Steve Kolowich, For Love of Longform, Inside Higher Ed, Jan. 12, 2011:
Students might still prefer bound books to the e-alternative, but researchers have long since discovered the benefits of electronic versions of scholarly texts. Now JSTOR, which offers packages of digital journal content, is teaming up with several university presses to expand its catalog to include digital books, the organization announced on Tuesday.
JSTOR is not alone. Elsewhere, university presses and academic nonprofits are teaming up to make longform content available, at last, in the same searchable online databases that researchers for years have used to browse through archived journal articles. …
What to make of these simultaneous pushes? Joseph Esposito, an independent consultant who advises scholarly publishers, says they amount to an attempt by the academic groups to muster a challenge to Google — which, through its massive and somewhat controversial book-scanning project, has positioned itself as the market leader for digital longform texts among students and scholars doing research.
Ed Baig, At CES: Ion’s Book Saver personal scanner converts your books to digital, USAToday Technology Live, Jan. 8, 2011:
You’re intrigued by eBook readers like the Kindle or Nook but have already invested a lot through the years in good old fashioned print books. You’d love to be able to schlep those along digitally without breaking your back or having to repurchase every title. Ion’s would-be solution is its new $189 Book Saver Book Scanner, which lets you convert printed materials to digital PDF files that are compatible with popular electronic readers.
Barbara Casassus, Hachette Google agreement to last five years, The Bookseller, Jan. 5, 2011:
The final agreement for Google to scan out-of-print French language books for Hachette Livre, to be signed by mid-May, will be for a period of five years, the publishing group’s legal director Vianney de la Boulaye said.