A recently published academic paper has shown that the weakening of censorship inside publishers has lead to a dramatic increase in the use of swear words in American books since...Continue reading
Category: Digitization
On Standard eBooks’ “Light Modernization”
When Standard eBooks first gained widespread attention last week, a number of people complained about that project’s stated intention to alter the ebooks it created by changing the punctuation and...Continue reading
Standard eBooks Pick Up Where Project Gutenberg Leaves Off
eBook formatting is important. One of the reasons Feedbooks tops my list of free ebook sites is that the ebooks there are formatted to a higher standard than you can expect from...Continue reading
This Home-Made Book Scanner Uses an iPhone, Scans 24 Pages Per Minute
Book scanners can cost thousands of dollars, but with a little ingenuity you can build one at home relatively cheaply. Lone Wolf Librarian brought one such rig to our attention....Continue reading
Milestone: Project Gutenberg Releases eBook #50,000
Project Gutenberg announced on Saturday that the 40-year-old program had digitized its fifty thousandth work. Chosen in honor of Project Gutenberg founder Michael Hart, the milestone title was John Gutenberg, First...Continue reading
Brewster Kahle as the Next Librarian of Congress: Panacea or Palliative?
With James Billington set to retire in January from his position as the Librarian of Congress, talk is turning to his possible replacements. One of the names being bandied about is...Continue reading
That “Cache” of Mark Twain Writings Wasn’t a Cache, Nor Was it Recently Uncovered
There’s a story going around this week that a new cache of Mark Twain’s writings had been uncovered by researchers, but it turns out that is not the case. I just...Continue reading
Newly Discovered Treasure Trove of Mark Twain Stories Offer New Insight
Mark Twain is best-known as an American novelist and humorist, but aside from his fans few recall that before Twain was a novelist he was a newspaperman for the San Francisco Dramatic...Continue reading
Better World Books Will Sell You a Used Book, or a Scanned Copy for $2 More
This blogger may be an inveterate ebook devotee but I still buy used paper books when they are cheaper. So when a reader tipped me to an online bookseller which offered...Continue reading
How to Run a Web Browser – In a Windows 3.11 – In a DosBox – Inside Another Web Browser
If you thought it was madness to run Windows 95 inside a DOS emulator on an Android Wear smartwatch, then the following could blow your mind. Jason Scott, a digital archivist working...Continue reading
Machine-Learning Algorithm Can Rank the World’s Most Notable Authors, But Can it Identify the Most Worthwhile?
If it’s possible to judge an author’s notability based on their Wikipedia entry then Dr Allen Riddell of Dartmouth College has you covered. Earlier this month Riddell published a paper which...Continue reading
Internet Archive Catches Fire, Reminds Us Why Digital Archives are so Important
A fire broke out at 3:30 this morning in the Internet Archive’s scanning center, destroying equipment and temporarily knocking the IA servers offline. According to Mashable the fire did not...Continue reading
Two Book Scanning Services Lose Copyright Lawsuit in Japan
I have some bad news today for ebook lovers in Japan. The Tokyo District Court has handed down a ruling that says that a couple paid book scanning services (like...Continue reading
Kindle Plus Legos Plus Mac Equals DIY Scanner (video)
Do you like Rube Goldberg machines? Do you like to bypass DRM? Then you’ll love this DIY project. One hacker with too much time on his hands has built a...Continue reading
The ReLire Digitization Project is Facing Questions of Accuracy, Validity, and Legality
Digitization projects like the HathiTrust, Project Gutenberg, or the Internet Archive can be a good thing when treated as a nonprofit effort, but when you mix in a commercial interest...Continue reading