Global awareness of tablets and e-readers rising fast
(siliconindia.com): According to a BCG survey of more than 14,000 consumers in 16 markets including China, Germany, the U.K., and the U.S., the initial consumer interest in these devices, which reached a crescendo in April 2010 with the release of Apple's iPad, remains strong. Apple sold 3 million iPads in… Read More
Healthy scholarship: ‘Half the medical literature suffers from statistical flaws’
(tribune.com.pk): Almost 50 per cent of medical literature published today in medical journals around the world has statistical flaws, ultimately misleading people,” Prof John Biggs, the former Cambridge University postgraduate medical education dean said on Tuesday. Prof Biggs was visiting the University of Health Sciences (UHS), where he gave a… Read More
Academia in the age of digital reproducibility
(mcgilldaily.com): The uneasy situation with copyright collectives in which Canadian universities have found themselves is a strong indication of the current state of academic publishing. New possibilities and limitations on the use of scholarship are fundamentally restructuring how research is circulated and the ways we think about access. Read More
Outside US, e-books have a lot of catching up to do
(business-standard.com): When Bertelsmann, the German media giant, boasted of a financial resurgence last week, one of the strongest growth stories came from one of its most traditional businesses: the book publisher Random House. Random House said sales of digital books had more than tripled last year, lifting overall revenue 6… Read More
Google’s Digital Library Failed–Can Academics Succeed?
(fastcompany.com): Academic librarians, led by Harvard's, are positioning themselves as the successors to Google's scuttled vision for a massive digital library. But do they lack a coherent vision? Read More
A glimpse of the archives of the future
(physorg.com): How does an archivist understand the relationship among billions of documents or search for a single record in a sea of data? With the proliferation of digital records, the task of the archivist has grown more complex. This problem is especially acute for the National Archives and Records Administration… Read More
Android, Windows Phone will top smartphone OS sales in 2015, Gartner says
(computerworld.com): Android will dominate global smartphone operating system sales over the next four years, while Windows Phone-based Nokia devices will displace other platforms to surge to second place in 2015, Gartner said in a recently issued forecast. The latest Gartner forecast also shows the Apple's iPhone OS will drop to… Read More
What The Collapse Of The Google Books Deal Really Means
(paidcontent.org): For all the growth in the digital book market over the last few years, Google Books is still the only project with the outsize ambition of scanning every book, and it’s not an exaggeration to say the deal it reached with publishers would have changed our relationship to books… Read More
Cornell University Library Takes Stand Against Non-Disclosure Agreements
(libraryjournal.com): The Cornell University Library announced today that it will no longer sign contracts with publishers that include nondisclosure agreements (NDAs). Such agreements typically prohibit a library from sharing information about the price and terms of licensing agreements for material such as journal subscriptions and databases. NDAs also may govern… Read More
How Libraries Stack Up: 2010
(oclc.org): This new report examines the economic, social and cultural impact of libraries in the United States. As the current economic environment is impacting library budgets and library usage is increasing, particular attention is paid to the role that libraries play in providing assistance to job-seekers and support for small… Read More
