19. King Of The Road (101 Strings Orchestra)

20. California Girls (101 Strings Orchestra)

Audio Books: A character study and fun filled romance!

Among The Missing by Morag Joss: A pregnant woman, believed killed in a bridge accident in the Scottish Highlands, seizes her chance to disappear from her uncaring husband. Determined to safeguard her baby’s future and reinvent herself, she befriends illegal immigrant Silva, whose husband Stefan and daughter Anna, as she alone knows, have died in her place. As the bridge is rebuilt, the two women build a precarious existence in a makeshift home by the river. While Silva waits for Stefan and Anna’s return and the pregnant woman awaits the birth of her child, they are helped by the boatman, Ron, whose devotion to them masks his guilt for a past disaster for which he must atone.

Each of them having crossed some bridge in retreat from the world, each seeking an ever-elusive peace of mind and struggling with displacement and grief, together the three exiles conjure an unstable mix of trust and distrust, compounded by love and jealousy, both parental and sexual. With the discovery of Stefan’s and Anna’s bodies in the river, the tension in their uneasy triangle mounts inexorably and unbearably. With the birth of the new baby only days, then hours away, it finally breaks.

Love In A Nutshell by Janet Evanovich: Number one bestselling author Janet Evanovich teams up with award-winning author Dorien Kelly to deliver a sparkling novel of romantic suspense, small-town antics, secretive sabotage, and lots and lots of beer Kate Appleton needs a job. Her husband has left her, she’s been fired from her position as a magazine editor, and the only place she wants to go is to her parents’ summer house, The Nutshell, in Keene’s Harbor, Michigan. Kate’s plan is to turn The Nutshell into a Bed and Breakfast. Problem is, she needs cash, and the only job she can land is less than savory. Matt Culhane wants Kate to spy on his brewery employees. Someone has been sabotaging his company, and Kate is just new enough in town that she can insert herself into Culhane’s business and snoop around for him. If Kate finds the culprit, Matt will pay her a $20,000 bonus. Needless to say, Kate is highly motivated. But several problems present themselves. Kate despises beer. No one seems to trust her. And she is falling hard for her boss. Can these two smoke out a saboteur, save Kate’s family home, and keep a killer from closing in…all while resisting their undeniable attraction to one another? Filled with humor, heart, and loveable characters, Love in a Nutshell is delicious fun.

E-Books:

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: Now a major motion picture starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Susan Sarandon, and Hugh Grant, and directed by Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer

Includes a new Afterword by David Mitchell

A postmodern visionary who is also a master of styles and genres, David Mitchell combines flat-out adventure, a Nabokovian love of puzzles, a keen eye for character, and a taste for mind-bending philosophical and scientific speculation in the tradition of Haruki Murakami, Umberto Eco, and Philip K. Dick. The result is brilliantly original fiction that reveals how disparate people connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

Headhunters by Jo Nesbo: With Headhunters, Jo Nesbø has crafted a funny, dark, and twisted caper story worthy of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers. FIRST TIME PUBLISHED IN THE U.S. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM MAGNOLIA PICTURES.

Roger Brown is a corporate headhunter, and he’s a master of his profession. But one career simply can’t support his luxurious lifestyle and his wife’s fledgling art gallery. At an art opening one night he meets Clas Greve, who is not only the perfect candidate for a major CEO job, but also, perhaps, the answer to his financial woes: Greve just so happens to mention that he owns a priceless Peter Paul Rubens painting that’s been lost since World War II–and Roger Brown just so happens to dabble in art theft. But when he breaks into Greve’s apartment, he finds more than just the painting. And Clas Greve may turn out to be the worst thing that’s ever happened to Roger Brown.

Mystic Island, Nikki O’Connor Series Book 1 by Jan Evan Whitford: Looking for mystery, romance, humor and a category-5 hurricane? Nikki O’Connor, an attractive single mom – who also happens to be an intelligent and resourceful environmental cop-competes with a U.S. Presidential candidate in the search for a valuable letter FDR sent to Hitler back in 1945. During her quest, she encounters lobster rustlers, passionate romance, betrayal, murder, a catastrophic hurricane, self-awareness and plenty of laughs.

