The Internet And The Library

by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

"In this digital age, the custodians of published works are at the center of a global copyright controversy that casts them as villains simply for doing their job: letting people borrow books for free."

(ZDNet quoted by "Publisher's Lunch on July 13, 2001)

It is amazing that the traditional archivists of human knowledge - the libraries - failed so spectacularly to ride the tiger of the Internet, that epitome and apex of knowledge creation and distribution. At first, libraries, the inertial repositories of printed matter, were overwhelmed by the rapid pace of technology and by the ephemeral and anarchic content it spawned. They were reduced to providing access to dull card catalogues and unimaginative collections of web links. The more daring added online exhibits and digitized collections. A typical library web site is still comprised of static representations of the library's physical assets and a few quasi-interactive services.

This tendency - by both publishers and libraries - to inadequately and inappropriately pour old wine into new vessels is what caused the recent furor over e-books.

The lending of e-books to patrons appears to be a natural extension of the classical role of libraries: physical book lending. Libraries sought also to extend their archival functions to e-books. But librarians failed to grasp the essential and substantive differences between the two formats. E-books can be easily, stealthily, and cheaply copied, for instance. The source of the e-book - scanned printed titles, or converted digital files - is immaterial and irrelevant. The minute a title becomes an e-book, copyright violations are a real and present danger. Moreover, e-books are not a tangible product. "Lending" an e-book - is tantamount to copying an e-book. In other words, e-books are not books at all. They are software products. Libraries have pioneered digital collections (as they have other information technologies throughout history) and are still the main promoters of e-publishing. But now they are at risk of becoming piracy portals.

Solutions are, appropriately, being borrowed from the software industry. NetLibrary has lately granted multiple user licences to a university library system. Such licences allow for unlimited access and are priced according to the number of the library's patrons, or the number of its reading devices and terminals. Another possibility is to implement the shareware model - a trial period followed by a purchase option or an expiration, a-la Rosetta's expiring e-book.

Distributor Baker & Taylor have unveiled at the recent ALA a prototype e-book distribution system jointly developed by ibooks and Digital Owl. It will be sold to libraries by B&T's Informata division and Reciprocal.

The annual subscription for use of the digital library comprises "a catalog of digital content, brandable pages and web based tools for each participating library to customize for their patrons. Patrons of participating libraries will then be able to browse digital content online, or download and check out the content they are most interested in. Content may be checked out for an extended period of time set by each library, including checking out eBooks from home." Still, it seems that B&T's approach is heavily influenced by software licencing ("one copy one use").

But, there is an underlying, fundamental incompatibility between the Internet and the library. They are competitors. One vitiates the other. Free Internet access and e-book reading devices in libraries notwithstanding - the Internet, unless harnessed and integrated by libraries, threatens their very existence by depriving them of patrons. Libraries, in turn, threaten the budding software industry we, misleadingly, call "e-publishing".

There are major operational and philosophical differences between physical and virtual libraries. The former are based on the tried and proven technology of print. The latter on the chaos we know as cyberspace and on user-averse technologies developed by geeks and nerds, rather than by marketers, users, and librarians.

Physical libraries enjoy great advantages, not the least being their habit-forming head start (2,500 years of first mover advantage). Libraries are hubs of social interaction and entertainment (the way cinemas used to be). Libraries have catered to users' reference needs in reference centres for centuries (and, lately, through Selective Dissemination of Information, or SDI). The war is by no means decided. "Progress" may yet consist of the assimilation of hi-tech gadgets by lo-tech libraries. It may turn out to be convergence at its best, as librarians become computer savvy - and computer types create knowledge and disseminate it. http://samvak.tripod.com

Products for the Blind Migrate From Cassette to Flash Drive

Judith M. Dixon, a clinical psychologist by training and a sophisticated techie by avocation, is helping to lead the Library of Congress into the digital age.

Dixon, 55, who gave up university teaching 27 years ago to join the library's National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, is a key player on a team that has been working for the better part of a decade to create a new generation of audiobooks for the library's more than 700,000 registered blind and disabled users.

The goal is to make the digital format the backbone of the library's "talking book" program by transferring onto special digital flash drives the 60,000 titles that the library has on audiocassettes and giving patrons new machines on which to play them.

"The library system is here because free public library service is a basic tenet of our society," said Dixon, who is blind and navigates with the aid of a guide dog. "This program is providing access to people who would otherwise not have it."

