MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 3): Elsevier, Music, Ebsco, Google

That National Association of Home Builders say that more home owners want libraries in their homes (Sun Sentinel):

We may think folks are reading less, but 63 percent of homeowners surveyed said they have a library or want one in their homes. That's a 9 percent increase from 2002. Even mass-market home builders are including libraries. Many offer old-fashioned touches such as rolling ladders and circular stairs.

(Unfortunately, I couldn't find any more on the subject or the report but we'll take what we can get). Elsevier announced that they are broadening the distribution of 600 professional titles so that they are available on Science Direct. (Press release)

Elsevier, announced today that over 600 Medical, Veterinary Medicine, and Health Professions book titles will be launched in Health Science eBook Collections in April 2009 on ScienceDirect, its online scientific research platform.

Elsevier's health science books are published under the imprints W.B. Saunders, Mosby, Churchill Livingstone, and Hanley & Belfus, publishers with a rich medical and health science publishing heritage dating back to 1688. The inclusion of these books on ScienceDirect will allow more researchers across the world to access these valuable content resources.

To date, Elsevier's medical and health science book titles have only been available through MD Consult (http://www.mdconsult.com) for clinical practitioners and medical education, Evolve eBooks ( http://evolve.elsevier.com/ebooks) for health professions education, and Veterinary Consult (http://evolve.elsevier.com/vetconsult) for veterinary medicine education. The thousands of authors represented in the Elsevier medical and health science collections on ScienceDirect will now enjoy greater market visibility, increasing the potential for research collaboration and recognition.

Ebsco which has hosted Salem Press content for many years did the honorable thing and purchased the entire company this week. Since they have been paying Salem press a revenue share this one will have been a no-brainer. (I remain convinced this would have been a very nice acquisition for Bowker). (Library Journal)

Salem Press was founded by Frank N. Magill in 1949 as a one-book publishing company, releasing its staple product: Masterplots. It has since developed into an independent library reference book publisher known for such reference series as “Great Lives from History,” “The Decades in America,” and Critical Surveys of Literature.”

The religious moronity is stepping up its attempts to re-define scientific 'theory' in Texas and in the process push the teaching of science back into the 1400's. (NYTimes)

The debate here has far-reaching consequences; Texas is one of the nation’s biggest buyers of textbooks, and publishers are reluctant to produce different versions of the same material.

Many biologists and teachers said they feared that the board would force textbook publishers to include what skeptics see as weaknesses in Darwin’s theory to sow doubt about science and support the Biblical version of creation.

“These weaknesses that they bring forward are decades old, and they have been refuted many, many times over,” Kevin Fisher, a past president of the Science Teachers Association of Texas, said after testifying. “It’s an attempt to bring false weaknesses into the classroom in an attempt to get students to reject evolution.”

To be filed under 'why did it take you so long', Music publishers have begun to realize the value of lyrics and the art-work that goes along with a CD or Album. (Billboard)

But a few years ago many discovered a value that was sitting under their nose: the lyrics right. “And it doesn’t even need the master rights,” Channon added. Since putting lyrics onto mugs, clothing, toys, greeting cards and other merchandise, EMI has had to grow into becoming a manufacturer and distributor, Channon said. But its definetely a volume business as EMI said 3 million units of one lyric-licensed merchandise piece for a department store chain in Australia realized about 30,000 pounds profit.

As the article notes, however there are already hundreds of lyrics sites that the record companies have failed to police and it is going to be difficult for them to get this back under control.

When the words “Mr. Blue Sky” and lyrics are entered into a search, it returns thousands of separate sites offering those lyrics, and publishers “don’t get one red cent,” one panelist said. But Metro Lyrics CEO and co-founder Alan Juristovski said that publishers shouldn’t shut down pirate sites—rather, they should convert them to legitimate sites by trying to get them to license the lyrics, something which he claimed his site does.

"Mr Blue Sky" would that be an ELO fan? I've mentioned lyrics before here. Robert Darton in The New York Review of Books had a very interesting and (almost) poetic discussion of the potential impact of the Google/AAP agreement on the publishing industry. Well worth reading. (NYReview)

After lengthy negotiations, the plaintiffs and Google agreed on a settlement, which will have a profound effect on the way books reach readers for the foreseeable future. What will that future be?

