Recent Comments
- Amazon’s book city #1, Alexandria, VA, may cut library hours: Time for a digital-era national endowment to help ease U.S. libraries’ financial woes? | The Travelin' Librarian { [...] Read the full article @ LibraryCity.org. [...] }
- Promising DPLA debut—but please don’t confuse special-collection items, exhibits and APIs with a full-fledged ‘public library’ demo | The Travelin' Librarian { [...] Read the full article @ librarycity.org. [...] }
- Tom Peters { Excellent review of the nascent D(P)LA e-resource. I agree with all your major points. Tis a pity that the usual suspects (Twain, Fitzgerald, Cather, et... } – Apr 19, 11:28 AM
- Online la Digital Public Library of America, che vuole superare Google e Wikipedia | Tropico del Libro { [...] di questo ambizioso progetto. Non sono mancate, in questo senso, le polemiche di chi ha vivamente esortato i creatori della DPLA a preoccuparsi anche... }
- David Rothman { Thanks for such a prompt and classy reply, Dan---you're indeed giving #dpla its due! I truly truly hope that the DPLA succeeds, and meanwhile the... } – Mar 31, 11:58 AM
- Dan Cohen { Thanks for the great and helpful post, David. To be clear on #2, I'm very interested (as I know others are within DPLA) and plan... } – Mar 31, 10:40 AM
- David Rothman { Hi, Don. Nice to see such enthusiasm from a veteran school librarian. I appreciate your thoughtfulness, agree with your priorities, and will have more to... } – Mar 26, 4:57 AM
- Don Smith { If I might, I would like to propose a statement of purpose for the National Digital Library. Often times during my forty year career as... } – Mar 25, 8:54 PM
- David Rothman { Hey, Ralph, here's a belated but heartfelt reply to one of your points. Around here we love both libraries and librarians and are interested in... } – Mar 13, 9:58 AM
- Some news from LibraryLand | not so quiet { [...] this opinion piece, David Rothman makes a case for folks in the Warren Buffet and Bill Gates income bracket to support [...] }
- Bibliotecas públicas sin libros en EE.UU. ¿A la de tres? | Bibliotecas 2029 { [...] comunicada, tuvo una contestación pública demoledora. No sólo los profesionales de todo el país se escandalizaron por este proyecto sino que los propios usuarios... }
- A National Digital Library Endowment { [...] An interesting concept from blogger David Rothman, founder of TeleRead. He suggests that those who have signed The Giving Pledge (though he doesn’t mention... }
- David Rothman { Hi, Robert. Some quick replies… 1. I envision a variety of business models in use, but if nothing else, libraries could buy multiple e-copies (or... } – Feb 20, 2:05 PM
- Robert Nagle { Generally, a great proposal, but here are some practical issues which pop up in my mind. First, if everything is centralized, when I put a... } – Feb 20, 12:56 PM
- ATG Article of the Week: Need Library E-Books to Feed Your New Gadget? Here’s the Answer | Against-the-Grain.com { [...] Need Library E-Books to Feed Your New Gadget? Here’s the Answer, is an thought provoking article by David Rothman posted in TeleRead a few... }
- Reading about eReading this week 2/18/2013 « Allegany County Library System Director's Notes { [...] A national digital library endowment: How America’s billionaires could be modern Carnegies for rea... [...] }
- Reading about eReading this week 1/28/2013 « Allegany County Library System Director's Notes { [...] Dwarf-sized public e-libraries vs. abundance: Listen to veteran publishing guru Brian O’Leary and ... [...] }
- David Rothman { You're welcome, Anthony. Keep us posted if you can Amy-ize your new Fire without installing a full-strength version of Android. David } – Jan 19, 5:46 PM
- Anthony { Thanks Dave! } – Jan 19, 4:47 PM
- David Rothman { Hi, Anthony. Some possibilities: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/where-to-get-more-help-with-your-kindle.html Happy Kindling, David } – Jan 19, 4:00 AM
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Recent Posts
- E-book usability news: Adjustable line spacing now on the Kindle Fire HD 8.9” and perhaps other Fire HDs—although I still can’t narrow the spaces sufficiently
- Voice Dream e-reading app: Stellar for text to speech—and promising as a general reader
- Amazon’s book city #1 avoids cuts in library hours but still might reduce its library book budget—already below the U.S. per-capita average
- Cut in Alexandria, VA, library hours not needed, says city staff memo. Also: Councilman Justin Wilson endorses LibraryCity’s national digital library endowment plan
- Is your local library budget about to be slashed? Here’s an example of how you can fight back
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- Mike Shatzkin
- NDPL discussion forum
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Archive for the Category: eBooks
Voice Dream e-reading app: Stellar for text to speech—and promising as a general reader
The latest: An update of this post focuses on education-related issues of read-aloud apps. Also, I’ve just tried a Voice Dream beta with paging. More on the beta’s features later in the week. – D.R. A Catch-22 dogs those of us who most often read e-books visually but also want to hear them when we’re [...]
