The Virginia Physics “Flexbook” project is a collaborative effort of the Secretaries of Education and Technology and the Department of Education that seeks to elevate the quality of physics instruction across the Commonwealth. Participating educators will create and compile supplemental materials relating to 21st century physics in an open–source format that can be used to strengthen existing physics content.

The concept of open source textbooks is very cool.  Open source and education are a natural match.  I know there are other free textbooks out there, but I really like the level of collaboration Virginia trying to achieve here.  The finished materials will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share–Alike license.

It will be interesting to see if the term “flexbook” catches on.  I like it.

Find out more on the Virginia Secretary of Technology’s website.

One thing I’ve wondered, however, is just how accurate reCAPTCHA is.  I just read a post over at ars technica that answers that question.

The researchers tested the system using a random sampling of 250 New York Times articles from different eras where the identity of every word was confirmed by two independent transcription experts. Each OCR software program managed about 84 percent accuracy but, when their results were combined with the reCAPTCHA system, the overall accuracy shot up to 99.1 percent. That’s actually within the bounds of professional transcription services that use two independent experts to generate copies that are then examined by a third party.

Very cool!  Looks like a win-win situation for all.

O’Reilly has begun selling DRM-free ebooks.  So far only 12 titles are available, but they are planning to slowly roll out more.  You can also purchase both the PDF and the print verison together.

That’s all well and good, but I did say slowly and painfully, didn’t I?  Yahoo! just announced that it is killing its music store at the end of September.  That means the DRM keys will be gone and any music purchased from Yahoo’s store will no longer play on your computer.  They recommend burning the music to CDs before that date to get around the dead DRM.  As DRM continues to slowly die, we can expect to see more orphaned digital content.

Drupal is also becoming a popular choice for libraries and now the New York Public Library is joining the party.  Josh Greenberg recently posted on NYPL Labs that they are in the process of moving their site to Drupal.  It’s not only an informative post about Drupal, but also a cool look at the process that NYPL is going through to rebuild their site in a CMS.  Looks like it will be a good fit for them.

I gotta say that having a “behind the scenes” blog is an awesome idea.  It can give the public more of a connection to the library while also keeping the rest of the staff informed.

Now I dislike DRM just as much as the next person. In fact, I probably dislike it more than most people. I understand that it makes content unnecessarily difficult to access and leaves out people without access to certain software or hardware. But the sad truth is that libraries don’t really have much choice. DRM is put in place by the vendors and if libraries boycotted those companies they wouldn’t have much digital content to offer their users.

We’ve seen the retail sector start to move away from DRM with vendors offering unprotected music and such. We are also starting to see library vendors offer DRM-free content. So we are hopefully seeing the beginnings of a trend away from locked-down content. There’s still a long way to go and it’s not going to happen over night. Baby steps.

So while I appreciate all that the Free Software Foundation does, demanding that libraries drop DRM now is just not feasible. Our users want popular, digital content and libraries need to provide it if they want to stay relevant. Should users complain to libraries about DRM? Sure. Should libraries complain to their vendors about it? Definitely. Boycotting digital content, however, is just not an option.

They say that this number reached 281 billion gigabytes (281 exabytes) in 2007, which adds up to about 45GB of digital information for each person on earth. For the first time ever, the total volume of digital content exceeds total storage capacity. IDC speculates that, by 2011, only half of the digital universe will be stored.

It took me a bit to wrap my head around this.  How can data exist if it is not being stored somewhere?  The answer seems to be that a chunk of this data is always in transit at any given moment.  There are petabytes of data constantly flowing through networks around the plant.

I was listening to a podcast yesterday that gave a good analogy for this.  Cities like New York actually have more cars than parking spaces.  The only reason the system works is because there are always some cars on the roads.  If the roads were shut down for some reason, there would be a big problem.

Makes you wonder what would happen if the Internet came crashing to a halt.  Where would we put all that data if we had to “park” it?

Drupal 6.0 and Joomla 1.5 were recently released. These new versions make it even easier for libraries to get up and running with a CMS. Drupal is my personal favorite. We have several custom PHP scripts and Drupal allows us to easily integrate them into the content management framework. Drupal is also being used in cool libraries like Ann Arbor and Cleveland Public. Miami University is playing with Drupal as a faceted catalog and ALA has decided to move it’s website to Drupal.

