on ebooks and ownership

Here's a philosophical question - Do I own the ebooks that I have purchased?

This question came to me after performing a mundane task - compiling my annual "What I Read This Year List." I was performing my recordkeeping in a Facebook service. The Facebook service included a datapoint whether the book was owned or borrowed. This was easy, as I bought books or borrowed them from a library. I didn't track this in my LibraryThing account because I felt strongly that LT was where I managed my personal library, and never made any notations about books that I'd borrowed.

Then, in fall 2010, I bought a Nook. I travel a lot, and I an a pretty speedy reader, so my trips often require that 3-6 books accompany me. As I was due to make a trip that would require 10 hour of travel time each way, bracketing a 5-day stay, I was looking at taking 8 books. This would have been at least 1/4 of my suitcase. So I researched and decided on a Nook because I could expand its memory, swap out batteries, load my own pdbs, epubs and pdfs, and use the cool "loan" feature to trade some title with other Nook owners (even though I only knew 1 such person at the time). Its eInk screen is very easy to read. I got to travel with clothes and leave room for souvenirs.

I still buy books. I love books. I still frequent public libraries. I cannot say enough about the quality of the Alexandria Public Library. But I cannot deny that I have bought more ebooks that print books over the past 8 months. At least one a week.

I first considered the concept of ownership when I attended a reading by William Gibson. I loved his most recent book, Zero History. I took a number of my older Gibson paperbacks with me for him to sign, as I hadn't been to one of his signings since 1984.

But not Zero History, because you can't get an ebook inscribed. That saddened me.

I had a related moment when I bought ebooks that the latest n two different series. I owned the others in paperback. This felt wrong, like I really owned the earlier ones but not these. I couldn't see them next to each other on my shelves. No one perusing my shelves would know I had them. But when I was reading the ebook I wanted to refer back to something in an earlier volume, which I did not have on the reader. Might I buy physical copies out of a sense of completeness and the ebook for mobile access and searchability?

Then, when I was updating my year-end reading list in Facebook, I found myself puzzling over the "owned" or "borrowed" column. Did I really own my ebooks?

In one sense I do. I have files on my Nook. I can access them using Adobe Digital Editions or the Nook PC App. I can preserve them to some extent. I have some sense of control over the files.

In the legal sense I do not. I have actually licensed the use of that file for use on one or more devices. The Nook legal notice says that I cannot "copy, transfer, sublicense, assign, rent, lease, lend, resell or in any way transfer any rights to, all or any portion of the Digital Content to any third party, except in connection with the normal use of the lending feature available through the Service, or as expressly permitted by the Terms of Use or applicable third-party license agreement." So, I can only lend using the Lend feature, and I can' resell my ebooks like I could sell my paperbacks.

I don't really own them. How confortable am I with that? Moderately, but not entirely. How much do I miss the physicality? It depends on the time of day. When I'm on the Metro hauling things to and from work, or rushing through an airport, I do not miss books at all. When I'm standing in front of my bookcases, I want to see all my books on those shelves, not on a device charging in my living room.

So, I'm conflicted. I suspect I will sometimes end up buying both.

My year in reading

I pulled together my list of books read in 2010, which comes to 84 books. It's not actually all the books that I read, but all the new books I read, not the re-reads. There were at least a dozen of those. I have a lot of time on my Metro ride to and from work. Also - no judging, please. As a colleague noted this year, I have "unexpected depths of shallowness" in some of my reading. I read horror and science fiction and mysteries. Live with it.

I need a new way to do this. I was using Visual Bookshelf in Facebook, but its export does not include the data from lists, as in "Read in 2010." I also had a custom filed if I own or borrowed the book -- also lost. I don't do this in LibraryThing because I borrow so many of my books and don't want to include them there. I'm open to suggestions.

