“In order to be really good as a librarian, everything counts towards your work, every play you go see, every concert you hear, every trip you take, everything you read, everything you know.” – Allen Smith, PhD
Bibliotheka is a site that gathers digital files of books in Spanish. The collections can be searched by title, author, and subject. Files can also be browsed through larger topical categories such as art, science, poetry, or religion.
Individual entries include a brief description of the piece, art cover, file size, genre, and two different options for download. There is also space for users to comment on the piece.
Here’s an example of what you will find for Isabel Allende.
Lubuto means knowledge, enlightenment and light in the Bemba language, and this is exactly what the Lubuto Library Project is proving vulnerable children throughout sub-Saharan Africa.
The project is a non-profit based in Washington DC which has been providing library services since 2005. Their aim is to help provide information, a space for socialization, and a positive physical environment for children throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The project began after seeing the success a makeshift library at the Fountain of Hope Center which provided help for street children, victims of the AIDS crisis.
Each Lubuto Library has starts out with a collection of 5,000 items, primarily non-fiction, and covering a wide range of subjects. The initial collection has only English language books, but material in local languages is added once the library is established.
Interestingly, this project helps children in the USA as well. The project aims to educate children in the USA about the impact of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa, while helping create the collections, organizing them, and helping out with other aspects of the project, as well as learning about the children these libraries will impact.
The above video shows the libraries, the children they service, as well as the children in the USA who organize book drives and help keep the project going in a number of other ways.
You can learn more about this project by visiting their website.
A few days ago OCLC and Google Books created a partnership that will allow uses of both services to benefit, and better locate library material. OCLC member libraries who already have agreements with Google Books will now be able to make their MARC records available through Google, which will increase the visibility of material. Basically this partnership will allow users of the web to search for books and other library material be guided towards specific library catalogs, which will then provide full access to books that are already part of Google Books. Ideally this set up will drive up traffic for libraries both online and in person. Web users will be able to access full text books from home, but those who wish to borrow the books will be able to see local libraries’ holding.
You can read OCLCs press release on the matter here.
In any case, the date was proposed to the UNESCO’s International Union of Editor as a day to promote culture and raise awareness around intellectual property rights. Final approval came on November 15, 1995.
Current festivities include a rotating title of World Book Capital. This began in 2001 with Madrid, last year it was Bogotá, and this year the world’s book capital is Amsterdam, next year it will be Beirut.
Click here for UNESCO’s page on World Book and Copyright Day.
At random, here are a few links to how a handful of libraries around the world are celebrating.
Nowadays is seems that so many of us spend hours and hours commuting back and forth, (hopefully we are doing this on public transportation). For those of us lucky enough to be able to read while traveling it seems that a few public transportation systems are starting to offer us options. In Colombia the TransMilenio has been experimented with lending out book. This project is promoted by the Instituto de Cultura y Turismo which extended their Libro Al Viento campaign onto TrasMilenio. Here users don’t need to be affiliated with any library; great literature is made available to anyone traveling, with hopes that the books will be returned. Readers are encouraged to pick up these book and take them home or to the office until their are finished with it, and then return them to the system for another to use. This project has since extended into local grocery stores, and public markets around the city.
The Contra Costa Public Library has joined forces with BART to offer library services to commuters. The program named, Library-a-GO-Go, will install book lending machines that will allow patrons to check out books while in their commute. The first machines will be installed at the Pittsburgh/Bay Point station in April, with more machines to come at the Pleasant Hill and the Byron/Discovery Bay stations.
You can read the press release for the Contra Costa - BART project here, and an article (in Spanish) on the TransMilenio project here. You can read about LibroAl Viento in supermarkets (in Spanish) here, and in public markets (in Spanish) here.
As the year comes to an end the Million Book Project has reached its goal of scanning and making freely available a million books! This project is spearheaded by the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Sciences and University Libraries, with a number of partnerships including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United States National Agricultural Library, the National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Education in China, and the University of California at Merced who negotiated to acquire copyright permission for the books which are not currently in the public domain.
So far the project has scanned 1.5 million books in 20 languages, including Chinese, English, Arabic and Telugo. The books have also been scanned using OCR to enable full text searching. The project also collaborates with the OCA, acknowledging that both are working towards the same goal of making content easily available to everyone.
You can learn more about the project here, and can access their catalog here.
Amazon.com just launched a new electronic reader called Kindle. This new device is said to hold as many as 200 books and weights only 10.3 onces. Its screen seems to have addressed the common complaint with other e-readers, that of having a back lit screen; Kindle requires outside light to be used. In terms of reading with Kindle, allows the users to access a dictionary while reading and can scan other books for related information. Virtual pages can be marked for later reviewing, and Kindle will automatically save your place in the book.
