EDItEUR has just finalized the program for their annual book supply chain seminar in Frankfurt. Read on for the details…
Streamlining Metadata Workflow Paper
The NISO and OCLC have published a white paper on Streamlining Metadata Workflow [pdf] that looks very interesting. I haven’t had the opportunity to wade through all 22 pages yet (fun for the weekend), but it looks interesting and worth the effort.
979 ISBNs Spotted in the Wilds of France!
We’ve been beating the 979 drum for a while, but it’s finally here. And they aren’t being issued somewhere out-of-the-way like Burkina Faso, but in EU/decadent West/producing-tons-of-books *France*! And that means anyone with French books passing through their supply chains has finally reached their day of identifier reckoning.
ISBN Missing You for So Long
Just saying ‘ISBN’ creates an instant bond with any fellow book trade devotees in the vicinity. Whether you favour the spell out (i.s.B.n., generally with an element of slur) or the phonetic slide (IsBin), publishers, booksellers and librarians alike perk up their ears at the mention of this secret password, this shared standard, this format filer.
When does a helping hand, like the ISBN has been for the printed book, become a major pain in the behind?
Stimulating E-Books: Part Two
Like identical twins, just because e-books and print books are born from the same material does not mean they behave or even look like carbon copies. Finding ways to bring out the different but equal potential in each will allow for well-adjusted creations who don’t need literary therapy at a later date.
From the IDPF 2009 Digital Book Summit, three major considerations came to light.
A New Acronym = A New Standard!
An interesting alliance has opened up between Stanza, Adobe, the Internet Archive and O’Reilly Media. Perhaps alliance is putting it too strongly, but these are the key players who are pushing a new initiative to develop a standard to enable the widespread discovery, description and access of book and other published material on the open web.
In the Beginning, There Was EPUB Boot Camp
It’s finally happening. The eBook is coming to fruition as a thing that some people want. It didn’t work with Rocket EBook, but with new technologies—eInk, wireless readers, smart phones, etc—people are reading books off of a screen.
BookNet Canada and the Association of Canadian Publisher’s EPUB Boot Camp was a great introduction to the format and general overview of the available tech.
EPUB Boot Camp: Get Your Hands Dirty
EPUB vs. HTML
Over at TeleRead, a reader and author has posed a question worth unzipping: why not just code your eBooks using HTML and skip EPUB all together?
TOC2009: A Book Is A...
This year’s Tools of Change conference contained similar themes to last year, but the difference is the level of adoption, or perceived adoption, and ubqiuity of devices that can take the electronic content that publishers have and provide a transportable, light-weight, library of books to readers that they can carry in their pockets.
Here is a collection of ideas and information shared at the conference.
Here is a collection of ideas and information shared at the conference.