Here's the list:

“Yellow Blue Tibia” by Adam Roberts

“Polystom” by Adam Roberts

“Gradisil” by Adam Roberts

“God of Clocks” by Alan Campbell

“Iron Angel” by Alan Campbell

“Scar Night” by Alan Campbell

“Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America” by Barbara Ehrenreich

“Dead in the Family “ by Charlaine Harris

“How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe” by Charles Yu

“Dreadnought” by Cherie Priest

“Boneshaker” by Cherie Priest

“Kraken” by China Mieville

“The Love We Share Without Knowing” by Christopher Barzak

“Bryant & May off the Rails” by Christopher Fowler

“Bryant and May on the Loose” by Christopher Fowler

“Seventy-Seven Clocks” by Christopher Fowler

“Ten Second Staircase” by Christopher Fowler

“Full Dark House” by Christopher Fowler

“White Corridor” by Christopher Fowler

“The Victoria Vanishes” by Christopher Fowler

“Rune” by Christopher Fowler

“Seventy-Seven Clocks” by Christopher Fowler

“The Water Room” by Christopher Fowler

“The Tears of the Furies” by Christopher Golden

“Bite Me: A Love Story” by Christopher Moore

“Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa” by Dambisa Moyo

“The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York” by Deborah Blum

“The Alchemy Of Stone” by Ekaterina Sedia

“The Half-Made World” by Felix Gilman

“Blameless” by Gail Carriger

“Changeless” by Gail Carriger

“Soulless” by Gail Carriger

“Andy Warhol and the Can That Sold the World” by Gary Indiana

"House of Fallen Trees" by Gina Ranalli

“Basilisk” by Graham Masterton

“The Fall” by Guillermo del Toro

“The Man from Beijing” by Henning Mankell

“Parasite Eve” by Hideaki Sena

“Stone's Fall: A Novel” by Iain Pears

“The Secret of Crickley Hall” by James Herbert

“O Gentle Death” by Janet Neel

“You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto” by Jaron Lanier

“The Bellini Card” by Jason Goodwin

“The Snake Stone: A Novel” by Jason Goodwin

“The Janissary Tree: A Novel” by Jason Goodwin

“Shades of Grey: A Novel” by Jasper Fforde

“Aurorarama” by Jean-Christophe Valtat

“The Burning Wire” by Jeffery Deaver

“Changes: A Novel of the Dresden Files” by Jim Butcher

“Johannes Cabal the Detective” by Jonathan L. Howard

“Something to Declare: Essays on France and French Culture” by Julian Barnes

“The Passage” by Justin Cronin

“Beautiful Creatures” by Kami Garcia

“The Indian Bride” by Karin Fossum

“He Who Fears the Wolf ” by Karin Fossum

“When the Devil Holds the Candle” by Karin Fossum

“Black Magic Sanction” by Kim Harrison

“Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape” by Kirk Savage

“Paradise” by Koji Suzuki

“The Betrayal of the Blood Lily” by Lauren Willig

“Fever Dream” by Lincoln Child

“Far North: A Novel” by Marcel Theroux

“Bad Monkeys” by Matt Ruff

“Critique of Criminal Reason” by Michael Gregorio

“The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

“In Light of India” by Octavio Paz

“The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi

“Skippy Dies” by Paul Murray

“The Mao Case” by Qiu Xiaolong

“Kill the Dead” by Richard Kadrey

“2666: A Novel” by Roberto Bolano

“Whitechapel Gods” by S.M. Peters

“The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements” by Sam Kean

“The Little Stranger” by Sarah Waters

“Daemons Are Forever” by Simon R. Green

“The Kingdom Beyond the Waves” by Stephen Hunt

“The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest” by Stieg Larsson

“The Slynx: A Novel” by Tatyana Tolstaya

“The Better Mousetrap” by Tom Holt

“You Don't Have to Be Evil to Work Here, But it Helps” by Tom Holt

“In Your Dreams” by Tom Holt

“The Portable Door” by Tom Holt

“Earth, Air, Fire and Custard” by Tom Holt

“Big Machine: A Novel” by Victor LaValle

“Zero History” by William Gibson

My favorites:

"Zero History." I love the story arc of the characters through his recent books, and his take on international marketing culture.

"The Kraken." I am a fan of novels where someone discovers a destiny that they were unaware of, and unknown societies just hidden from our own. Of course, I also love everything that China Mieville writes.

"Monument Wars." I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of urban planning, or the history of Washington D.C.

"The Alchemy of Stone." I loved this lyrical novel about what it means to wish to be human.

"Kill the Dead." I cannot recommend the Sandman Slim books enough for their gritty portrayal of Los Angeles, by way of Hell. That said, these books are not for everyone, as there is some extreme violence. Not gratuitous violence in my estimation, but more than some might be able to handle.

"Bad Monkeys." I am still not sure I know what the truth is.

