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...
Continue readingCategory: 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...
Continue readingStandard 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...
Continue readingThis 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...
Continue readingMilestone: 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,...
Continue readingBrewster 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...
Continue readingThat “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...
Continue readingNewly 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...
Continue readingTaking Books to Bits: Book Scanning with 1DollarScan.com
There are services that offer to scan books and create electronic versions. Most are pretty expensive, but 1DollarScan.com holds out the prospect of scanning your book for $1.00. It’s...
Continue readingBetter 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...
Continue readingHow 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...
Continue readingMachine-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...
Continue readingInternet 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...
Continue readingTwo 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...
Continue readingKindle 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...
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