Silent Fall, Sanders Brothers Series, Book 2 by Barbara Freethy: Dylan Sanders is attending a wedding in the mountains when his trip takes a terrible turn. A former lover appears out of nowhere, demands a private conversation, and lures him into the woods, then leaves him there, drugged and disoriented. The next morning, the woman has disappeared, and Dylan is accused of her murder.

Catherine Hilliard, a beautiful psychi haunted by her own dark past, is reluctant to offer up her cryptic visions to help skeptical Dylan figure out what’s going on, but she can’t leave her best friend’s brother-in-law on his own … or deny the powerful, inexplicable connection between them.

It soon becomes clear that a wily and ruthless mastermind has targeted both of them, with a motive that’s very personal. Soon their race to expose the truth is no longer about staying out of jail but about staying alive …

E-Books for Children: Some new adventures just for kids!

The Emerald Atlas, The Books of Beginning Series, Book 1 by John Stephens: Called “A new Narnia for the tween set” by the New York Times and perfect for fans of the His Dark Materials series, The Emerald Atlas brims with humor and action as it charts Kate, Michael, and Emma’s extraordinary adventures through an unforgettable, enchanted world.

These three siblings have been in one orphanage after another for the last ten years, passed along like lost baggage.

Yet these unwanted children are more remarkable than they could possibly imagine. Ripped from their parents as babies, they are being protected from a horrible evil of devastating power, an evil they know nothing about.

Until now.

Before long, Kate, Michael, and Emma are on a journey through time to dangerous and secret corners of the world…a journey of allies and enemies, of magic and mayhem. And–if an ancient prophesy is correct–what they do can change history, and it is up to them to set things right. (Ages 8 and up).

Lexie by Audrey Couloumbis: Ten-year-old Lexie used to love going to the shore. For as long as she can remember, she’s spent every summer there with her parents, eating hamburgers, swimming in the ocean, and combing the beach for treasure. This summer is going to be different though. Lexie’s Mom and Daddy are divorced, and for the first time Mom won’t be there. To make matters worse, Daddy has a surprise–his new girlfriend, Vicky, and her two sons are coming to stay with them for a week! Now Lexie has to share her house with perky Vicky, Vicky’s moody teenage son Ben, and messy three-year-old Harris. The little beach house just doesn’t seem big enough for so many people. Is there still room for Lexie?

In a voice that’s sharp, funny, and sincere, Newbery Honor-winning author Audrey Couloumbis tells the story of a girl discovering that if you pay attention, sometimes you can find treasure in the most unlikely places. (Ages 8 and up)

Sky Lights, A Tale of Magic, Mystery and Mayhem by Barclay Baker: When characters from a well-loved book appear in the real world, Jack is confused. Fact and fiction can’t mix. Can they?

His sister’s chance remark on Facebook sparks a chain of events that sucks them into a plot involving celestial travel, blood-thirsty pirates seeking revenge, a brilliant scientist who performs miracles, a man-eating crocodile under investigation, and a life and death kidnapping situation.

Add a touch of fairy dust and the merest trace of gunpowder for an explosive mix that will have you turning the pages so fast, sparks will fly.

That’s Sky Lights.

Videos: Learn about dinosaurs or check out some relaxation and yoga tips!

Absolute Beginners: Guitar: This easy-to-follow guitar video tutor will take you step by step from first day exercises to playing along with a professional backing track. Learn how to tune your guitar, develop techniques using fingers or a pick, practice your sense of rhythm, play essential chord shapes, and perform your first complete guitar solo. Includes a 32-page booklet matching the exercises on the video.

All About Dinosaurs: Want to learn more about dinosaurs and what paleontologists do? Paleontologists are people who dig for fossils and study them in a lab. Dinosaurs lived for millions of years. Learn about the first dinosaurs in the Triassic Period, 230 million years ago. What kind of dinosaurs lived in the Jurassic Period? Not the Tyrannosaurus Rex or the Triceratops! They came much later in the Cretaceous Period. Dinosaurs vanished around 65 million years ago and no one knows for sure what happened to them. They may be gone, but they are not forgotten. As we dig deeper in the past, what we know about them will grow! Learn how you can unlock the hidden answer found in fossils.

Guided Relaxation for Sleep: Guided Relaxation for Sleep offers quick relief to help you achieve a restorative, restful night’s sleep. Through calm, soothing instruction, you’ll learn to let go of the day’s frustrations, quiet your mind and focus on the moment to fall into a deep, sound sleep.