Cherie Priest's Clockwork Century novels. Novels that make the steampunk aesthetic make sense, and feature the south and the pioneer west. I also had the pleasure of meeting her this year, and she's a gracious woman with a fabulous sense of humor.

"The Half-Made World." A steampunk western. I was extremely annoyed when it ended and it seems that there will be another book, because I wanted to find out what happened right away. But hooray, there will be another book.

"The Windup Girl." One of the most lauded SF novels of the year, which was highly deserved.

"The Disappearing Spoon." Fascinating personal stories from the history of science, framed through the discovery of elements.

"Aurorarama." I keep having to add that word to spellcheck dictionaries. An amazing concept where a decadent utopia in the arctic is poised for cultural revolution.

Alan Campbell's Deepgate Codex books. I don't know how I missed these intriguing books about a city chained in the sky over a gateway to Hell, and the wars between the gods when Hell opens up.

"Bright-Sided." I am not a fan of the self-esteem movement, especially in education. This book discusses the positive thinking movement, which I find equally fuzzy-headed.

Some of my surprises:

The Christopher Fowler Bryant and May books. I love quirky, and these English mysteries are full of that. I was particularly amused to read "Rune," one of Fowler's horror novels, to find that an earlier version of the characters were featured.

Tom Holt's J.W. Wells & Co books. I read a Tom Holt book some years ago and just didn't like it, even with its quirkiness. For some reason I picked up one of the Wells, book, and it struck the right note with me. The concept of taking the firm from Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Sorcerer" and bringing it into present day with clueless employees is a lot of fun.

Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate books. Supernatural historical romance-y fantasies. Silly, yes, but fun.

"2666." This book seems right up my alley -- academics, missing scholars, serial killers. And yet, I just could not finish it. If my friend Mike -- who is in the same boat -- ever finishes it, I have sworn to try it again.

"You are Not a Gadget." I agreed with some of its positions, but vehemently disagreed with others.

2009 in review

As is always the case for me at the end of the year, I find myself waxing nostalgic.

What were my favorite books of the year?

• Finch
• The City and the City
• Sandman Slim
• The Chalk Circle Man
• Chronic City
• The Year of the Flood
  
• The Girl who Played with Fire
• The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind
• Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture
• Free: The Future of a Radical Price

My favorite movies?

• District 9
• Food, Inc
• Julie and Julia (the Julia parts)
• Coraline
• Star Trek
• Coco Before Chanel
• Up (I know, I don't usually like sentimental things, but this was just so darned likable)
  

There's a longer list of movies I haven't seen but want to:

• Avatar
• Sherlock Holmes
• Up in the Air
• A Single Man
• A Serious Man
• The Young Victoria
• Bright Star
• Inglorious Basterds
• 9
• Fantastic Mr. Fox
  
• The September Issue
• The White Ribbon
• Bad Lieutenant
  
• Creation was never released in the U.S., but it looks like I'll get to see it at a screening in January
  

My favorite conferences?

• OR09
• DigCCurr 2009
  
• 2009 NDIIPP partners' meeting

Accomplishments?

• We released our BIL Java library on SourceForge to support the BagIt standard. Kudos to Justin Littman and Brian Vargas.
  
• We moved a number of our tools into supported LoC production, and opened up some of our in-development tools for limited external partner testing. Kudos to Justin Littman, Dan Chudnov, Dan Krech, Paul Petty, Jon Steinbach, Chun Yi, Praveen Bokka, Sohail Aslam, and Brian Vargas.
• We launched an expanded internal LoC transfer and workflow service with a greatly improved UI (and more features and improvements to come). Kudos to Justin Littman, Dan Chudnov, Paul Petty, Chun Yi, and Brian Vargas.
• The National Digital Newspaper Program hit a million page milestone and updated their entire underlying infrastructure. Congratulations to David Brunton, Deb Thomas, Ray Murray, Ivey Glendon, Henry Carter, Tonijala Penn, Dory Bower, Ed Summers, Dan Krech, Dan Chudnov, Curt Harvey, Justin Littman, and Brian Vargas.
  
