I mentioned Amazon's inside the book when the NY Times published about it. The Google news sounds interesting as well. It's less likely to appeal to the undergraduate with the paper due tomorrow morning than Amazon's service though.
Click through for the ShelfLife clippings.
GOOGLE SEEKS A FOOTHOLD IN AMAZON TERRITORY
At the same time that Amazon is seeking to incorporate some of Google's
search capabilities, Google has been in talks with publishers, hoping that
convince them to allow it to use some book content in its database. Unlike
Amazon, Google wouldn't offer the content in excerpted snippets, but rather
would use its spiders to crawl through the content, turning up relevant
links. If a user clicks through, she would go to a Google page offering an
abstract of the book and an opportunity to buy it. It's unclear who would
handle the actual transaction, but presumably the publisher. Google has
been coy about its plans -- "We're talking to a few publishers and are
always looking to add more content that will make the search more useful
for customers," says a company spokeswoman -- but rumor has it Google has
cut a deal with one publisher to enter as many as 60,000 titles into its
database. (Publishers Weekly 28 Oct 2003)
http://publishersweekly.reviewsnews.con/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&articleID=CA331934
AMAZON TURNS OVER A NEW LEAF ON BOOK SEARCHES
Amazon says its new "Search Inside the Book" feature does not allow users
to print pages from within books, allaying authors' fears that unscrupulous
readers might use it to print out recipes, hotel recommendations or other
such reference material. Amazon VP Steve Kessel refused to confirm that
Amazon had changed the feature to prevent such abuses, citing security
concerns, but acknowledged that 15 authors had requested their books to be
removed from the Search the Book database. Up until last Friday, according
to Authors Guild executive director Paul Aiken, the Search Inside the Book
tool allows users to search the complete text of a book for words or
phrases and print out pages where the phrases appeared. That feature
appears to be disabled, said Aiken, who praised the feature but said "we
just think it needs a little work." (AP 31 Oct 2003)
http://apnews.excite.com/article/20031101/D7UHG5SG0.html
The new ShelfLife didn't have any stories this week particularly relevant to RedLightGreen. Cliff Lynch's interview points to a disticntion between digital library services and digital library collections. It reflects the direction the DLF is going with DODL -- a large joint collection with standardized access point so that the services can be built on top. It also points to OAI, as OAI offers a way to build services over disparate collections.
One of our blue-sky plans for RedLightGreen is to add harvested OAI records to the union catalog data.
The Semantic Web article is yet another 3000 foot overview.
(read more for the table of contents of this week's edition)
ShelfLife, No. 118 (August 7 2003) ISSN 1538-4284
http://www.rlg.org
CONTENTS
The Library of the Future
Keep Your Standards High
Standing Up Against the Patriot Act
Two Library Test Projects Making Progress
The Promise of the Semantic Web
When Digitizing Content, Always Keep the Originals
XML: Extremely Confusing?
New Standards for Antitrust Review Urged
Harvard Law Library Digitizing Nazi War Crimes Documents
***********************************************************
ShelfLife, a weekly executive news summary for information professionals,
is a free service of RLG, the not-for-profit membership corporation of more
than 160 universities, national libraries, archives, museums -- and other
institutions with remarkable collections for research and learning. RLG was
created in 1974 as the Research Libraries Group. ShelfLife provides context
for RLG's major initiatives, which celebrate the power of knowledge to
grow, to live, and to last.
***********************************************************
A little history from my mailbox. (Posted 2004-10-08)
From RLG EXECUTIVE BRIEFING, January 2003
*** Third Member Advisor Joins Web Catalog Project ***
Last month I reported further on our Mellon-funded Union Catalog on the Web project. We're happy to announce that Columbia University has joined New York University and Swarthmore College as an active partner. In the next few weeks we will be adding more information to the project Web page (http://www.rlg.org/ucw.html) about what we've learned from work to date. If you have questions or comments about this project, please contact Merrilee dot Proffitt at notes dot rlg.org.
From RLG EXECUTIVE BRIEFING, February 2003
*** Union Catalog on the Web -- What's That Code Name? ***
Many members have been intrigued and want to know more about how RLG is approaching the presentation of the union catalog as a general Web resource, and we have wanted to share more of what we're learning in this project. Recently we recast the RLG Web page (now at http://www.rlg.org/redlightgreen/index.html). You'll find new illustrations there of the developing interface's screen design and new information in a January 2003 report called "Mining the Catalog" (at http://www.rlg.org/redlightgreen/mining.html). As you'll quickly see, in the Web site we've adopted the working name from the pilot interface -- RedLightGreen -- to capture attention and save some syllables. I hope you'll spend some time with this additional detail about the project and send any questions and comments to Merrilee dot Proffitt at notes dot rlg.org.