Publishers Weekly: With New Model Language, Library E-book Bills Are Back. “… with the 2023 legislative year underway, library advocates are back with new model legislation they say can help ensure ‘fair and equitable licensing terms in e-book contracts for libraries’ while avoiding the thorny copyright issue that doomed Maryland’s law.”
Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT: European forensic experts have published for the first time a practical guide for analyzing manipulated audio files. “This helpful guide describes technical procedures, necessary hardware and software, quality principles, and training recommendations, but also very practical approaches and methods for the forensic authenticity analysis of digital audio recordings.”
TorrentFreak: Z-Library Returns on the Clearnet in Full Hydra-Mode. “The U.S. Government’s crackdown against Z-Library late last year aimed to wipe out the pirate library for good. The criminal prosecution caused disruption but didn’t bring the site completely to its knees. Z-Library continued to operate on the dark web and this weekend, reappeared on the clearnet, offering a ‘unique’ domain name to all users.”
MakeUseOf: 10 Useful Kindle Sites You Should Know About . “Kindles have dramatically longer battery lives than smartphones and tablets and allow you to carry around thousands of books everywhere you go. Ultimately, owning a Kindle can help you read more books in less time. However, as awesome as Kindles are out of the box, there are a collection of websites that you should use to get even more out of your Kindle. The following Kindle websites are the perfect companions to your e-reader.” This is a nice list but the Kindle/RSS tool is the one which grabbed my eyeballs.
Publishers Weekly: Record Number of Libraries Surpassed One Million Digital Lends in 2022. “In a release, OverDrive officials said 10 library systems hit this milestone for the first time in 2022 (down from 22 in 2021, and 29 in 2020). Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Public Library became the first library system to surpass 10 million digital circulations via OverDrive.”
The Verge: How Kindle novelists are using ChatGPT. “Earlier this year, I wrote about genre-fiction authors using AI in their novels. Most wrote for Amazon’s Kindle platform, where an extremely rapid pace of publishing, as fast as a book a month, is the norm. AI helped them write quickly, but it also raised complex aesthetic and ethical questions.”
Ukrainian Jewish Encounter: Free electronic books for children in Ukrainian. “The Librarian Bear invites children aged 3-10 and their parents to join the ‘Let’s Read Together’ club in Ukrainian. This is a virtual reading club of the ‘Let’s Read’ digital library. In this club, you will be able to receive electronic children’s books, cartoons, movies, exercises, and trivia for children every week for free.”
Techdirt: Publisher Wiley Lets Libraries Offer eTextbooks Again… But Only For Nine Months. “Last week, we wrote about how publisher Wiley had removed 1,379 textbook titles from the list of books that academic libraries could lend out, thereby forcing students to have to buy the textbooks, rather than take them out of the library. As we noted, this was an example of how damaging copyright has been on the free flow of information…. Of course, after lots of people got mad about this removal, Wiley relented… but only for a little while. The statement is… kinda weak.”
Motherboard: Publishing Company Starts School Year by Removing Over 1,000 E-Textbooks. “Since late August, academic librarians in the U.S. and abroad have been scrambling to identify alternative textbook options for students and instructors after a major publishing company pulled a large amount of e-book and e-textbook titles from circulation.”
The Hill: Authors slam publishers’ lawsuit against ‘Open Library,’ push for new e-book policies. “Hundreds of authors signed a letter slamming major publishing companies’ lawsuit against a free digital library, and urged publishers to update their policies to allow libraries to purchase copies of e-books.”
Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): Librarians and Lawmakers Push for Greater Access to E-Books. “Librarians and their legislative allies are pushing publishers of electronic books to lower their prices and relax licensing terms, an effort that could make it easier for millions of library users to borrow the increasingly popular digital versions of books.”
California Department of Education: State Superintendent Thurmond Announces Access to Free Literacy and Biliteracy Learning Tool for California Families. “The Footsteps2Brilliance bilingual early literacy program for birth through third graders is accessible 24/7 via the Internet from the smartphones, tablets, and computers that families already own. This resource expands free access to all children and families statewide, creating a much-needed bridge between school and home. The $27 million digital literacy partnership will provide free learning resources in English and Spanish.”
University of Massachusetts Amherst: New Open-Access Book On Microplastic Pollution Highlights The Need For Better Science And Management. “In ‘Microplastic in the Environment: Pattern and Process,’ editor Michael S. Bank, senior scientist at Norway’s Institute of Marine Research and professor of contaminants and complex systems at UMass Amherst, tackles an extraordinarily complex problem that has recently come to popular attention: the problem of microplastics.”
The Verge: The Great Fiction of AI. “In order to survive in a marketplace where infinite other options are a click away, authors need to find their fans and keep them loyal. So they follow readers to the microgenres into which Amazon’s algorithms classify their tastes, niches like ‘mermaid young adult fantasy’ or ‘time-travel romance,’ and keep them engaged by writing in series, each installment teasing the next, which already has a title and set release date, all while producing a steady stream of newsletters, tweets, and videos.”
Library of Congress: What’s new online at the Library of Congress – Summer 2022. New and updated collections, new datasets, over 500 new open access ebooks, newly-digitized books, and crowdsourced transcriptions.
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