• The World Digital Library launched. Congratulations to Dave Hafken, Michelle Rago, Sandy Bostian, Kapil Thangavelu, Risa Ohara, Mike Giarlo, Sohail Aslam, Paul Petty, Chun Yi, and Laura Keen.
• Thanks to our QA testing team for all their hard work on all the group's projects during the year: JoKeeta Joyner, La Tonya Freeman, Tasmin McDonald, and Preethi Mothkupally.
  
• Thanks to our Ops team - Scott Phelps, Salim Malik, Ken Stailey, and Kurt Yoder - for all their support on all our group's projects this year.

something odd happened today

Last weekend I went to my local public library (which I love), where I spotted a book that was on my to-be-read list. I keep a list of books I want to read, and periodically search the library's catalog to see if they have it at any of their branches. I had this book noted on my list as being held in the collection of my local branch. Depending upon how much I want to read the book, I'll put a hold onto the book if they have it in the collection but it isn't checked in. This is a book that held a middling position on my list for a while, a 2007 sequel to a science fiction novel by a newish but award-winning author which I liked but didn't love, but thought might be interesting. I grabbed the book off the shelf, but, in the process of wandering around and gathering up other books, I must have set it down and it didn't make it to the self-checkout with me, something I didn't discover until I got home. Ah well, I knew I'd be back this weekend, and maybe it would still be available.

I returned today and wandered over to the shelf. It wasn't there. I decided to look the book up and see when it was due and put a hold on it this time.

It wasn't there any more. It wasn't in the catalog, and the author wasn't in the catalog either.

I left with the books I found and one that was on hold for me. I considered asking about the missing book/author, but there was quite a line and I didn't want to hold people up while I asked my crazy-conspiracy-sounding questions -- how did this author and his books disappear in the last week? And why?

eReading

Via TeleRead, I found an essay about eReading devices by Jennifer Chapelle on treocentral. The piece, "Centro, iPhone, and that Other Reading Device (Kindle 2)," briefly describes her experiences with a Centro and an iPhone, focusing on the new Kindle 2.

Overall, she liked it. But she's not throwing away her other devices.

If you've ever been interested in getting an eReader type of device, I can definitely recommend the Kindle 2. It's not the cheapest gadget, but it does have a lot of features, and don't forget that 3G Sprint radio inside. If you want an eReader that is thin, lightweight, fast, looks great, has a built-in dictionary and a battery saving sleep-mode with some cool portraits, the Kindle 2 from Amazon is a great choice.

And if you don't care about those eReaders like the Kindle and the Sony device, just stick with your Treo or Centro. Those are great little eBook readers! And we know all the other great stuff you can do on them like talking on the phone, texting, writing documents, listening to music, taking photos, surfing the internet on decent looking web browsers, playing games, etc. My Centro and Treo Pro will be staying right by my side, Kindle or no Kindle.

I saw an interview with Jeff Bezos on Charlie Rose last week, which was primarily a discussion of the Kindle 2. My take-away is that the killer feature for the Kindle is the wireless purchasing of books that does not require a PC. Bezos is also a huge fan of the ability to bookmark your location in a text on your Kindle, and when you pick up another of your Kindles, the devices will sync up and you will find the same bookmark. Interesting, but I'm not sure I understand yet why you would have more than one. One at home and one at work? One downstairs and one upstairs? It's already portable. The functionality that they are working on where you can sync between your Kindle and a reader app on a cell phone and back interests me more. His example was reading on a cell phone while waiting in line at the grocery store, and having your Kindle aware of your new bookmark once you get home. That use case works better for me.

His statement that he wants to deliver "Every book ever in print in any language" gives me pause. That feels potentially monopolistic for the eBook distribution sector. Well, at least for their proprietery AZW ebooks. But if theirs becomes the most successful pipeline for eBooks, will other creators and distributors of other formats be able to compete? I can only assume the open access eBook realm will not fade away.

I found myself looking at the Sony eReader a week ago. The touchscreen and non-touchscreen versions boths have some different usability issues. The touchscreen is the better of the two, and supports annotation. It supports more files formats that the Kindle. It requires a PC has no wireless features. And it runs on MonteVista Linux, which a member of my family worked on a couple of years ago.

For now at least I plan to continue to read books on my Centro. I have about 3 dozen books, some recent, some classics. And I haven't divested myself of my nearly 3,000 dead tree books. Or my library cards.

scholastic books flickr set

I came across a link to a flickr set that someone has created with covers and illustrations from Scholastic Book Services books from the 1960s and 1970s. I _loved_ it when the Scholastic book order forms were distributed, and I always ordered something like a dozen books every time. This set includes a number of books that I know I owned, and even a very few that I _still_ own. This person has a great collection.