No one knows, because the settlement is so complex that it is difficult to perceive the legal and economic contours in the new lay of the land. But those of us who are responsible for research libraries have a clear view of a common goal: we want to open up our collections and make them available to readers everywhere. How to get there? The only workable tactic may be vigilance: see as far ahead as you can; and while you keep your eye on the road, remember to look in the rearview mirror.

Book Website Developers - Update

An essay in the NY Times book review on book web site developers who are gaining some notoriety as really good cover designers have in the past. (NYTimes):

The task of the book Web designer can be a tricky one. “Book sites present challenges that fashion and other sorts of sites do not,” Rabb said in a telephone interview. Because of the nature of the book medium in general, and the hope of selling movie rights in particular, “any time I get too specific about the appearance of a character, people start to get very nervous,” he added.

Instead, Rabb aims to represent a book’s “gestalt,” as he puts it. His sites often include original material from the author, as in the one he created for “The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet,” Reif Larsen’s much anticipated first novel about a young Montana prodigy obsessed with mapmaking. That site — which will be rolled out incrementally starting later this month until the book’s release in May — represents a failed “Smithsonian exhibition” of the title character’s work, with some 10 different “cabinets” documenting everything from a taxonomy of all the animals on earth to a map of the American West.

It is nice to see Sheila English (friend of the blog) get a mention in the article as well:

The book video business began back in 2002, when Sheila English, an unpublished romance novelist, trademarked the term Book Trailer and started her own company, Circle of Seven Productions. Her first clients were mostly science-fiction and romance novelists, but the invention of video-sharing sites brought interest from mainstream publishers. Three years ago, English’s company had 12 projects. In 2008, it had 140.

Update:
Over at Publishing Trends they remind me that they did this last month:

And any remaining skeptics out there, take note: Website visits translate directly to the number of books bought. Book shoppers who had visited an author website in the past week bought 38% more books, from a wider range of retailers, than those who had not visited an author site. “Is putting up a website going to make a book a bestseller? No,” says Chin. “Is the website going to help the author build an audience? I believe it can. What you don’t want is for someone to hear about your book, search for it with Google, and find nothing. That’s a potential lost sale.”

Web presence is especially essential in today’s economy. “Websites have become even more important as people are not in stores discovering books,” Fitzgerald says. “We need to get them jazzed about a title and their favorite author and give them reason not just to buy the book, but also to have a relationship with the author and his or her work so they become evangelists for them with fellow readers. These next months, author websites and communications with readers are going to be critical for engendering excitement in readers online, since something as crucial as in-store browsing is not happening.”

The point, of course, is not just to get readers to visit an author site once, but to keep them coming back. How do you make a website sticky?“The saying ‘build it and they will come,’ well, they won’t,” says Burke. He and the other designers we spoke with agreed that flashy design is not a key to success, and the Codex Group research bears that out, with Stephenie Meyer’s website as a case in point. It receives more traffic than any other fiction author site, yet its design is extremely basic, “probably a generic template where you plug in your header graphic,” says Hildick-Smith. “She may only be paying $15 a month for this site on some server system. It’s not elaborately designed at all. But she’s got a daily blog, and more than any other site in our study, she has links to fan sites. Fan site links appear to contribute to loyal audience traffic.”

SONY to Offer NetLibrary Collections

SONY and Netlibrary announce a collaboration that will enable library patrons to check-out an e-Reader and gain access to several Netlibrary e-Book collections. From the press release:

The program includes a Reader model PRS-505, a collection of titles from leading publishers and all required licenses. Using the library's PC, librarians can download a mobile collection title or titles from the NetLibrary site to the Reader as necessary.

Libraries that purchase Mobile Collections will be able to offer their patrons the ability to check out Readers for onsite or offsite use, depending on the policy established by each library. Collections, selected by NetLibrary's collections librarian, include Career Development and Business Self Help (30 titles), Management and Leadership (22 titles), Popular Fiction (29 titles), Romance (19 titles) and Young Adult Fiction (24 titles).

