Scanner for ebook cannot tell its 'arms' from its 'anus'

 

• Scanner for ebook cannot tell its 'arms' from its 'anus'
: A technical problem with optical character recognition software creates some awkward moments in romantic novels theguardian.com

On the same shelf:

Top 5 embarrassing misprints  theguardian.com:

You'd think the substitution of anuses for arms was as good as a misprint gets, but such hilarious scanning errors are merely the latest in a long history of printing goofs. Here are some of the best. Can you find better ones?
1. The Wicked Bible
2. Ground black people
3. Jonathan Franzen's massive parade of typos
4. Like chips in the sea
5. Guardian Chistmas card

The Battle of Building Library's Digital Collection

How Data Mining Uncovered Rampant Scientific Plagiarism and Fraud

How Data Mining Uncovered Rampant Scientific Plagiarism and Fraud, Harold “Skip” Garner 

www.scientificamerican.com

The author wanted to build software that would navigate medical jargon. He ended up uncovering widespread plagiarism and hundreds of millions of dollars in potential fraud

Leaked document angers Rockford Public Library fans

Reading this news story, competitive intelligence, best practices and what not comes to your mind.
Leaked document angers Rockford Public Library fans By Susan Stephens @ Northern Public Radio
Extract:

The Rockford Public Library’s board of trustees can expect to see something unusual at its meeting Monday night… a large crowd. That’s because two confidential reports by the library’s executive director have been leaked to the public.
The documents detail ways to offer the public more digital services by cutting staff, closing some branches, and heavily “weeding out” print materials.
The Public Library has been an important institution in Rockford since it opened its first reading room in 1872. And the 110 year old Carnegie library on the banks of the Rock River now anchors a six branch system. Continue reading Leaked document angers

Fair Use by Social Media, Revisted

Today, as I write this post, I get a) forwarded email, with fulltext, and NO citations (owner / creator / distributor), b) another invitation to download for free some ebooks, and c) the question of 'Is Fair Use in Jeopardy.' As librarians are we to allowed to extract or quote (fairly) or NOT? WebProNews' extract brings to fore a lot of recent transactions and the debate is again open for us (see the extract below).


Fair Use Controversy: The Gift That Keeps On Giving
Is Fair Use in Jeopardy? WebProNews,
Extract:

So the whole "what is fair use?" debate is back, as Fortune describes the business practices of Righthaven and the Las Vegas Review Journal of going after publications for violating copyright.

As the piece by John Patrick Pullen explains, the operation involves "transferring the copyright of content that has been reproduced on the Internet — either entirely or in part — from the Review-Journal to Righthaven, which then files lawsuits against the alleged infringers."

The EFF has reportedly stepped up to represent some clients the firm has gone after, while most are just settling with Righthaven, which has been seeking a maximum penalty of $150,000 plus seizure of the domain name in every case, according to the report.

The piece does appear to be a little sensational, asking questions like "Could clicking a Like button lead to a lawsuit?" and "Are the days of posting stories to Facebook, emailing articles to friends, or printing out pieces numbered?" continue reading (see also the comments)

On the same shelf:

Is there a cure for Facebook-itis? By Heather Mallick, Toronto Star -- Facebook’s purchase of tiny, sad Instagram for $1 billion reveals its desperate hunt for authenticity...

The Battle of Building Library's Digital Collection

PS. Need feedback to improve this webliography relating to recent developments in this field:

Students, It’s 2010! So Let’s Go Back to Stone Age!

Google – Goodfather and/or Gravedigger?

Library ruling limits the rights of the TU Darmstadt

The right of prints out of digitalised medias

The 6th civil chamber at the regional court in Frankfurt decides in a summary proceeding that libraries have the right to digitalise and provide prints from their stock, no matter wether the publisher have own offers.
The publisher Eugen Ulmer filed a suit against the ULB, which offers at some selected workstations the "digital textbook collection" with 130 current textbooks.

The court confirmed the right to make prints of these files. Nevertheless digital copies are forbidden. The library was obligated to adopt precautionary measures which prevents such copies. Because of this the ULB modified their service and blocked the download on USB-stick. All other usage is as usual (please see : http://tudigilehrbuch.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de )

The court decision can be found in the law reports of the Regional Court Frankfurt with the reference number 2-06 O 172/09.
More comments :
Press release of TU Darmstadt
Press release of German Library Association(DBV)

GoogleBooks, the digital library wars, by Jack Kessler

Google Loses in French Copyright Case

"Three library associations have asked the Justice Department to oversee Google's plans to create a massive digital library to prevent an excessively high price for institutional subscriptions." New York Times

From the Chronicle of Higher Education's "Wired Campus" blog: The All-Digital Library? Not Quite Yet, By Jennifer Howard

To e-book or not to e-book, Wynken de Worde

Here today, gone tomorrow, Librarians do it Between the Covers

The Battle of the Books—Again, Barbara Fister, Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN -- Library Journal, 11/19/2009

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper by Nicholson Baker

Vandals in the Stacks?: A Response to Nicholson Baker's Assault on Libraries
~ Richard J. Cox

Library Research Service's 60-Second Survey: Future of the Book

Recently, news outlets and blogs have been busy deriding and celebrating the recent ascension of e-readers. The growing popularity of this new format has come with murmurs about the death of paper books and some even surmise that as technology advances libraries will cease to exist!

Taking notice of the chatter, the Library Research Service has decided to survey librarians on the matter. This new 60-Second Survey asks your opinions on e-readers and how you think they will transform reading. Will e-readers be the demise of the paper book? What will libraries circulate? What is the future of the book? You tell us!

See also on the same shelf:

Libraries and Readers Wade Into Digital Lending

‘As We May Digitize’ — Institutions and Documents Reconfigured, Liber Quarterly Volume 21 Issue 3/4 2012

Adams, Anne and Blandford, Ann (2002). The unseen and unacceptable face of digital libraries. International, Journal of Digital Libraries, 4(2), pp. 71–81.