EDIT: Here's another flickr set.

saw a kindle today

The man who sat down next to me on the Metro this morning had a Kindle. While he really just wanted to read, he politely answered a couple of questions and let me hold it. It feels lighter than I expected, and the screen is reasonable clear and high contrast. It's also not as ugly as I thought. Each screen shows about 3 paragraphs of text (better than my Palm), but the entire screen flashes every time to navigate to a new page.

If anyone who has a Kindle is interested, he was reading Ewan McGregor's Long Way Round.

HP BookPrep

Via ReadWriteWeb, I cam across HP BookPrep, a prototype print-on-demand service for, and this is really a quote, "every book ever published." The work from page images and process them through their own process into PDF "eMasters" for printing. It's an interesting prototype.

The pilot collection is Foodsville, a food and cooking community site. Members can read and purchase cookbooks at the site's free library, where books can be discovered by keyword, by author, or by browsing through tags. Of course, they're not actually "free" -- the print-on-demand costs ranged from $7 to $32 when I browsed through the 141 titles currently available. You don't have to buy the books -- you can read them online. I browsed through Lafcadio Hearn's La Cuisine Creole and found it readable. (I love the recipe title "Delicate Rusks for Convalescents" on page 235)

I'm a fan of Lafcadio Hearn, so I checked Amazon, and found that the same POD version is available for $10.26 versus $13.96 on Foodsville, both listed as marked down from $19.95 There is what looks to be a different POD version available from Amazon as well -- also a facsimile of the 1885 edition -- for $21.24. I'm not sure which I'd choose.

It does not say where they're getting the page images from. I'd really like to know that.

in other kindle news

A library cannot loan a Kindle without it being a violation of the Terms of Service. It also cannot keep patrons who borrow one from adding their own content.

ereaders

There was an interesting article about the Amazon Kindle in the New York Times -- Freed From the Page, but a Book Nonetheless. The article rightly addresses two of the factors that are key to the success of portable ebook readers -- the quality of the display and usability of the interface, and the physical portability of the unit itself. In those areas, the Kindle doesn't do too badly. Stephen King wrote a column for Entertainment Weekly where he reported on his first use of a Kindle -- he found that he was able to enjoy the book he was reading and the fact that he was using an ebook reader faded into the background.

The article also reports on Steve Jobs' attack on the Kindle not as a device, but as a tool for an untenable market niche because "people don’t read anymore." The article countered the percentage that he presented with some data from a survey conducted in August 2007 by Ipsos Public Affairs for The Associated Press.

27 percent of Americans had not read a book in the previous year. Not as bad as Mr. Jobs’s figure, but dismaying to be sure. Happily, however, the same share — 27 percent — read 15 or more books.

In fact, when we exclude Americans who had not read a single book in that year, the average number of books read was 20, raised by the 8 percent who read 51 books or more. In other words, a sizable minority does not read, but the overall distribution is balanced somewhat by those who read a lot.

Both sides are trying to make a point using statistics: Jobs' figure is high, and the NYT is getting a favorable average by excluding an entire class of respondents. But it's the wrong point. Neither article really dealt with the issues surrounding the content -- availability, formats, interoperability, and DRM. Those are what's really crippling the ebook reader market, not whether people read any more. Make the content as openly available as possible, in as many formats as possible, and transferable between desktops and devices and between people, _and_ do away with the crippling DRM, and then there will be a thriving ebook and ereader market.

amazon kindle

There was an article in the New York Times yesterday on ebooks that briefly mentioned two upcoming business models:

In October, the online retailer Amazon.com will unveil the Kindle, an electronic book reader that has been the subject of industry speculation for a year, according to several people who have tried the device and are familiar with Amazon’s plans. The Kindle will be priced at $400 to $500 and will wirelessly connect to an e-book store on Amazon’s site.

That is a significant advance over older e-book devices, which must be connected to a computer to download books or articles.

Also this fall, Google plans to start charging users for full online access to the digital copies of some books in its database, according to people with knowledge of its plans. Publishers will set the prices for their own books and share the revenue with Google. So far, Google has made only limited excerpts of copyrighted books available to its users.