Under the program, blind and disabled users may obtain audiobooks through the mail from any of the service's more than 130 regional libraries throughout the country. There is no charge for the books or the players, but to keep the machines, users must check out at least one book a year. The library plans to roll out the new machines and digital books by the end of the year.

One of the new digital cartridges can hold 46 hours of audio. In contrast, a single cassette tape holds six hours -- and then only when recorded at half-speed and on four tracks. Since the typical book is 15 hours long, the new format means all but the longest books can be contained on a single cartridge, Dixon said.

The transformation also is driven by necessity. The cassette tape belongs to a generation of technology whose time has passed. As the library-issued cassette players on which blind users play tapes fall into disrepair, finding spare parts grows harder and harder.

The Library of Congress and its users have been through technological revolutions before. The library began offering audiobooks on long-play records in 1934. It added books on cassettes in the late 1960s, but the vinyl era lasted well into the 1980s.

"This transition is probably going to have to happen a lot faster because cassettes just aren't going to be available much longer," said Dixon, who is a consumer relations officer for the library.

The new players resemble the flat, dictionary-size cassette machines of old, with large buttons and a single built-in speaker. The digital cartridge is about the same size as a cassette tape, but it connects to the player via a USB port rather than fitting over two rotating pegs.

Dixon and advocates for the blind say that relying on commercially available books on compact disc or in MP3 format is not an option. Many blind users have difficulty operating the tiny buttons of MP3 players, and the inventory of available books is usually limited to commercially popular titles.

Congress has approved $12.5 million annually for four years to help the program go digital, less than the $19.1 million that the library had sought. That means it will be able to make 3.5 million copies of audiobooks over four years instead of 4.8 million, officials said. The program's advocates plan to press their case for more money today at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the library's budget.

"The old players will start to break down and the new players will not be available yet, and a lot of patrons are going to experience a halt in service," said Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind. "The talking-book program is the primary source of reading material for most blind people. Imagine if someone told you, 'You know what, you just don't get to read anything for a while.' "

By Christopher Lee

Washington Post Staff Writer

J.K. Rowling says rival Potter book would exploit her

By Christine Kearney

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling would feel "exploited" if a fan's unofficial encyclopedic companion to the boy wizard series was published, she said in court papers made public on Thursday.
Steve Vander Ark has written "The Harry Potter Lexicon" -- a 400-page reference book based on his popular fan Web site (www.hp-lexicon.org). Rowling and Warner Bros. are suing RDR Books, which planned to publish the book last November.
"I am very frustrated that a former fan has tried to co-opt my work for financial gain," Rowling, 42, who wrote the seven hugely successful Harry Potter novels, said in a declaration filed in U.S. District Court this week.
"I believe that RDR's book constitutes a Harry Potter 'rip off' of the type I have spent years trying to prevent, and that both I, as the creator of this world, and fans of Harry Potter, would be exploited by its publication," she said.
The lawsuit filed in October names RDR Books, an independent publisher based in Michigan, and unidentified persons as defendants. It seeks to stop publication and requests damages for copyright and federal trademark infringement and any profits to be gained.
Rowling has said she plans to write her own definitive Harry Potter encyclopedia, which would include material that did not make it into the novels, and donate the proceeds to charity. The novels have sold more than 400 million copies.
"I feel intensely protective, firstly, of the literary world I spent so long creating, and secondly, of the fans who bought my books in such large numbers," said the British writer ranked by Forbes as the world's 48th most powerful celebrity.
RDR Books has said Vander Ark, a librarian, had spoken at Harry Potter academic conferences in Britain, Canada and the United States and that a timeline he created was used by Warner Bros. in DVD releases of the Harry Potter films.
The company and Vander Ark have said the book would only promote the sale of Rowling's work and that Vander Ark's Web site, used by 25 million visitors, had been called "a great site" by Rowling herself.
Warner Bros is a unit of Time Warner Inc, which owns the copyright and trademark rights to the Harry Potter books.
(Editing by Michelle Nichols and Stuart Grudgings)

Library Allows Free DVD Rentals For Seniors

PLAINFIELD: The Plainfield Public Library allows senior citizens 60 and over to take home DVD rentals for, and provides VHS video rentals for free to all library cardholders. The library is located at 800 Park Ave.

The rental fee for new DVDs (in the library for six months or less) is $3 for a three-day period. All other DVDs rent for $1 for a seven-day period.