Also posted in Social media Tagged Digital Public Library of America, DPLA, e-book readers, e-books, ebook apps, ebooks, education, educational software, iOS apps, k-12, read aloud, review, text to speech, TTS, Voice Dream, Voice Dream Reader, Winston Chen
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Amazon’s book city #1 avoids cuts in library hours but still might reduce its library book budget—already below the U.S. per-capita average
Update, May 7: The missing $56K for materials was restored in the final version of the budget last night. Kudos to all the library advocates who spoke up! See, it’s worth the time! – D.R. Now it’s definite. Alexandria, VA—honored as Amazon’s “most well-read” city in the U.S. despite ample evidence to the contrary, especially [...]
Amazon’s book city #1, Alexandria, VA, may cut library hours: Time for a digital-era national endowment to help ease U.S. libraries’ financial woes?
Update: We won! Library advocates successfully fought cuts in hours and the materials budget. Leaving us in the dark about the source of this tidbit, a Washington Post headline in the Style section blog says: “Alexandria, Virginia: the most well-read city in America.” Similar words show up elsewhere in the media about my hometown, the [...]
Tagged Alexandria, Allison Silberberg, Amazon, biased journalism, corporate hype, digal libraries, digital divide, Digital Public Library of America, DPLA, ebooks, librrianship, literacy, New York Times, Rashad Young, reading, the most well-read city in America, VA, Virginia, Washington Post
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Promising DPLA debut—but please don’t confuse special-collection items, exhibits and APIs with a full-fledged ‘public library’ demo
A caveat first. The Digital Public Library of America is evolving. What’s more, I’m a booster of the organization and of the people behind it, including the new executive director, Dan Cohen, who so decently reacted after the Boston Marathon bombings. But for now, the academic-and-hacker mindset is prevailing at the DPLA over the traditional [...]
LibraryCity’s take on K-12 libraries and the Digital Public Library of America
Yes, LibraryCity has been on an S. R. Ranganathan kick lately (here and here). Still ahead is a DPLA-related essay on his Five Laws of Library Science as applied to K-12, including school libraries—a follow-up to the LibraryCity post by Apple Distinguished Educator Donald R. Smith, a teacher-librarian with 40 years of experience. If you [...]
Also posted in LibraryCity, National Digital Public Library Tagged Chief Officers of State Library Agencies, COSLA, Digital Public Library of America, Don Smith, Donald R. Smith, DPLA, John Palfrey, k-12, librarians, librarianship, libraries, national digital libraies, national digital library, Ranganathan, Robert Darnton, school libraries, school libraries and the DPLA
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Sad fate of ‘Five Laws’ book shows need for DPLA-related efforts to keep old masterpieces alive
Oh, the irony! In The Five Laws of Library Science, S. R. Ranganathan argued in the 1930s for libraries as improvers of life for rich and poor alike. Now Google Books has digitized 30 million titles, but you won’t find Laws on the Web in its entirety from Google at any price. You’ll see a [...]