The Google announcement is, I think, a fair one -- right now they limit viewing to copyrighted books to a snippet view. If a work is still clearly in copyright and the rights owner wants to release that book for full access, they should be able to charge for that access. It's their right. Of course I'd like to see more publishers make e-versions of their title available freely ...

The Amazon news gives me pause, not knowing all the details yet. You access the files wirelessly -- do you read them via a live connection from their servers, or is the file downloaded to the device? I understand why some think it's a plus to not require a full-fledged computer to get access to a book, but it potentially seems like a really limited version of access. The ebook files will be Mobipocket format and the Kindle device seems to use a proprietary wireless system to grab the files (known through their FCC filing), so the files likely won't be available to other devices. They are not using the Adobe format for their files; it's not clear if the Kindle will support reading of Abobe ebooks from other sources or if you can only read Amazon files. Can you get the files off the device or back it up? If you can get the files off the device, will they work with the desktop version of Mobipocket? There have also been complaints about Mobipocket DRM.

This is all speculation given the lack of details. TeleRead has some speculation of their own. I look forward to hearing more about the product and the service.

Google exposes plain text

An interesting post from the "Inside Google Book Search" blog:

http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/07/greater-access-to-public-domain-works.html

For the works that Google deems to be in the public domain, they are exposing the full text "text layer' of the work. This is not the pages images, but what one assumes is the output of their OCR process. The plain text is organized into pages and retains punctuation and line breaks. You can toggle between the plain text and page image view.

This is a huge breakthrough in terms of accessibility -- the principle reason that they cite for the new feature. What is slightly disappointing is that you cannot download the plan text version to use offline reader tools -- you have to read online. That could be burdensome for some.

It would also be nice someday if the downloaded PDFs included the plain text behind the scenes to support searching within the PDF.

Espresso Book Machine

That the Espresso Book Machine exists is not new news -- World Bank and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina went into beta-test last year. On Demand showed models at BEA earlier this month. The story of the company is an interesting one, as is the QT movie of the alpha version (called Perfect Book) on the On Demand Books site.

What is news is that New York Public Library has received the first production machine. They plan to begin by offering 20 titles on demand from the 200,000 from the Open Content Alliance. It's been variously described as a "vending machine for books" and an "ATM for books."

It was also announced that the New Orleans Public Library, the University of Alberta campus bookstore, the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont, and at the Open Content Alliance are the next to receive machines. I am particularly excited about the possibilities for New Orleans Public -- what a great way to offer services to patrons while they are still re-building their collections and facilities two years after Hurricane Katrina.

Do I even need to say that I think print-on-demand is a technology with huge promise? It makes digital files usable in an additional way, it provides quick fulfillment, and reduces wasteful production that takes up warehouse space and might end up getting pulped if there is no demand.

Adobe Digital Editions

A colleague pointed out to me that Adobe had released the 1.0 version of Digital Editions yesterday.

It's an interface for managing, sorting, annotating, and reading electronic text files, not unlike iTunes or iView or Picasa in look & feel. The library view lets you manage your collection (drag-and-drop bookshelves) in thumbnail or list view, while the reading view lets you work within one text at a time, including make annotations. The double page view is a plus. It's a different rendering engine than regular Adobe reader, but I'm not yet sure of the differences. Once review that I read said that the rendering is worse, and apparently there's also a flavor of PDF that can be read only by Digital Editions and not by regular Reader. I usually read ebooks on my Palm device, so I can't compare my past ebook reading experience with this. Digital Editions also supports the EPUB XHTML etext format. Let's hope the ability to create EPUB files using InDesign improves.

The biggest potential flaw is that Digital Editions offers no web portal for locating and downloading books or for automated importing if one expects the iTunes model of ebook discovery, sales, or collection building.

in memorium, Kurt Vonnegut

I try to keep this blog dedicated to professional issues, but I cannot let Kurt Vonnegut's passing go unmentioned.

I discovered Vonnegut early in my high school career. I read everything I could easily and affordably get my hands on, and I still have those paperback editions today. I just checked my LibraryThing and I have 16 Vonnegut volumes, only one a duplicate title.