Healing Yoga: The healing art of yoga has been practiced for millennia to enhance both physical and mental well-being. Filmed on the serene island of Maui, Healing Yoga features internationally acclaimed yoga teacher Rodney Yee, who offers you five yoga solutions that use restorative poses to help relieve stress, back pain, indigestion, fatigue and headache. Take time for yourself and discover the healing power of yoga and the rewards it brings to your life.

All descriptions are from the respective publishers unless otherwise specified.

The STLS Digital Catalog may be found on the library’s homepage of http://ssclibrary.org/

Or via the following link:

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/FE5904CF-8A91-4688-A592-7A046C7988D3/10/536/en/Default.htm

And if you have an app device look for the OverDrive Media Console app in your app store – it is the app that will allow you to check out free library e-books and audio books.

Digital Catalog music and video titles must currently be downloaded to a Windows computer to enjoy.

Have a great weekend!

Linda R.

Printing Your Own Clothes, Verizon Wants To Pay Cable Companies Only For Channels Their Customers Actually Watch & Book Publishers And The Digital Revolution

Linda Reimer

Printing Your Own Clothes: Can you imagine a future in which clothes washers and dryers are a thing of the past? A future that has us printing our own clothes at home via 3 D clothing printers? Designer Joshua Harris can! He has designed an award winning 3 D clothing printer which takes cartridges of different colored thread instead of cartridges of ink and actually prints clothes. So in the future instead of going out to a brick and mortar store to shop you’ll shop for clothing designs online at home. You’ll be able to browse shirt designs via the Eagle Outfitters or Gap or your other favorite stores online to your hearts’ content and then select your favorite shirt pattern, pay for it of course, and print it off at home. And after you’re finished wearing the shirt you’ll feed it back into the printer where the threads will be cleaned and then returned to their respective color cartridge cases to await your next clothes printing!

I came across an article, titled The Future of Clothing: 3D Printing Your Own Clothes, on Joshua Harris’s 3 D Clothing Printer on the Nanowerk website – here’s the link:

http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/gadget/newsid=29612.php

And the 3-D Clothing Printer designer Joshua Harris, who incidentally is a 2011 Syracuse University graduate, also features information about his printer on his website found at:

http://jhharris.prosite.com/104313/973830/work/design-for-2050-clothing-printer

Verizon Wants To Pay Cable Companies Only For Channels Their Customers Actually Watch: We are truly in the midst of what is starting to be called the TV Revolution – a time during which how consumers watch television shows and movies is evolving from the more traditional way of getting cable TV from a cable service provider and sitting on your couch to watch broadcast television at the time the cable company broadcasts it – to a time where we are able to access television shows and movies on demand via the Internet on smartphones, tablets and via media streaming players or smart TVs via television sets at home.

And in the midst of this revolution some media companies are challenging the traditional way networks have sold them television channels – in bundles of channels. This traditional bundled channel business model the networks favor has media companies that provide cable TV, like Verizon, Time Warner, Cablevision & Comcast, offering their customers bundles of channels that include popular channels like CNN, ESPN, Disney and Nickelodeon but that also features niche channels that few mainstream viewers watch. Currently media companies have no other option than to purchase the bundled channel packages networks provide which they then must offer to their subscribers in the same bundled format.  And this bundled channel business model is the reason that when you subscribe to a cable TV package you must pick a package from your cable provider to get some of your favorite channels and must also take, and pay for as part of the bundle, some channels that you never watch.

 And yesterday Verizon added fuel to the Television Revolution fire by announcing that it is trying to break away from the old outdated bundled channel business model and wants, instead, to pay the networks only for the channels its customers actually watch. Verizon plans to tabulate what channels viewers watch by data they retrieve from their customer’s cable boxes – which will actually show them which channels their customers watch and for how long they watch them (shades of Big Brother is watching us…). This is the second time in a month a large media company has challenged the network cable channel bundle business model. Last month Cablevision actually brought an anti-trust lawsuit against the network Viacom charging that Viacom’s insistence that Cablevision take all the bundled packages of channels Viacom offers, which it then must also sell to its customers as bundled packages, violates anti-competitive anti-trusts laws. Cablevision, like Verizon, would rather be able to sell its customers channels they do want to watch instead of bundles of channels the majority of which their customers don’t want to watch.