Kindle is entirely wireless so users do not need the use of a PC to order and download books. Wireless access costs will be included in the tag price, but there are additional fees to access online newspapers and blog, as well as extra charges to access personal documents on the device.
On the positive side an instrument such as Kindle can allow us to carry a large amount of reading material with us at any time, and it gives us the possibility of renewing this collection from anywhere in the USA (The technology -EVDO- used for wireless connectivity is much more common in the USA than in other countries). In libraries we could pre-load these devices to check out several books to patrons at the same time. From an environmental perspective we can help save a few trees by accessing reading material in electronic form.
Still electronic books disconnect us in a way from the culture of books and reading. Many of us choose books by their covers, and are enamored with worn down books which have obviously been read my many people, two aspects that an electronic book reader doesn’t incorporate. Literature purist fear that a device such as Kindle will eventually incorporate a number of Web 2.0 features that will encourage users to “scan” information instead of truly being engaged with the book.
I think books are integral parts of so many people’s lives. I love carrying a book around in my purse, and how I eventually wear them down, and I’m sure that in some way books will always be around (I can’t imagine reproducing the experience of looking through a good coffee table book on an electronic device), but things are changing, and in a way I support whatever facilitates reading. Still at around $400.00 a piece I figure we are still a long way away from seeing everyone on the subway holding Kindles instead of books.
You can read more about Kindle from an article in the BBC. WBUR’s On Point had a show on Kindle this morning, you can access the podcast here.
11.28.07 - Last Thursday the BBC printed an article commenting on how high sales have been for Kindle. The devise sold out on the Amazon.com website soon after being released. The article continues to note that customers who have received their Kindle already, many give it a rating of only 2.5 out of 5. In general people are upset at having to pay for content that is freely available on the web.
02.03.08 - I was just reading a blog entry on Tinfoil Raccoon explaining that technically speaking libraries will be in violation of Kindle’s Terms of Use policy if they lend out the machine to patrons. You can read the full explanation here. The blog has a number of other entries on Kindle.
This weekend I attended the 31st. Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. I heard about this event after a visit to the John Carter Brown Library and decided to check it out. I saw a number of fascinating book, not all as old as I expected. Some of the exhibitors had material that dated back hundreds and hundreds of years, as well as other book from the 20th century. Newer books were usually first editions and they were usually signed. Among these first editions I saw books by Garcia Marquez, Steven King, and John Steinbeck, among others. Some of the vendors had old maps, prints (including an original Chagall), poster, and I even saw an entire case of glass eyes that was for sale.
I also attended two lectures the first by Anne Bromer, titled Miniature Books: 4,000 of tiny treasures, and the second presentation was titled Japanese Illustrated Books, by Charles Vilnis. During the first presentation I learned about the practical use of miniature books (usually books smaller than 3 inches). We saw a copy of a miniature book version of the Emancipation Proclamation which Lincoln had printed and gave to soldiers to hand out throughout many southern states. I also heard of a collection of classics that were printed in miniature form which people who spend a lot of time on the road could easily take with. In general I was surprised to learn that miniature books were usually created to be read and used, instead of being only for decoration.
During the presentation on prints in Japanese books we saw an amazing selection of images that dated as far back as the 1600s and as recent as the mid 1900. The illustrations ranged from very simple, elegant images, to long scrolls that describes entire journeys.
In a gesture of good faith, the Chilean government has returned close to 4,000 books that were plundered from the Peruvian National library back in 1881 during the War of the Pacific. Some of these books were written in French, Spanish, Greek and Latin, and date as far back as the 16th century. Some of the treasures returned include a hand written copy of “The History of Peru” by the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, in 1617.
The return of these books is part of ongoing negotiations between the two countries which have had a number of problems over border disputes.
You can read more about this story from an article in the The International Herald Tribune, and from another article in The Santiago Times.
The US Postal Service used to mail books internationally for $1 a pound, making it possible for small groups, such as a classroom of students, to donate and ship books around the world. Last spring rates rose to $43.45 for the first 11 pounds, and $3.95 for each additional pound. These new rates will make it hard to help projects such as small school libraries in places where books are inaccessible.
The postal service explains that the M-bags, as they were known, had to be stopped because they simply weren’t paying for themselves. They explain that while people wishing to ship abroad were paying these lower prices, often routing schedules would push these packeges on to airplanes, instead of boats, where the prices would have been higher. Sadly, lots of small initiatives to send books and other educational material abroad have been shut down entierly, or are being drastically reduced.
Domestic rates for mailing books have also gone up.
You can read a couple articles about these rate increases, including stories of individuals who have been affected by it; from The Oregonian, and The Chicago Tribune.
Bibliotheka is a site that gathers digital files of books in Spanish. The collections can be searched by title, author, and subject. Files can also be browsed through larger topical categories such as art, science, poetry, or religion. 
