The European Commission have been holding their first summit on digital libraries. From PhysOrg.com:

“Our goal is to make Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage available to all European citizens and researchers for their studies, work or leisure. With its immense expertise and knowledge, this group can make an essential contribution to the European digital library,” said Information Society and Media Commissioner Viviane Reding.

This is a subject close to my heart in many ways. As I am sure I have mentioned before, I am a book junkie. I love books; I couldn’t imagine life without them, fact or fiction, whatever – books are great things. I am also a library employee, and it is plain to see (from the inside at least) that as an industry we are somewhat flat on our arses thanks to a lack of funding from the government. Falling rates of use have been met with cuts in funding, creating a vicious spiral of decline. Libraries desperately need to modernise and move with the times… Continue reading “Digital libraries”

Bored of typing in the postcodes of vague acquaintances on the off chance of seeing high definition pictures of their driveway? Continue reading “Hey, I can see that failed lander from here…”

Ah, good old Billy Gates and his merry band of code-monkeys. They said they’d trounce their competitors, and they sure are trying. Continue reading “Google Earth? Sooooo 2005, baby…”

I have a whole lot of books. I don’t want to get rid of them, but the extra space would be very handy, that’s for certain. Continue reading “Beat Google at their own game…scan your own library automatically”

As a library employee and lover of books, I’ve been following the ongoing ‘upload-the-books’ debate as closely as I have been able to, given time restrictions (y’know, full time employment, feeding myself, my online writing jobs and, of course, this here blog). Continue reading “Publisher decides to pre-empt Google book scan project”

I’m not an economics buff, but there’s something a little odd here as far as I’m concerned. Continue reading “Who *really* failed here?”

George Dyson:

The bound universe has been divided, in recent discussions over the digitization of books, into works in the public domain on one side, works under active copyright on the other, and a vast sea of inactive titles drifting in between. For those who dream of a Universal Library, however, any such classification is deficient, because it neglects the most important sector of the literary universe – books that have not been written yet. Continue reading “George Dyson on the future of books”