"OCLC member libraries have indicated a strong interest in providing a mobile device that library patrons can use to read eBooks on the go," said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. "The NetLibrary collections available with Sony's Reader Digital Book offer great variety for readers with different interests, and make it possible for library patrons to enjoy many eBooks on one portable device that offers state-of-the-art readability."

"Librarians have always been leaders in exposing their patrons to new technologies related to reading, research and learning," said Steve Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division. "We are pleased to work with OCLC and its membership to further this cause."

Circulating Reader units through OCLC's newly established program is just one way libraries are able to offer eBooks to their communities and expose people to electronic reading. Thousands of public libraries in the United States already offer online collections that patrons can borrow, typically for two to three weeks. eBooks are offered in the Adobe PDF format and it is expected that the recently established EPUB format will become common.

Bibliographic Studies

The Library of Congress has announced they have appointed R2 Consulting to look into the current marketplace for cataloging records in MARC format. The deliverable from this engagement due June 30th will include current practices including a review of existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability. This project is considered a follow on phase in the library's review of the creation and distribution of bibliographic data. From the press release:

The Library has recognized that its role as a producer of bibliographic data is changing and that other libraries have options as they consider sources for cataloging records. The conclusions outlined in a report issued last year, "On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control," indicate that cataloging activity must be shared more broadly and equitably among all libraries. Before the Library considers any changes to its cataloging commitments or priorities, however, it is vital to understand the extent to which other libraries rely on its contributions. The study will examine cataloging production and practice across all library types, including cooperative activity through OCLC, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), the National Library of Medicine, the National Agricultural Library, library consortia, and other shared cataloging initiatives.

Under the general direction of Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress, R2 will develop a description of the current economic model and will determine the extent of library participation in and reliance on existing structures and organizations. The study will show the degree to which sources other than the Library of Congress are supplying quality records in economically sufficient quantities, or whether most libraries use records created by the Library. This project is oriented toward fact-finding and reporting rather than solutions, and it is intended to produce a snapshot of the existing market. The project is scheduled for completion by June 30, 2009, with a written report and visual representation of the existing marketplace. Progress reports, along with various other data collection and communication tools, will be made available via the R2 Web site at www.r2consulting.org and the Bibliographic Control Working Group site at www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/.

"I am very optimistic that the project will shed new light on the current cataloging supply and distribution environment," Marcum said, "in such a way that future opportunities and challenges can be promptly identified and evaluated. I am hopeful that librarians and all other participants in the distribution chain will be as forthcoming as possible during the investigative process. Our intention is to understand as fully as possible both the economic and workflow implications for the U.S. and Canadian marketplace prior to implementing any changes at the Library."

On a broadly related note, the Guardian reported this week on the spat over OCLC's revision of their data use provisions that all member OCLC libraries are expected to abide by. This report is slanted against OCLC but nevertheless the organization has handled the whole issue horribly, and management has now been forced to do what they should have done in the first place which is to hold a open forum (which will now be an open bitch session).

Snowy Monday in New York

Empire State River View 2, originally uploaded by Personanondata.

Twittering

I have taken the plunge and will experiment with Twitter.

www.twitter.com/personanondata

MediaWeek (Vol 2, No 2):

In the Wall Street Journal this weekend an article on Dash Hammett's, The Thin Man. Tom Nolan explores the deeper purpose of the book that many at the time of its publication thought of as a cast off. Many of us will know The Thin Man from the William Powell Myrna Loy movies. (Myrna is one of Mr. PND's favorites).

The author himself made no great claims for his creation. "Nobody ever invented a more insufferably smug pair of characters," he said of the book's married protagonists, Nick and Nora Charles; and in 1957, four years before his death, he would claim that "'The Thin Man' always bored me."

Yet Hammett -- often as hedonistic in life as the heavy drinkers in his stories -- was sober and industrious while writing the novel during his tenancy in an unimpressive New York hotel managed by his friend and fellow author Nathanael West; and, one way or another, the book and its characters would earn Dashiell Hammett (according to biographer Richard Layman) close to a million dollars.

The subsequent success of half a dozen MGM screwball-comedy movies inspired by "The Thin Man" and starring William Powell and Myrna Loy perpetuated the impression among serious readers and critics that Hammett's last effort was in all ways a lesser work and maybe even a worthless one. But a careful reading of this novel (and what better birthday present could a book receive?) reveals a still-sparkling comedy of manners within which lurks a vision of human affairs as grim as any social realist's.

