From a SAGE press release:

Los Angeles, CA (May 17, 2012) SAGE and Simon Fraser University (SFU), a leader in the open access movement and a member of COPE (Compact for Open-access Publishing Equity), have announced a partnership designed to encourage social science and humanities faculty and students at SFU to publish in SAGE Open. Launched by SAGE in 2011, SAGE Open is the first peer-reviewed, broad-based “Gold” open access social science and humanities journal.

SFU will subsidize the author fee for 30 accepted papers to SAGE Open at a discounted rate. SAGE will reach out to SFU faculty and students to let them know about the subsidized fees. Additionally, SAGE will handle the billing and accounting for the fees so that it is a seamless transaction for SFU authors. [Read more →]

From an EBSCO Press Release:

IPSWICH, Mass. — May 24, 2012 — Highlighting its growing audiobook collection, EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) released nine new audiobook collections in popular genres, providing public libraries with a quick and convenient way to begin or expand their audiobook offerings.

The latest audiobook sets focus on niche areas of fiction and nonfiction. These collections contain a wide variety of materials from best sellers such as the Hunger Games trilogy and Tina Fey’s Bossypants to recently digitized classics such as Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter. With these latest sets, particular attention was given to very specific areas of interest to public library patrons.  [Read more →]

Congratulations to everyone at Unglue.it on the official launch.

May 17, 2012 — Unglue.it (http://unglue.it) is launching on May 17, 2012, at noon EDT, with campaigns for books from five initial authors and publishers:

• Michael Laser, 6-321
• Joseph Nassise, Riverwatch
• Nancy Rawles, Love Like Gumbo
• Budding Reader, Cat and Rat
• Open Book Publishers, Oral Literature in Africa, by Ruth Finnegan.

Unglue.it is a crowdfunding site that lets book lovers pay authors and publishers to make their already-published books free to the world under a Creative Commons license.  If supporters pledge an amount chosen by the books’ rights holders before a given deadline, those books will be released as “unglued” ebook editions.  For these campaigns, deadlines vary from approximately two to six months, and funding goals from approximately $5,000 to $25,000. [Read more →]

Very interesting developments in ebook lending strategies from the State Library of Kansas, who will partner with Bilbary to sell titles to patrons.  According to the press release (in full below), this is a first step in a program that is intended to provide subsidized lending of e-books in the US public library service.

NEW YORK, NY (April 23, 2012) – Due to rapidly changing technology and a greater demand for e-books, the tension in the book industry has grown as all parties attempt to rationalize accessibility and pricing. Now open in the United States, www.Bilbary.com – an internet-based, consumer e-book library and retail bookstore, addresses some of the issues that have risen, while also serving as a conduit for bringing books from authors to readers. Today, Bilbary is proud to announce two separate partnerships that will work toward building stronger relationships, as well as improved accessibility: Taylor & Francis and The State Library of Kansas. [Read more →]

A very interesting development at the University of Minnesota was discussed in an article found at Inside Higher Ed.  Here’s a clip from the article:  Minnesota launched an online catalog of open-source books last month and will pay its professors $500 each time they post an evaluation of one of those books. (Faculty members elsewhere are welcome to post their own reviews, but they won’t be compensated.) Minnesota professors who have already adopted open-source texts will also receive $500, with all of the money coming from donor funds.

From an ebrary press release:

May 8, 2012 – Palo Alto, CA, USA – Students in the United Kingdom who recently participated in ebrary’s Global Student E-book Survey reported a greater preference for digital over printed books and higher usage than their global counterparts in a similar survey conducted in 2011.  When asked how often they would choose e-books over printed books, 58% of UK students stated they would “very often” to “often” choose the digital version if it were available compared to 48% of global respondents.  Over 85% of UK students indicated they use e-books up to 10 hours per week and only 10% stated that they never use e-books.  In contrast, 52% of global participants indicated they use e-books up to 10 hours per week, and another 46% stated they never use e-books.  Approximately 5% of UK students indicated they use e-books more than 10 hours per week compared to 2% of global respondents. [Read more →]

Read this news on a Teleread post from last week.  Libraries who are lending eReaders, what are you doing to accommodate visually impaired patrons?  Are you purchasing audiobooks or another type of device that allows text-to-speech functionality? Is that an acceptable solution for the NFB, to have the same content but in a different format?

Here’s more from the press release:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (May 2, 2012): With the assistance of the National Federation of the Blind, four blind patrons of the Free Library of Philadelphia—Denice Brown, Karen Comorato, Patricia Grebloski, and Antoinette Whaley—have filed suit (case number: 12-2373) against the library because they cannot access one of the library’s programs for which they are eligible.   [Read more →]

Library Journal invites you to participate in our 2012 ebook survey. We want to hear from all U.S. public, academic and school libraries, even if your library currently has no ebook collection. Every person who completes the survey will be entered into a drawing to win an Apple iPad^™!

This research will allow libraries to cite persuasive data when engaged in conversations with library stakeholders, publishers and library vendors. Results from the LJ/SLJ ebook surveys conducted over the last two years revealed:

•  The availability of ebooks in public libraries increased from 72% to 82% nationally between 2010 and 2011.Ebook circulation increased 108% over the same time period.
• In 2011, approximately 4% of public libraries’ materials budgets was spent on ebooks.
• Almost all (95%) of academic libraries offered ebooks to users in 2011 with the average number of ebook titles available practically doubling from the previous year to 65,000. Ebooks represented almost 9% of materials budgets in 2011.
• School libraries saw the most movement on ebook adoption last year, up to 44% in 2011 from 33% in 2010. The number of ebooks available to students/faculty jumped 700% to almost 400 titles in 2011.
• The prevalence of library-owned ereading devices for student usage was 17% with over a third of remaining school libraries considering them. [Read more →]

From InfoDOCKET

Chris Meadows at Teleread has an interesting post about giving eBooks as gifts.  In it he references a short CNET video which demonstrates how to send ebooks as gifts through Amazon and Barnes & Noble.  Libraries, have you tried this?  Have you made your email addresses with Amazon and Barnes & Noble available to your patrons who may want to gift you an ebook?  Not a bad idea.  Here’s more from Chris’ post and a link to the video. [Read more →]