And while we aren’t at an al la care channel business model yet; the actions of Verizon and Cablevision on this issue takes us several steps further down the road that will one day allow us to buy access only to television/video content we want to watch. And I do see the unbundling of cable channels as inevitable in the future because as more and more people access video content on demand via the Internet on portable and home bound Internet connecting devices and as more content is produced by non-traditional networks for streaming, i.e. Netflix & their House of Cards series – well, that is where consumer demand is and will continue to go – for video content people can stream when they want and where they want so that will correspondingly be the market where money will be made.

Here are links to three articles on the Television Revolution:

Article 1 is titled Verizon Considers Only Paying Cable Providers for What You Watch:

http://mashable.com/2013/03/19/verizon-payment-options-providers/

Article 2 is titled Cablevision Viacom Suit Aims To Shake Up 170B Industry:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-27/cablevision-viacom-suit-aims-to-shake-up-170b-industry.html

And article 3 is from the New Yorker and is titled House of Cards and the Death of Cable:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2013/02/house-of-cards-and-the-death-of-cable.html

Book Publishers And The Digital Revolution: I came across another interesting article about the Digital Revolution this morning on the Wired website. The article is titled Book Publishers Scramble to Rewrite Their Future and the author discusses how the publishing industry is changing. Specifically the article focus is on the rise of self-published e-book authors like Amanda Hocking and John Locke (the non-philosopher author!) and the speculation that if traditional publishing companies want to stay in business in the future they’ll have change their entrenched traditional business models or they may go the way of the dinosaurs.

Here’s the link:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2013/03/publishing-industry-next-chapter/all/

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Design for 2050 Clothing Printer. Joshua Harris Industrial Interaction Design. Online. Accessed March 20, 2013.

Future of Clothing: 3D Printing Your Own Clothes. Nanowerk. Online. Accessed March 20, 2013.

Hughes, Evan. (2013, March 19). Book Publishers Scramble To Re-Write Their Future. Wired. Online. 

Sherman, Alex., Lee, Edmund. (2013, February 27). Cablevision-Viacom Suit Aims to Shake Up $170B Industry. Bloomberg. Online.

Smith, Andrea. (2013, March 20). Verizon Considers Only Paying Cable Providers for What You Watch. Mashable. Online.

Link To Cool Article On Used E-Books

Linda Reimer

Here’s a link to a cool article titled Reselling E-Books and the One Penny Problem that focuses on the possibility of Amazon and Apple selling used e-books – from the New York Times tech guru David Pogue

http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/14/reselling-e-books-and-the-one-penny-problem/

And here’s a link to the Owners’ Rights Initiative website – their logo is “You bought it. You own it. You have a right to re-sell it.” And the American Library Association is, not surprisingly, one of the members of the group. And the organization of course focuses on the fact although you can own printed books; albums on vinyl and CD and videos on DVD and you can’t own the very same titles in the digital format…

 http://ownersrightsinitiative.org/

Have a great evening!

Linda R.

 

 

New Google Touchscreen Chromebook, External Battery Packs For Your Smartphone & Independent Book Sellers Sue Amazon & The Big Six Publishers Over E-Book DRM

Linda Reimer

New Google Touchscreen Chromebook: Google announced today that it will begin shipping a new touch screen Chromebook laptop called the Chromebook Pixel shortly. The Pixel, like its lower end (and cheaper) counterparts, is a laptop designed around cloud computing*1 so it doesn’t have a large storage capacity at 32 gigabytes (aka GBs). The small storage capacity is because Google’s expectation is that users will store their documents, photos and media in the cloud through Google’s cloud system.

Google’s new Pixel model features a better screen than the previous Chromebooks, an i5 processors and the cellular models will connect to Verizon’s LTE network so they should be quite speedy. And of course, because the new Pixel Chromebooks have more bells and whistles they cost more than the old Chromeboosk– $1,299 for the Wi-Fi version and $1,499 for the LTE (cellular) version. And although I agree that eventually most computer users will likely use cloud based storage and applications as the standard… I think it is a bit early to so heavily emphasize a cloud based computer especially at the prices Google is charging for the Pixel Chromebooks. Paying $199 for an entry-level Chromebook or even $349 for a Samsung Chromebook with the intent of using that Chromebook as a second computer at home or at the lake or as an inexpensive computer for some one who only does light online computing – that makes sense to me. Paying $1,499 for a Pixel touch screen LTE model doesn’t. After all you can buy a great laptop running Windows 8 with a touch screen or even a MacBook Air for less money than the entry-level Pixel Chromebook costs at $1,299 and you can do more with those laptops because they have more storage space and more features than the Chromebooks.