There are growing options for Drupal support as well. Back in November, the DRUPAL4LIB discussion list went live. There’s a fair amount of traffic and of course there are several experts on the list to answer your questions. You can also keep up with Drupal in libraries and visit the forums at drupalib. There’s a post in the forum there on Drupal help websites.

If your library hasn’t considered a CMS yet, maybe it’s time. Even small libraries can benefit from basic CMS features like those found in WordPress. There’s even a free hosted version at WordPress.com that makes it easy to get started.

Random House notes that they’ve been running a DRM-free audiobook program with eMusic for months, and that none of the pirate editions of their audiobooks online came from those DRM-free editions; rather, they’ve come from DRM’ed editions that were cracked, and from ripped CDs.

It goes on to say that Audible (recently purchased by Amazon) may also drop its DRM. Considering that Amazon is very successfully selling non-DRM music, I think non-DRM audiobooks are likely in the future.

It looks like the anti-DRM music movement may now be moving to include audiobooks. Are ebooks next? What about video? How will this affect libraries and library vendors? I’m not ready to say that DRM is dying, but it’s certainly not in good health right now. 2008 is sure to bring more changes.

Update: Penguin and Simon & Schuster Audio have also announced that they are going to try out DRM-free audio books.

Once again, I gave my talk on Digital Rights Management. DRM is showing up in lots of digital content and has its pros and cons (mostly cons) for libraries.

Next, I gave an abbreviated look at Gadgets and Gizmos. Patrons with portable media players and smart phones are definitely influencing collection development policies. They want to enjoy ebooks, audio books, and even movies on their portable devices.

I co-presented the first session with Laura Solomon. “Look Before Your Leap” covered the issues libraries need to consider before they jump into Web 2.0 and social tools. I was concerned about how the audience would receive out talk, but in the end I was very pleased. Slides from the presentation are now available.

I then moved down the hall to present “Managing Rights or Managing Restrictions?” I try to be objective when speaking about DRM, but I’m sure the audience figured out my true feelings. Slides from this talk are also available.

Technology Trends
October 2nd
Preble County District Library – Eaton, Ohio

Look before You Leap: Why Web 2.0 Alone Can’t Save Your Library
October 10th
OLC Annual Convention – Columbus, Ohio

Managing Rights or Managing Restrictions?
October 10th
OLC Annual Convention – Columbus, Ohio

Integrating Web 2.0 Tools for Your Web Site
October 26th
ALAO Annual Conference – Columbus, Ohio

Panel Discussion
October 26th
ALAO Annual Conference – Columbus, Ohio

[youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=T0QJmmdw3b0]

Key points from his definition:

• Applications that are pieced together
• The data is in the cloud
• Can run on any device
• Very fast, very customizable
• Distributed virally

His response is very focused on the idea of the Web as a software platform. And it’s no coincidence that these are the types of things that Google is developing. Many other descriptions of Web 3.0 focus on the Semantic Web aspect. No one really knows exactly how the Web will evolve, but I think it’s a given that more and more software will live online.

Whatever the next evolution of the Web looks like, libraries need to figure out how it fits into the services they provide. Much of the information that libraries provide is already available online. There are some questions, however, that libraries need to think about. Can library data be mixed up and used in custom applications? How can libraries integrate data from “the cloud?” Can these services be easily accessed on mobile devices?

Your Virtual Branch: Best Practices for Today’s Library Websites
August 1st
SWON Libraries Mini Conference – Erlanger, Kentucky

A Look at George Jetson’s Gadgets
August 15th
International Paper – Loveland, Ohio

Gadgets & Gizmos Galore
September 4th
Kenton County Public Library – Independence, Kentucky

Technology Trends
October 2nd
Preble County District Library – Eaton, Ohio

Look before You Leap: Why Web 2.0 Alone Can’t Save Your Library
October 10th
OLC Annual Convention – Columbus, Ohio

Managing Rights or Managing Restrictions?
October 10th
OLC Annual Convention – Columbus, Ohio

Integrating Web 2.0 Tools for Your Web Site
October 26th
ALAO Annual Conference – Columbus, Ohio

Panel Discussion
October 26th
ALAO Annual Conference – Columbus, Ohio