There is a $1 per day late fee for any overdue VHS videos or DVDs.

For more information, call the circulation department at (908) 757-1111 ext. 111. Get into the swing

with dance lessons UNION: Free swing dancing lessons will be given on Sunday, from 1 to 3 p.m. in the YM-YWHA of Union County, at 501 Green Lane.

The live band, called Full Count Big Band, is an 18-piece contemporary big band with a vocalist. Kenneth Fink is the direc tor.

Refreshments will be served.

For directions, call the Y at (908) 289-8112. Call in case of inclement weather.

Source: Yahoo!

Children's Book Award Winners Break The Mold

Highly unconventional books by Laura Amy Schlitz and Brian Selznick won the most prestigious awards for American children's literature yesterday.

Schlitz, a librarian at the Park School of Baltimore, won the Newbery Medal for "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices From a Medieval Village." A collection of theatrical monologues, it was originally written as a performance piece for fifth-grade students studying the Middle Ages. The Newbery usually goes to works of narrative fiction, though other genres are not excluded.

"It was written to be performed," Schlitz said yesterday of "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!" But teachers and parents at the school persuaded her to send the manuscript to publishers, and Candlewick Press "pulled it out of the slush pile" and helped her turn it into a book.

Selznick won the Caldecott Medal for "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," a 500-plus-page category-buster that the author has called "not exactly a novel, not quite a picture book, not really a graphic novel, or a flip book or a movie, but a combination of all these things." The judges decided that Selznick's tale of an orphan who lives in a Paris train station was driven primarily by its elegant black-and-white drawings, which qualified it for the picture-book award.

Selznick said yesterday that the questions about his book's genre were "part of what makes this [award] such a surprise." His young protagonist ends up getting involved with one of the pioneers of the cinema, and Selznick said he chose a picture-heavy form "because I saw that it connected with how a director tells a story through a camera."

Prolific British writer Geraldine McCaughrean won the Printz Award for young adult literature for "The White Darkness." Unlike the Newbery and the Caldecott Medals, this relatively new but increasingly influential award is not restricted to American authors.

"The White Darkness" is the story of a teenage girl, not yet ready to deal with boys in the real world, who makes a "secret friend" of the long-dead Antarctic explorer Titus Oates -- only to find herself pulled into an Antarctic expedition herself. "If you're a girl, it's about sex," McCaughrean said yesterday. "If you're a boy, it's about caterpillar-track vehicles falling into crevasses."

The Coretta Scott King Book Awards, which recognize African American authors and illustrators, went to writer Christopher Paul Curtis for "Elijah of Buxton" and writer-illustrator Ashley Bryan for "Let It Shine." Curtis is the author of "The Watsons Go to Birmingham -- 1963" and "Bud, Not Buddy," which won the 2000 King award.

The awards were announced in Philadelphia at the American Library Association's midwinter meeting.

When Schlitz began working on "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!," she wanted something that could be performed, but she didn't want to write a play. Fifth-grade classes at Park had 17 children in them, and she remembered that as a child herself, "it broke my heart" when she got only a tiny part in a dramatic production.

So she wrote monologues of relatively equal length. She wrote them in a variety of forms: some prose, but most poetry. She invented Hugo, the lord's nephew ("The Feast of All Souls, I ran from my tutor -- Latin and grammar -- no wonder!"). She invented Petronella, the merchant's daughter, and Lowdy, the varlet's child ("I love the dogs, but God's bones! The house is full of fleas!"). She based Thomas, the doctor's son, on a character from Chaucer.

"I just was exploring and playing," she says.

The monologues were a hit with the fifth-graders, and after some urging from parents and colleagues, Schlitz sent "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies" to 11 publishers in the summer of 2000. One wrote back to inform her, she recalls, that "we have shredded your manuscript."

Mary Lee Donovan, Schlitz's editor at Candlewick, credits her then-assistant, Danielle Sadler, with an enthusiastic first read. Donovan agreed with her: Schlitz's work was striking and unusual. But it was so unusual that the question became: "What do we do with it?"

Donovan suggested that the stories Schlitz's characters tell -- originally written to be fully independent of one another -- might be woven together by placing them all in the same medieval village and creating small links between them. Schlitz realized that the weaving would be easier if she added a few more monologues rather than tear up her finished ones.