Here’s a link to a USA Today article that focuses on the new Pixel Chromebook series titled Google unleashes touch-based Chromebook:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/02/21/apple-google-microsoft-chromebook-pixel/1936285/

And if you’re interested in information on other Chromebook models here’s a link to the Google Chromebook page which offers a description of the different Chromebook models – all of which are cloud based:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebooks.html

External Battery Packs For Your Smartphone: The tech site Mashable features a cool article today that briefly discusses the Bar & Mini portable batteries that will, when you connect them to your smartphone, give you many extra hours of cell phone use time. Both external battery packs cost less than $40 and are small enough to easily fit in a purse or backpack.

Here’s a link to the article which is titled External Battery Packs Add Hours to Your Phone, Even iPhone which offers more information on the subject:

http://mashable.com/2013/02/21/jackery-external-battery-pack/

Independent Book Sellers Sue Amazon & The Big Six Publishers Over E-Book DRM: Three independent book sellers, Posman Books of Manhattan, Fiction Addiction of Greenville, SC and Book House of Albany, NY are suing Amazon and the Big Six publishers*2 over the use of the restrictive Digital Rights Management (DRM) software that those publishers build into their e-books as a means towards fighting digital piracy. The suit claims that Amazon as the largest seller of e-books uses a proprietary form of DRM*3 to sell e-books published by the Big Six publishers and essentially locks independent book sellers out of the e-book market because they cannot produce Amazon DRM formatted e-books.

I think the suit is interesting not because the independent book sellers want a slice of the e-book pie and are having a hard time in getting it. Because of course, the independent book sellers aren’t saying they are against DRM software per se just that they are against the proprietary form of it that Amazon uses.  The interesting part of the equation to my mind is that I think that it just might come to pass, through the litigation, that the courts decide the DRM isn’t legal – I’ll cross my fingers for that! Because this DRM issue to my mind is a smaller part of a larger issue — that issue being the lack of ownership of digital content. E-Books and other e-formatted items are being treated by large e-book sellers and publishing companies as if they were pieces of software. And just as you’d have to license a copy of Microsoft Office for personal use which of course limits what you can do with it – you are licensing the digital content you “buy.” And the licensing of e-books and other e-content allows publishers and e-book stores to limit which devices you can read their e-books on and even whether you can loan an e-book or sell an e-book to someone else. This is a grey area at the present time. The large publishing companies would rather keep control of e-books and license them than sell them but really you should be able to buy an e-book just as you would a printed book and then loan the e-book to your friends and family members and sell it later at a garage sale if you wish. Or, even donated that e-book to your public library if you want to – and those things are not things you can do with e-books at the moment.

And going back around to the topic of why I find this law suite interesting – the reason, which I am honestly getting to! Is because I think it is just possible that the courts might decide DRM isn’t legal and order its use be discontinued. I know there is a long shot chance of that happening but I think it is just possible because the independent book sellers are crying foul over the use of DRM by Amazon and the Big Six Publishers and even though they aren’t suggesting the use of DRM being discontinued…. I can see that option – legally saying DRM software can’t be used and all e-books must be sold without it — being the only way for there to be a level playing field among all e-book book sellers both large and small.

And after my mini-soap box speech – here’s a link to an article, titled Indie bookstores sue Amazon, big-6 publishers for using DRM to create monopoly on ebooks, about the law suit from the PaidContent site:

http://paidcontent.org/2013/02/20/indie-bookstores-sue-amazon-big-6-publishers-for-using-drm-to-create-monopoly-on-ebooks/

Have a great day!

Linda R.

*1) The term “Cloud Computing” or “Cloud Based” simply translated means that you have to be connected to the Internet to use the computer and that your documents, photos and other media are stored online (i.e. on Google’s servers and not your computer) and accessed through the Internet. These cloud based computer don’t have much storage space built in so you can’t download and store a great deal of stuff (files, music, videos etc.) on a cloud based computer.  In contrast, most computers, i.e. non-Chromebooks, sold today offer a solid amount storage space with the expectation that you will store lots of photos, documents, music and videos on those computers.  And to give you an idea of the difference – the new Pixel Chromebooks have 32 GBs of storage built into them and the iMac I bought 2 years ago has a 4 terabyte storage capacity and each terabyte is made up of 1000 gigabytes – so a 32 GB storage capacity is consider a rather small one by 2013 standards!