Ann Patchett in the same newspaper (WSJ) pays respect to her library but more importantly sees some impressive changes in the reading habits of the youth (or as Vinnie would say Yoots);

According to a recent report from the National Endowment for the Arts, our Nashville library is bearing out a national trend. For the first time in more than 25 years, the number of people reading fiction is on the rise.

Am I surprised? No, but then I see the world of reading from a very particular angle. I spend a lot of time speaking in schools and town halls and public libraries where people who read and read and read pack the auditoriums because they want to talk about literature. Inevitably someone in the audience raises their hand to ask me how worried I am about the crisis in publishing, the rise of electronic books, and the death of the reading. "What death of reading?" I say. "Look at all of you." I have long refused to participate in the last rites of what is both my passion and my profession. I meet too many people who stay up half the night racing towards a final chapter. We are a hardy bunch, we readers. The rumor is we'll play around with a Kindle or an I-Book for awhile but eventually give up on the whole endeavor, the logic being who would want to read a book when there are so many enticing video games to play and Web sites to surf. But I'm more of the Charlton Heston school: you'll get my paperback of "One Hundred Years of Solitude" away from me when you pry it out of my cold, dead hands.

One of the largest Public Television companies WGBH Boston has sold its Music catalog to a Canadian company. (I am not sure if we should be pissed about this or not - not because it is a Canadian company but isn't this a public asset since public dollars fund public television?)

Canadian music publishing firm ole has purchased a worldwide majority ownership interest in the music rights of the catalog of WGBH Boston, the producer of television and on-line programming for PBS. The amount paid for the deal was not disclosed. The terms of the deal include co-ownership of the music in 1,200 individual episodes and programs, as well as a substantial stake in the music rights for all WGBH programming in the near future. WGBH programs include "Antiques Roadshow," "American Experience," "Nova," "Frontline," "Masterpiece," "Arthur" and "Curious George."

Reed Elsevier sold $1.5billion in debt to fund the Choice Point acquisition. Telegraph OCLC bows to significant (or at least vocal opposition) to the revision of its data usage terms and will convene a review board to examine the terms all over again. This time will a little more openness.

The purpose of this Review Board is to engage the membership and solicit feedback and questions before the new policy is implemented. In order to allow sufficient time for feedback and discussion, implementation of the Policy will be delayed until the third quarter of the 2009 calendar year.

In November 2008, OCLC announced that it was implementing the new Policy to update the existing Guidelines for Use and Transfer of OCLC-Derived Records. The goals of the new Policy are to modernize record use and transfer practices for application on the Web, foster new uses of WorldCat data that benefit members and clarify data sharing rights and restrictions. The Policy is intended to foster innovative use of shared records, while protecting the investment OCLC members have made in WorldCat, and ensuring that use of WorldCat records provides benefit to the membership.

"We have listened to questions and concerns about the revised Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records and have concluded that the issues surrounding the Policy needed further review and discussion,” said Larry Alford, Chair, OCLC Board of Trustees, and Dean of University Libraries, Temple University.

Lesson to publishers: When you run out of space don't simply drop content - especially when the content may be of interest to a key demographic: (MediaPost).

TV Guide is dropping the listings for youth-oriented channels the CW and MTV, reports Variety. CEO Scott Crystal said it was a space consideration. The magazine can only run 70 channels in its prime-time grid. The trade mag speculated that younger viewers who watch CW and MTV may get their information from set-top box listings.

Eminence Gris Jason Epstein has An Autopsy of the Book Business in The Daily Beast and he concludes:

The effect of this post-Gutenberg Revolution will be to radically decentralize the marketplace for books and greatly reduce the cost of entry for would-be publishers. Because these changes imply a superfluity of books—some readable and valuable and many others not—the need for filtering and branding is a vital task for future librarians and bibliographers. Meanwhile, through today’s gloom we may discern a spectacularly bright future in which the rewards to writers and readers and even to publishers will be unprecedented as world-wide multilingual backlists expand online in a cultural revolution orders of magnitude greater than Gutenberg’s world-changing technology generated five centuries ago.