Recently a Google engineer unveiled a do-it-yourself (DIY) robotic book scanner. As reported by The Verge, Dany Qumsiyeh and a team of colleagues constructed it out of sheet metal, scanner parts, and an ordinary vacuum cleaner to build a page-turning scanner that only requires human intervention to put a book on the device. Scans are automatically [...]
Groups Digitize Local History with Help of Scottsdale Public Library
By on November 9, 2012 Leave a Comment
The Scottsdale Public Library (SPL) recently went live with the Papago Salado Story Tour Collection, a digitized project that features historic photos of several of their city’s most notable buildings, accompanied by audio files of locals telling stories about those buildings. The collection got its start last year, when Arizona’s Papago Salado Association received a grant from the Arizona Humanities Council to record memories of historical buildings.
Digital Public Library of America Partners With iFactory to Design/Develop Prototype of DPLA Front End Web
By on October 25, 2012
From DPLA: The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will be partnering with Boston, MA-based interactive agency iFactory to design and develop a prototype front end portal, the companies announced today. iFactory will create a website that will facilitate the creative discovery, sharing, and use of multimedia library materials among the general public. This prototype [...]
HathiTrust Ruled Fair Use
By on October 11, 2012 1 Comment
From a WIred Magazine article: A federal judge on Wednesday threw out a copyright infringement lawsuit against universities that participated in a massive book-digitization project in conjunction with Google without permission from rights holders. U.S. District Judge Harold Baer of New York dismissed an infringement lawsuit brought by the Authors Guild and other writers’ guilds, [...]
Q&A: Gale EVP Frank Menchaca on Digitization and Ed2Go College Courses
By on October 10, 2012 Leave a Comment
Frank Menchaca, executive vice president of publishing for Gale Cengage Learning, discusses digitization projects and the company’s new college courses for public libraries as part of a series of Q&As leading up to “The Digital Shift: Libraries, Ebooks and Beyond,” LJ’s third annual ebook summit on Wednesday, October 17.
NYPL Crowdsources Interpretations of John Cage
By on September 27, 2012 Leave a Comment
This month, the New York Public Library (NYPL) is celebrating the centennial of Cage’s birthday with a live event on September 27 and the publication of John Cage’s Prepared Piano, a new edition of their Point iBook periodical series. The evening event also offered NYPL an opportunity to highlight the ongoing development of John Cage Unbound: A Living Archive, a new website that showcases the John Cage manuscript collection housed at NYPL’s Library for the Performing Arts, as well as videos in which professional musicians, students, and others explain how they prepare and perform works by Cage.
Serving Up Really Large Images
By on September 24, 2012 4 Comments
Recently I came across some open source software for serving really large images on the web, and as the proprietor of a photography web site, I was immediately intrigued. What if, I thought, I could put up the full versions of my photos (multi-megapixel) for viewing and discovery, but not for download? This is because [...]
Something Old, Something New: Dicing Data At NYPL Labs | Cover Story
By on September 10, 2012 Leave a Comment
The home base for the New York Public Library (NYPL) Labs is a strange mix of old and new. A bunch of modern cubicles hover incongruously amid the stately marble walls of what used to be a courtyard in the venerable Schwarzman Building, before the need for more space convinced the library to press it into service. It’s not a bad metaphor for what the labs do: turn the library’s substantial historical holdings into something new, useful, and a little bit quirky.
Google Allowed to Appeal Class Action Status of Authors Guild Case
By on August 14, 2012 Leave a Comment
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit will allow Google to appeal the class action status of the seven-year old Google Inc. v. Authors Guild case, the court announced in an order this morning. Decertifying the case would force Author’s Guild members who dispute the digitization of their works to sue Google individually. Google has argued that many authors have benefited economically from its Google Books project, and whether a scan violated copyright or was protected under fair use doctrine should be determined on a case-by-case basis.