*2) The term “The Big Six” publishers refers to the six largest publishers in the United States:  Simon & Shuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, Macmillan, Hachette and Random House.

*3) If you’re wondering:  “What on Earth is DRM anyway?” The basic answer to that is that DRM is restrictive software that publishers insist be incorporated into e-books as an anti-piracy/anti e-book duplication and anti e-book-loaning tool and which doesn’t allow you to read e-books on any device you own and/or to loan, sell or give your e-books to someone else. And that DRM is also the reason that if you have an e-ink Nook (in other words a Nook without a color display) that you have to download library e-books to your computer before you can drag and drop them onto your Nook – because essentially the DRM software has to be unlocked in order for you to read the library e-book and it is unlocked via the download process from the STLS Digital Catalog into the Adobe Digital Editions software on your computer. If all of that sounds confusing – please ask a member of our tech staff to elaborate that next time you are in the library!

References

For the Best of Google. Google. Online. Accessed February 21, 2013.

Martin, Scott. (2013, February 21). Google unleashes touch-based Chromebook. USA Today. Online.

Owen, Laura Hazard. (2013, February 21). Three indie bookstores file lawsuit against Amazon and Big Six publishers. PaidContent. Online.

Smith, Andrea. (2013, February 21). External Battery Packs Add Hours to Your Phone, Even iPhone 5. Mashable. Online.

 

Why You Can’t Find Some Bestselling E-Books @ Public Libraries

Linda Reimer

The answer to the question of “Why you can’t find some bestselling e-books in public libraries (or via public libraries online digital catalogs) has several aspects to it but three points rise head and shoulders above the rest.

Firstly, some publishers, including Simon & Schuster, simply will not sell e-books to public libraries – period. For example, if you’d like to read the e-book Team of Rivals by Doris Goodwin, which is indeed published by Simon & Schuster, you won’t find it in the STLS Digital Catalog because Simon & Schuster won’t allow us to purchase a copy for the Digital Catalog!*1

Secondly, the prices some publishers charge for the e-books they sell to public libraries are more than triple the list price of the hardcover versions of the same books. For example, the new book My Beloved World by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has a hardcover list price of $27.95 and the e-book version available for consumers currently costs $14.99 via Amazon and $12.99 via Barnes and Noble. And guess how much it costs public libraries to purchase a copy? Does an e-book cost public libraries $12.99 or14.99? No not even close! The publisher Knopf Double (an offshoot of Random House) charges public libraries $83.85 for that same title! So the publishing company wants public libraries to pay $68.86 more than the $14.99 price currently being charged by Amazon for that same e-title. I’m all for companies’ making a profit but $83.85 is a really steep price to charge public libraries for a book that costs consumers, in both e-book and print formats, less than fifteen dollars.

And thirdly, in a word ownership! Or to be more precise the lack of ownership of digital content – most people do not realize that e-books (and e-videos, e-music titles and e-audio books) are being sold in a different way than traditional formatted items. For example, if you buy a print book, DVD, music CD or audio book on CD – you bought and you own it. You can sell that item later, loan it to your sister, your mother or grandfather, keep the book for 50 years and pass it along to your granddaughter as a cherished item and even recycle that bestseller that has been read by so many friends and family members that it is falling apart.

In contrast, the way e-books and other digital content are being sold today…

Well that can be summed up in a word too – “licensed.”

Currently most user end agreements for both e-books purchased by individuals and by libraries state that the purchaser is being granted a license to access the e-book or other digital content. So you can’t lend most e-books or other e-content to your mother, sister or best friend to read, and you can’t re-sell e-books because of course you don’t own them. And theoretically, since you’ve licensed the content the publishing company can revoke that license and you as the licensee probably are not going to be able to transfer the e-books you’ve acquired over a number of years to your granddaughter via your will; because again; you don’t own the e-books.

If you consider those three points you’ll understand why some of the new and popular e-books you’d like to read are not available in our Digital Catalog.