Also posted in National Digital Public Library Tagged academic librarians, academic libraries, Digital Public Library of America, Don Smith, Donald R. Smith, Donald Smith, DPLA, education, k-12, librarianship, national digital libraies, national digital libraries, national digital library, public librarians, public libraries, public schools, Robert Darnton, schools
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Beyond a ‘Digital Attic’: How the DPLA can honor the Five Laws of Library Science—and help libraries in Orange County, Florida
This is the era of bits and bytes and multimedia and 3D printing, not just books and other texts. But Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science would still apply today in spirit even after more than eighty years. Educated originally as a mathematician, S. R. Ranganathan was a library-science genius who studied librarianship [...]
Also posted in National Digital Public Library Tagged digital libraries, Digital Public Library of America, DPLA, dpla and the five laws of library science, family literacy, Five Laws of Library Science, librarianship, Orlando Sentinel, Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan. S. R. Ranganathan, Walter Pacheco
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A national digital library endowment: More details, an FAQ, and an invitation to librarians and others to help shape the proposal
LibraryCity inspired mentions on the Atlantic Magazine’s Web site and elsewhere with a call for a national digital library endowment for the United States. Endowment funds would come entirely or almost entirely from philanthropists, in the beginning at least, given the hostility of so many politicians toward new programs. The endowment would be just one [...]
A national digital library endowment: How America’s billionaires could be modern Carnegies for real
Update: James Fallows’s blog on The Atlantic’s site reproduced part of this proposal, and the long version appeared in Sabrina Pacifici’s award-winning LLRX library journal. More details and an FAQ on the proposal are here. Warren Buffett was on CBS Sunday Morning. The interviewer, Rebecca Jarvis, asked if he owned an iPad. No. iPhone. No. [...]
Also posted in National Digital Public Library Tagged Amazon, Andrew Carnegie, Berkshire Hathaway, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Libraries Initiative, Bill Gates, Born Digital, Brian O'Leary, Cengage, Congress, contractors, digital divide, digital libraries, digital library, DPLA, dysfunction, e-book, e-books, ebook, ebooks, endowments, family literacy, FCC, Federal Communications Commission, Giving Pledge, Inerstate Highway System, Internet, Internet Archive, iPad, James Fallows, Jeff Bezos, John Palfrey, Jr., Kindle, librarianship, library endowments, library of congress, Lorain, Microsoft, National Archives, national digiital library system, national digital libraies, national digital library, National Digital Library Endowment, national digital library system, National Digital Public Library, New Jersey, Newark, Ohio, Paprika, Pentagon, philanthropies, philanthropy, public libraries, Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Surface tablet, TeleRead, The Atlantic, TheAtlantic.com, Warren Buffett, Wayback Machine, Web, WFB, William F. Buckley
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Tell Dec. 6 DPLA hackfest what a good blog editor/creation tool should be like—to help libraries and patrons easily create their own stuff
If only WordPress, Drupal and the like were as easy to use as Windows Live Writer (screenshot) or at least the less cluttered versions of Microsoft Word! Inserting images and sizing and positioning them just right, for example, can be so much simpler with LW and Word. That’s why, here and here, I urged the [...]
Help the Gates Foundation decide how to spend money on libraries: Time to free ‘The Great Gatsby’ and other classics and support national digital library systems?
Update, December 3: My defense of the Gates survey against a Southern librarian’s thoughtful criticism of it. In an even more wired future, what will be the needs of public libraries in the U.S. and elsewhere? Just what’s the role of libraries if “a person can access much of the information in the world from [...]
Also posted in National Digital Public Library Tagged Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Global Libraries Initiative, Bill Gates, David H. Rothman, digital libraries, e-books, ebooks, F. Scott Fitzgerald, library books, Melinda Gates, philanthropies, philanthropy, TeleRead, The Great Gatsby
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