Library Tech Confidential

It seems that York University has joined the Univeristy of Toronto in the Internet Archive’s out-of-copyright book digitization project. This came to my attention via Michael Geist’s twitter feed.

Having been on boths sides of the Canadian Libraries project (scanning these 685 books on the evening shift at Robarts, and as grateful user of digitized materials like this), I’m very glad to hear that their electronic collection will continue to grow apace.

From Publishers Sue Georgia State University Over E-Reserves [Library Journal] :

The federal lawsuit was filed against Georgia State University (GSU) in Atlanta by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press and SAGE Publications, and supported by the Association of American Publishers(AAP). It charges GSU with “pervasive, flagrant, and ongoing unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials” via its “electronic course reserves service, its Blackboard/WebCT Vista electronic course management system, and its departmental web pages and hyperlinked online syllabi available on websites and computer servers controlled by GSU. [read more]

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Seneca@York: Freedom toaster dispenses open source software - “The product of a student project, the Freedom Toaster burns open source software to your own CDs, quickly and free of charge.” [Seneca Libraries]

Apparently this is modeled after an initial freedom toaster project in Africa. Neat!

Archivists embrace digital page - “In a darkened and anonymous corner of the 7th floor of the University of Toronto’s main library, the books of the future are being created 14 hours a day…The ’scribes’ here are a combination of people and custom-built machines that can each scan up to 500 book pages in an hour. Multiply that by 13 such set-ups and two seven-hour shifts every weekday and you can see how the scanning centre manages to copy more than 1,000 books a week.” [Toronto Star]

Carleton University Library offers self-guided library tours via ‘podcast’ (err, non-RSS downloadable MP3 and enhanced M4A, but still) [iTunes store link]

From Cyril Davenport’s English Emobroidered Bookbindings:

“The application of needlework to the embellishment of the bindings of books has hitherto almost escaped special notice…”

The PDF version of this wonderfully illustrated and typeset 1899 work is fabulous. More proof of the brilliance of The Internet Archive’s mass digitization project. Here’s a ton of items recently scanned at U of T. I really wish I could be a part of this, given that it’s so close by…

• “The library director at the University of the Incarnate Word has canceled the library’s subscription to The New York Times to protest articles revealing a covert government program to track terrorist financing” before regaining sanity and reinstating the subscription. [AP via Houston Chronicle; more @ Google News]