And perhaps needless to say The American Library Association and a number of other organizations*2 that value the traditional First Sale Doctrine that applies to printed books but not currently to e-books and other e-content have started a lobby group titled The Owners’ Right Initiative whose motto regarding digital content is “You bought it. You own it. You have a right to re-sell it!”

And having said all of that here are two links to short FYI type articles on this subject from The Digital Book World site:

Article 1 is titled E-Book Dispatches from 2013 ALA Midwinter Meeting:

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/the-real-cost-of-ebooks-for-libraries/

And article 2 is titled The Real Cost of Ebooks for Libraries:

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/e-book-dispatches-from-2013-ala-midwinter-meeting/

And a third and fourth related links to the official definition of what First Sale Doctrine means in the United States courtesy of the U.S. Copyright Office (Code S 109) and a more accessible explanation offered by The Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Here’s the U.S. Copyright Office link to Section 109 of the U.S. Copyright Laws:

http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#109

And the link to the more accessible explanation of First Sale Doctrine offered by the EFF:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/12/first-sale-under-siege-if-you-bought-it-you-should-own-it

Have a great day!

Linda R.

References

Digital Book Wire. (2013, February 5). The Real Cost of Ebooks for Libraries. DBW. Online.

Inouye, Alan. (2013, February 6.) E-book Dispatches from 2013 ALA Midwinter Meeting. DBW. Online.

Mcksherry, Corynne. (2012, December 23). 2012 in Review: First Sale Under Siege — If You Bought It, You Should Own It. Electronic Frontier Foundation: Defending Your Rights in the Digital World. Online.

Limitations on exclusive rights: Effect of transfer of particular copy or phonorecord.  United States Copyright Office. (Accessed 2013, February 6). Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code: Section 109. U.S. Copyright Office. Online.

*1. Public libraries have found a loop hole in this procedure– while we can’t purchaseSimon & Schuster e-books for patrons to download to their Kindles, Nooks, iPads etc. We can purchase them through Barnes & Noble for our circulating Nooks. So if you don’t see a bestselling book in the STLS Digital Catalog that is published by Simon & Schuster – like Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin (the book is the basis for the movie Lincoln) – ask the staff – you can make a request and we can purchase a copy of the e-book title at the e-book price listed on the Barnes & Noble website and you’ll be able to read it on one of our circulating e-reader – not your e-reader unfortunately; but you will have access to the title as an e-book.

*2. Here’s a list of all the groups that belong to the Owners’ Rights Initiative as taken from their website. The link to the website follows the list.

ORI Members:

American Free Trade Association

American Association of Law Libraries

American Library Association

Association of Service and Computer Dealers International and the North American Association of Telecommunications Dealers (AscdiNatd)

Association of Research Libraries

Computer and Communications Industry Association

Chegg

CXtec

eBay

Etsy

Goodwill Industries

Home School Legal Defense Fund (HSLDA)

Impulse Technology

International Imaging Technology Counsel (ITC)

Internet Commerce Coalition

Network Hardware Resale

Overstock

Powell’s Books

Quality King Distributors

Redbox

United Network Equipment Dealers Association (UNEDA)

XS International

http://ownersrightsinitiative.org/about/

 

New E-Books, Audio Books, Music & Videos Available In The STLS Digital Catalog Later Today

Linda Reimer

Hi everyone, just as an FYI for all the consumers of digital content out there! There will be a multitude of new items appearing in the STLS Digital Catalog this evening. The new items include audio books in the swashbuckling Horatio Hornblower series, albums by Pink Floyd and videos on a variety of subjects including non-fiction titles on genealogy and gardening, children’s videos including Thomas The Tank Engine, All About Cowboys, All About Dinosaurs & Mr. Sherman & Peabody, Season 1. Other new video titles include: Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, Budokon For Beginners, Night Train – Pociag, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, Derailed and American in World War II.

