Peter Bennett
Peter Bennett develops iPhone apps and advises companies on mobile strategy through his company Hablantia.com. He was a founder of a publishing business that grew rapidly and profitably, but didn't quite live to see its 10th birthday. In previous incarnations he has worked for the BBC in corporate strategy, and has written management reports on technology issues for the FT.
The Barack SlideShow
When archives are built incrementally on top of access, instead of access being born of hard labor from accumulated storage, the nature of the archive is transformed. The possibilities for an Obama Presidential Library — built from today and onwards — are transformative.
Philadelphia Closing 11 Library Branches
The financial crisis is having a huge negative impact on many public sector services, including libraries. From Publishers Lunch (subscription required): As municipalities across the country face large gaps in their budget, Philadelphia is taking "drastic new steps" to face the "economic storm" that include closing 11 of the 54 branch libraries that comprise the Free Library of Philadelphia….
Vanishing Paper in Higher Education
Christopher Conway has a thoughtful essay at Inside Higher Ed on the seemingly inevitable trend towards digital text consumption: It is becoming increasingly easier to put together affordable 'readers' or anthologies culled from existing print material without bypassing rights and fees and without overloading students with unnecessary expense. If this wave of the future takes hold and becomes the…
EFF's Concerns About the Google Book Search Settlement
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes that the Google Book Search settlement accomplishes a degree of access that litigation might have taken years to develop, but it also observes areas of concern: fair use, innovation, competition, access, public domain and privacy. Innovation: It seems likely that the "nondisplay uses" of Google's scanned corpus of text will end up being…
Another Sci-Fi Publisher Opts Out of DRM
Night Shade Books has joined Baen's WebScription service. It's interesting how sci-fi is one of the genres leading the way into DRM-free ebooks. From a Galley Cat: "Baen has successfully led the industry into the future with its DRM-free electronic publishing program," said Night Shade editor-in-chief Jeremy Lassen in a press release announcing the move. "This canny insight into…
Connecting the Dots Between Google Book Search and Android
Ed Nawotka of Beyond Hall 8 discusses the possibility that the Google Book Search settlement permits them to envision product delivery through Android-capable devices: Perhaps most important of all is how this cements Google as the industry leader in the distribution of digital books. Sure, there's Amazon with its Kindle…and the Sony E-reader…each with hundreds of thousands of titles…
New York Times Movie Reviews Released as API
The New York Times has released an application programming interface (API) to its movie reviews, which is a rather significant feature. From the Times' Open blog: Finally — and this is the key — we're giving you access to our Movies search feature, containing all 22,000 reviews indexed by title, reviewer's name, director's name, names of the top five actors,…
Google Reaches Book Search Settlement
Google has announced a settlement plan for the suits filed by the Association of American Publishers and the Authors' Guild. From the Google Book Search site: Today we're delighted to announce that we've settled that lawsuit and will be working closely with these industry partners to bring even more of the world's books online.Together we'll accomplish far more than any…
Sulzberger: "Be of the Internet, Not on the Internet"
Arthur Sulzberger Jr. indicates he is willing to consider radical change to continue the New York Times' relevance in the digital age. From News.com: Sulzberger would brand this not as a crisis, but rather as change that requires adaptation. "It's important for traditional companies to adopt strategies that enable us to be of the Internet, not on the Internet,"…
Libraries Embrace Urban Lit
Great story in the New York Times on the embrace of urban lit by the Queens Public Library, and others. By the way: most of the young, and many of the old, librarians that i know are not … ur … prim: It's not the kind of literary fare usually associated with the prim image of librarians. But public libraries…