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An inside look at the world of electronic content resources acquired and managed by information professionals covering its content, emerging technology such as eBooks and commercial models.
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ContentBloggerTM - eResources Marketplace |
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| Monday, February 23, 2004 |
Hybrid Books the New Future of eBooks?
The headline today "Customised Content, Hybrid Books to be New Catchwords" for the Indian Financial Express caught my attention as I'd encountered the same theme this past week with the launch of Wharton School Publishing by Pearson Education and the Wharton School of Business. The partners bring impressive credentials to the venture, but far more significant is the concept of focusing on providing an authoritative body of knowledge, which for Wharton School Publishing, is the applied knowledge from leading business authors, in a "portfolio of print and interactive formats", not as a book imprint, not as an audio imprint, not as a video imprint, not as a CD-ROM imprint.
The academic world is ready for a different approach to providing content and instructional material, given the frustrations of coursepacks and the rising cost of textbooks, as well as technology savvy students. Having just spent $55 for one paperback text book in information sciences, copyright 2000 with no websites or electronic resources, count me as a proponent of changing this picture! You see, I am the instructor for a section of this class, and this is a required text, but it will have to be heavily supplemented. Multiply my experience by the number of educational institutions, and there is a clear opportunity for innovative publishers to build market share.
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posted by Jean Bedord at
7:06 PM |
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| Wednesday, February 11, 2004 |
Australian Libraries Confront Copyright Changes in U.S. Trade Pact
As the Australian federal government hurtles towards the completion of a new free trade pact with the United States that includes new copyright requirements that mesh with U.S. media and publishing interests, librarians are discovering that there could be a strong catch - large new copyright licensing fees to cover an additional twenty years of materials now covered by the "Disney clause" of current U.S. statutes. Colette Ormonde, copyright adviser for the Australian Library and Information Association noted in The Melbourne Age, "We are a small country that consumes enormous amounts of information. The US, on the other hand, is an exporter of copyright material." While international standards may stay at a lower level indefinitely, this extension of U.S. standards into Australian markets is a large step towards establishing an English language-based standard that will protect a huge swath of today's current media and publishing sources. This is all well and good for these interests that wish to lower global production costs and increase revenues in countries such as Australia, but the dilemma faced by their libraries points out an important irony in extended copyrights: institutions that have to shell out for this "copyright tax" have fewer funds to spend on newer materials, forcing decisions on more contemporary sources that may not favor those same publishers and producers in the long run. Being overreliant on revenues from archives is an easy way to get lazy about fulfilling the needs of today's content users effectively - a problem that seems to be at the root of the current copyright conundrum.
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posted by John Blossom at
4:09 PM |
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| Friday, February 06, 2004 |
Book Publishing Partnership: Google Branded DK Encyclopedia
The boundaries between print and online are blurring, as new products are released that combine the strength of each medium. DK Publishing, known for their attractive children's reference books, has launched a new print co-branded book that combines the organization and clarity of an encyclopedia, with heavy emphasis on keywords that can be used to search the companion website www.dke-encyc.com for Google links. As the parent of a teenager, conveying the concept of using keywords for relevant searching is not easy, so the encylopedia format is a good teaching tool. But encyclopedias don't stay current, hence the online website, winnowed down to age-appropriate, trustworthy sites fully acceptable to the key buyers--parents and educators. And the web is uniquely suited to conveying additional content in a fully integrated mode. When I used the keyword reptiles, my choices included the sounds of a gecko and a video of the Komodo dragon, both on topic! Look for more ventures that merge mediums to provide valued content.
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posted by Jean Bedord at
7:35 PM |
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