You can access the entire Digital Catalog by going to the library’s home page (SSCLIBRARY.ORG) or clicking on the following link:

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/5654A588-8683-4527-A797-407FB5E8710C/10/536/en/default.htm

And if you’d rather check out e-books, music, videos or audio books categories directly please click on anyone of the following links:

All E-Books:

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/5654A588-8683-4527-A797-407FB5E8710C/10/536/en/SearchResults.htm?SearchID=7457576s&SortBy=CollDate

All Music:

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/5654A588-8683-4527-A797-407FB5E8710C/10/536/en/SearchResults.htm?SearchID=7457568s&SortBy=CollDate

All Videos:

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/5654A588-8683-4527-A797-407FB5E8710C/10/536/en/SearchResults.htm?SearchID=7457555s&SortBy=CollDate

New Audio Book Editions:

http://stls.lib.overdrive.com/5654A588-8683-4527-A797-407FB5E8710C/10/536/en/SearchResults.htm?SearchID=31706431&SortBy=CollDate

Note: To check on format compatibility with your device click on the following link which will take you to the OverDriveDeviceResourceCenter page:

http://www.overdrive.com/resources/drc/

Also of note, as of January 2013 you can download all OverDrive Content to a PC and OverDrive E-Books to most e-readers and tablets. A/V materials can be downloaded to PCs and a handful of portable devices from Creative Zen and Colby. Reportedly OverDrive (that is the name of the STLS Digital Catalog platform vendor) will be ushering a new streaming system for all e-books, audio books, music and videos in the catalog which will mean that you’ll be able to stream content to most smart phones, tablets and PCs in the near future. We’ll update our website, Facebook page and the SSCL Tech Talk blog site with that information as soon as that update occurs.

And if you have any questions about the items in the Digital Catalog and how you can access them please ask the staff; we are here to help!

Have a great afternoon!

Linda R.

It’s Coming! The Ability to Stream Content Through The SSCL Website!

Linda Reimer

Right now you can check out digital content in the form of e-books, downloadable audio books, downloadable videos and downloadable music titles from the STLS Digital Catalog to a variety of tablets, PCs, smart phones, e-readers and Macs.

And also right now the content you can check out to specific devices varies as does the process you use to check out those items.

For example, you can read library e-books on almost any e-reader, tablet, Smartphone, PC or Mac.  

However, you can only watch videos on PCs and a handful of less-than-well-known portable devices but not on your iPad, Smartphone or Android tablet.

And you can download free library audio books to your Smartphone or tablet directly but only the ones that are in the MP3 format. OverDrive audio books that are WMA formatted have to be downloaded to a computer first and then you can transfer them to you Smartphone or tablet – but you can’t download them to a Mac because the “WMA” stands for Windows Media Audio and it is a Microsoft software which won’t open on an Apple computer – but you can transfer a WMA audio book to an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch if you first download it to a PC.

Did I mention all of this can be very confusing!

However, if you are interested in checking out digital content and have questions please ask the library staff! A member of our tech team will even be happy to sit down with you and go over the entire process step by step.

But I digress; back to the subject of streaming content!

If you’re streaming content, and the word streaming is fancy tech speak that simply means you open a web browser of your choice (i.e. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc.) and the e-book or other e-formatted item you open is sent from the server on which it is stored to your device so you can read the book, watch the movie or listen to the audio book or album. And with this new streaming process you won’t actually be downloading anything so there won’t be a cumbersome registration and set up process, you won’t have to authorize your device before you can check out content nor will the process for accessing the content be different by device – you’ll be able to read your library e-book, watch your library e-videos or listen to library e-audios by opening the web browser on your tablet, PC, Mac, Smartphone and even XBOX and Wii!

So the fact that this new second generation library e-content software, officially called the Next Generation Library Platform (managed by the library e-content vendor OverDrive) is coming is very exciting because it will make the process of accessing digital content from the STLS Digital Catalog a very easy and user friendly one!

And as soon as the updated platform is available we’ll loudly proclaim that fact via this blog, the library’s website and our Facebook page.

Have a great day!

Linda R

And here are links to two cool, and short, news stories offered by OverDrive regarding the new cool features coming to the Library Digital Content vendor’s platform soon!

The first story relays the fact that you’ll soon be able to read e-books, watch library e-videos and listen to library e-audios on your TV via your gaming console and the second offers information on the platform upgrade which will allow you stream content instead of having to download it:

Library E-Books Coming to Gaming Consoles:

http://overdriveblogs.com/library/2013/01/24/library-ebooks-are-coming-to-game-consoles/

http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/News/News-Item/OverDrive-Announces-Streaming-Video-and-Audio-Services-for-Libraries-and-Schools–87321.htm

OverDrive The Next Generation Digital Library Platform

http://www.overdrive.com/Next-Gen/