I was one of those serious, artsy teenagers who spent her senior year of high school reading serious fiction at coffee houses when I wasn't in classes or working in theater production or painting. I identified with the title characters of "Harrison Bergeron" and "Who am I This Time?". I don't know how many times I read Breakfast of Champions, which I find one of his most humorous books along with Slapstick. Cat's Cradle, Player Piano, and Slaughterhouse Five are my other favorites of his novels. Vonnegut's work is the definitive example of black humor for me. His work was my first encounter with metafiction and with non-linear narrative.

I want to take the rest of the week off to go home and start re-reading it all.

FictionFinder

I've spent way too much of my day exploring OCLC's FictionFinder prototype. Read more about the project.

The subject tag cloud that you encounter when first entering the system intrigues me -- the most commonly used subject appears to be "Marriage." I followed the subject "Missing children," vaguely thinking that I might encounter From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Nope. I searched for it and found that it's actually the subject "Runaway children." I wonder if I could have found it without knowing the title or that subject term? How do you know what subject term is the right one when browsing or searching? When is something under "Quakers" and when is it under "Society of Friends"?

I think that defaulting to genre for browsing is the right choice. It's a manageable length for browsing (at least for now), while the "subjects" list is quite long and "characters" is huge. See Thom Hickey's post on the difficulty in creating that character list. The awards list frustrated me momentarily -- I had to remember that the "Edgar" awards are actually the Mystery Writers of America awards and look under M.

The "settings" browse list results could be frustrating for some. I clicked on Mexico and found books where the subject was actually "New Mexico." It was great to see that books where the subject was "New Mexico -- Santa Fe" showed up under "New Mexico."

I searched on "voodoo," which is not the official subject terms (It's voodooism, if you care to know). I got books where voodooism is a subject. I got books where voodoo is in the title. And I got books where voodoo is in the description, such as "By the author of Voodoo, Ltd." I know it's a tough problem to index the assigned terms and other fields where relevant subject topics might be found.

The FRBRization display for a work is a sensible one. Who knew that Gaston Laroux's Fantome de l'Opera was available in Thai? Nice to see that I could follow the edition into WorldCat to see that Cornell owns it.

I did come across many examples of works that should have been identified as the same but were not for a single author -- H. P. Lovecraft. When I had the same experience in LibraryThing some months ago, I spent some time cleaning up the work relationships. I wonder why his works are difficult to identify and combine programmatically?

How do I combine browse types? I'm looking for books set in England that feature ghosts. There's an advanced search but no advanced browse. Maybe something like at Amazon, where one can narrow within facets: jewelery --> rings --> gold --> emerald.

I don't want this to sound like a rant, because it isn't. I think this is a really promising prototype, both as a FRBR experiment and as a subject browse environment. The fact that you can generate the browse lists at all is exciting.

children's book week

Not too surprisingly, I was a constant reader as a child. When it came time for Scholastic book sales at my school, I would pore over the little catalog and select dozens of books, which my mother would usually make me pare down to no more than a dozen per order. Even so, teachers would express amazement over my orders, asking "How long will it take you to read all these, dear?" Stunned silence would follow when I'd reply with a very small number of days. Hey, these were my teachers -- didn't they know how fast I read?

I read way beyond my grade level, reading Hawthorne and Poe and Lovecraft in elementary school. I remember a short story in an Alfred Hitchcock-edited collection that terrified me, and still likely would today. I bought every book of folklore and ghost stories. I read A. A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum, Roald Dahl, Madeline L'Engle, Andre Norton, and Maurice Sendak (Higgelty Piggelty Pop!). I loved the Alfred Hitchcock 3 Detectives books, Ruth Chew's Witch books, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, The Little Prince, The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E, Frankweiler, and The Phantom Tollbooth. There were some real oddities like The Forgotten Door and Stranger from the Depths.

If I could name _a_ favorite, it would be The Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E, Frankweiler. I still want to live at The Met. The Phantom Tollbooth and Higgelty Piggelty Pop! tie for a close second.

I still buy children's books occasionally. Every so often I come across one that I just feel the need to buy, like Armadillo Rodeo or Frankie's Bau Wau Haus. I only read The Mouse and His Child two years ago.

Check out the "childrens" tag in my LibraryThing tag cloud. Sadly, my mother got rid of many of my books while I was in college. I still have some of them. A few I've replaced. I recently got a copy of a cookie baking book that I still think has the best recipe for snickerdoodles.

Children's Book Week