There were problems finding the right illustrator (one, who loved the book, died before she could finish). And throughout there was the nagging question: What exactly is this anyway? Years went by. Schlitz had time to write and publish two other books with Candlewick: a biography of the roguish, self-taught archeologist who discovered Troy ("The Hero Schliemann") and a novel called "A Drowned Maiden's Hair."

Schlitz made a point yesterday of thanking the Park School, which encourages faculty writing in numerous ways.

Among yesterday's other award recipients were:

Newbery Honor Books: "The Wednesday Wars," by Gary D. Schmidt; "Feathers," by Jacqueline Woodson; and "Elijah of Buxton," by Christopher Paul Curtis.

Caldecott Honor Books: "Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story From the Underground Railroad," illustrated by Kadir Nelson, written by Ellen Levine; "First the Egg," illustrated and written by Laura Vaccaro Seeger; "The Wall: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain," illustrated and written by Peter S¿s; and "Knuffle Bunny Too: A Case of Mistaken Identity," illustrated and written by Mo Willems.

Printz Honor Books: "Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet," by Elizabeth Knox; "One Whole and Perfect Day," by Judith Clarke; "Repossessed," by A.M. Jenkins; and "Your Own, Sylvia: A Verse Portrait of Sylvia Plath," by Stephanie Hemphill.

The Pura Belpr¿ Award, honoring Latino illustrators and authors: "Los Gatos Black on Halloween," illustrated by Yuyi Morales; and "The Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano," written by Margarita Engle.

King Author Honor Books: "November Blues," by Sharon M. Draper; and "Twelve Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali," written by Charles R. Smith Jr., illustrated by Bryan Collier.

King Illustrator Honor Books: "The Secret Olivia Told Me," by N. Joy, illustrated by Nancy Devard; and "Jazz on a Saturday Night," by Leo and Diane Dillon.

Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Author Award: "Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It," by Sundee T. Frazier.

The Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing for young adults went to Orson Scott Card, for his novels "Ender's Game" and "Ender's Shadow."

By Bob Thompson

Washington Post Staff Writer

In Colleges, Comics Art Is Becoming a Serious Matter

CINCINNATI -- As a fine-arts graduate student in the early 1980s, Carol Tyler felt she had to hide her interest in cartoon drawing from teachers. An art form associated with comic books and comic strips wasn't considered college material.

Now a professional cartoonist and graphic novelist, Tyler began teaching the University of Cincinnati's first comics art class last year.

Other colleges have also started such classes as critical and academic respect for comics has grown. Courses that began in 2005 at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks are starting to lure professional artists and public school teachers. Monroe Community College in Rochester, N.Y., will start its first course next spring.

Applications have increased by at least 50 percent at the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vt., which was founded two years ago and won state approval this year for a master of fine arts degree. "Schools are now recognizing the creative and commercial value of comics," Tyler said as she watched her Cincinnati students outline their pencil drawings in ink, filling in sections with black or gray tones. "An interest in comics and cartooning doesn't have to be a secret anymore."

Some students hope to learn skills useful for advertising, film, video game or illustration careers. Some just enjoy comics. Others want to produce comics or graphic novels.

"I started drawing comics when I was about 12, but had sort of put it aside," said Mariana Young, 25, who wants to be a professional cartoonist.

Tyler's students learn graphic design, composition, lettering, layout and how to draw figures that convey emotion. She also tries to show them how to organize their thoughts to deliver clear and concise ideas. Story lines have included the impact of nannies on a student's life and recollections of a colorful grandfather.

The director of the National Association of Comics Art Educators, Ben Towle, said it's too soon to have hard data on numbers or where new classes are being taught. But the association is fielding many more inquiries about starting classes.

"There are a lot of scattershot courses as opposed to dedicated programs, but you wouldn't even have seen that five years ago," he said.

Demand also is growing for established courses, and some schools have waiting lists to take classes.

The number of freshmen in the cartooning major at the School of Visual Arts in New York more than doubled from 2002 to last year. The Savannah College of Art and Design offered comics art in 1992 as an elective to a handful of students. The school now has nearly 300 undergraduates and 50 graduate students pursuing bachelor's and master's degrees in sequential art, also known as comics art.

Much of the credit goes to the emergence in the 1980s of graphic novels, which offer more complex story lines for more mature audiences than traditional comic books do. They typically are more durably bound and longer than the floppy comic magazines that told the tales of Superman or the antics of small-town teenager Archie Andrews and friends.

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