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Scriblio Integrates Google Book Search Links

(crossposted at Scriblio.net) Using the newly released book viewability API in Google Book Search, Plymouth State University’s Lamson Library and Learning Commons is one of the first libraries to move beyond simply listing their books online and open them up to reading and searching via the web. Take a look at how this works with […] » about 200 words

Stephen King Doesn’t Hate Kindle

Stephen King writes at Entertainment Weekly.com that he doesn’t hate the Kindle:

Will Kindles replace books? No. And not just because books furnish a room, either. There’s a permanence to books that underlines the importance of the ideas and the stories we find inside them; books solidify an otherwise fragile medium.

But can a Kindle enrich any reader’s life? My own experience — so far limited to 1.5 books, I’ll admit — suggests that it can. For a while I was very aware that I was looking at a screen and bopping a button instead of turning pages. Then the story simply swallowed me, as the good ones always do. I wasn’t thinking about my Kindle anymore; I was rooting for someone to stop the evil Lady Powerstock. It became about the message instead of the medium, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Mildly Funny Scenes I’ve Come Across Recently

Not LMAO, certainly not ROFLcopter-ingly funny, but funny enough to want to snap a picture, and good enough for casual Friday here. The boat in the parking lot, UPS vs. FedEx, and Hoe For Hire are all easy enough to understand (though they leave me open to easy criticism). The fourth photo is of some […] » about 100 words

Books I Now Want To Read…

The problem with working on Scriblio is that I end up running into so many interesting looking books. Just this morning I discovered a number of recent acquisitions in the 19th Century and 20th Century subject feeds in my development instance (also available via RSS). All of this is under active development, so those links […] » about 100 words

Joe’s Favorite Novels

Will pressed Joe, asking him to name his top ten favorite books. Joe pressed back, saying such lists were ridiculous, but still, sometime later he emailed with the following:

Okay, here are the books that got to me at certain points in my life. Not sure I would view them all the same now, but this is a list of sorts.

I found this an interesting challenge, and of course impossible…I have more lists but I stuck to novels…

Top ten novels by female authors

Top ten novels by male authors

Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books

It seems common among contemporary artists that a web search might turn up a few pictures of their works, but not much about them or their works. In this case it’s Nina Katchadourian and the work I’m interested in is her Sorted Books Project. A video interview from the University of Colorado and ResearchChannel.org does […] » about 200 words

And We’re Discarding This?

I read <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/maisonbisson/149529625/" title="Photo Sharing">enough of this to get a good laugh</a>, but not enough to understand if it was serious or not. Some of it reads like satire, but other parts as are dry as, well, they're dry (who really needs a simile anyway, they're just dry, okay?). » about 100 words

Art Deco Hair

Daniela Turudich knows vintage fashion. Her books include not only hair, but how to recreate a vintage wedding, vintage recipes and candy making, and Beauty Secrets of History’s Most Notorious Courtesans. Here’s the description from Art Deco Hair: Art deco has long been associated with uncompromising style and sophistication, and this guide to recreating the […] » about 200 words

The Mystifying Aroma Of Rot

I love libraries, and I love books, but there the needs of our students and limitations of our budgets have no room for misplaced romantic attachments. That’s why I’ve found myself paraphrasing something from Ibiblio’s Paul Jones (via Teleread):

That smell of an old book, that smell of old libraries? That’s the smell of the books rotting.

We must remember that libraries catalog and share information and knowledge, not books. Our students and faculty have already voted with their feet and demonstrated that our paper (and microform) collections of periodicals are useless compared to the online, fully searchable versions. How long before the same happens for books as well?

Connections: some people don’t get this, but there are a number who do (too many to list, actually). This issue is bigger than ebooks alone, but OpenReader deserves a plug here too.