Erica mentions something that has always sort of bugged me about scanned books, keyword searchable or no: bitonal image scanning. I use Heritage Quest at my library to do genealogical research. They have about 25,000 history and family name books scanned and searchable online. It’s sort of amazing except that the thing I really like to look at old books for — the fancy pictures and odd typography and illustrations — are almost unreadable. At some point, someone made a decision to do this, and I think it was the wrong decision. If we’re saving shelves and shelves of storage space and preservation costs, and I’m not so sure we are, couldn’t we spend a few cents extra to get at least grayscale renditions of the images in these books?
Category: books
edible book, yum!
I encourage all librarians to try to get involved in their local Edible Books Festival, coming up soon at the tail end of National Library Week.
Harriet Klausner, book reader/reviewer, librarian
Of course Amazon.com’s most prolific reviewer has an MLS. [thanks natalia]
how is an ebook not like a book
Jason has a good example of how DRM can affect libraries. Can you count the different ways this ebook is not like a real book?
The Librarian, a good book, a realistic librarian
Speaking of reading, I am reading The Librarian by Larry Beinhart the guy who wrote Wag the Dog. It’s got a realistic librarian character who gets mixed up in all sorts of adventures. You can view a few chapters online if your curiosity is piqued.