[gui-talk] Fwd: Very cool eBook development

[Steve Pattison]

From: athen-bounces at athenpro.org] On
Behalf Of Ron Stewart
To: Access Technology Higher Education Network; e-grads at ahead-lists.org

This article made my day just with the promise this holds for accessible
books:
http://followthereader.wordpress.com/2009/10/20/the-day-it-all-changed/

You may also find that stats that are provided very illuminating.

Ron

*************************************************************************

Ron Stewart MS
Technology Advisor 
Association on Higher Education and Disabilities
Chair, AHEAD Instructional Materials Accessibility Group (IMAG)

8300 West Weller St
Yorktown, IN 47396
Mobile: 609 213-2190
Fax: 765 405-1484
ron at ahead.org 
www.ahead.org

Remember you are making a difference in someone's life and you never know
how your time and efforts will be passed forward.  That is something to look
forward to in the morning!

-----begin article-----
The Day It All Changed
October 20, 2009 by
ftoolan
OK, sounds dramatic, but trust me, mark down October 19, 2009 as a day to
remember.
ia logo
Rarely, in my career have I been "blown away" by a demonstration.  Tonight,
"blown
away" doesn't even begin to describe it.  I should have seen it coming, but,
I didn't.
I was completely blindsided.  I was blindsided by the vision of Brewster
Kahle, the
raw brilliance of his team, and the entire group of individuals and
companies who
played a role in Brewster's "convocation".
Brewster Kahle
Brewster Kahle
What I saw, was many of the dreams and visions of e-book aficionados
everywhere becoming
a demonstrable reality tonight.  I say 'demonstrable', because by Brewster's
own
admission, it's not ready for prime time, but the demonstration was enough
to make
my head spin with the possibilities.  But you don't really want to know
that, so
let me do my best to just report what I saw.
Let's start from the beginning.
Tonight, Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive Founder and Chief Librarian,
introduced
what he calls his
"BookServer" project
.  BookServer is a framework of tools and activities. It is an
open-architectured
set of tools that allow for the discoverability, distribution, and delivery
of electronic
books by retailers, librarians, and aggregators, all in a way that makes for
a very
easy and satisfying experience for the reader, on whatever device they want.
Now that may sound fairly innocuous, but let me try to walk through what was
announced,
and demonstrated  (Please forgive me if some names or sequences are wrong,
I'm trying
to do this all from memory):
Brewster announced that the number of books scanned at libraries all over
the world
has increased over the past year from 1 million books to 1.6 million books.
He then announced that all of these 1.6 million books were available in the
ePub
format, making them accessible via Stanza on the iPhone, on Sony Readers,
and many
other reading devices in a way that allows the text to re-flow if the font
has been
changed.
Next he announced that not only were these files available in ePub form, but
that
they were available in the "Daisy" format as well.  Daisy is the format used
to create
Braille and Text to Speech software interpretations of the work.
There were other statistics he cited related to other mediums such as
100,000 hours
of TV recordings, 400,000 music recordings, and 15 billion (yes it's a 'b')
web pages
that have been archived.
He then choreographed a series of demonstrations.  Raj Kumar from Internet
Archive
demonstrated how the BookServer technology can deliver books  to the OLPC
(One Laptop
per Child) XO laptop, wirelessly.  There are 1 million of these machines in
the hands
of underprivileged children around the world, and today they just got access
to 1.6
million new books.
Michael Ang of IA then demonstrated how a title in the Internet Archive
which was
available in the MOBI format could be downloaded to a Kindle - from outside
the Kindle
store - and then read on the Kindle.  Because many of these titles were in
the Mobi
format as well, Kindle readers everywhere also have access to IA's vast
database.
Next up, Mike McCabe of IA, came up and demonstrated how files in the Daisy
format
could be downloaded to a PC then downloaded to a device from Humana,
specifically
designed for the reading impaired.  The device used Text-to-speech
technology to
deliver the content, but what was most amazing about this device was the
unprecedented
ease at which a sight impaired person could navigate around a book, moving
from chapter
to chapter, or to specific pages in the text.
Brewster took a break from the demonstrations  to elaborate a couple of
facts, the
most significant of which was the fact the books in the worlds libraries
fall into
3 categories. The first category is public domain, which accounts for 20% of
the
total titles out there - these are the titles being scanned by IA.  The
second category
is books that are in print and still commercially viable, these account for
10% of
the volumes in the world's libraries.  The last category are books that are
"out
of print" but still in copyright.  These account for 70% of the titles, and
Brewster
called this massive amount of information the "dead zone" of publishing.
Many of
these are the orphan titles that we've heard so much about related to the
Google
Book Settlement - where no one even knows how to contact the copyright
holder.  (To
all of my friends in publishing, if you let these statistics sink in for a
minute,
your head will start to spin).
Brewster went on to talk about how for any digital ecosystem to thrive, it
must support
not just the free availability of information, but also the ability for a
consumer
to purchase, or borrow books as well.
At this point, Michael came back out and demonstrated - using the bookserver
technology
- the purchase of a title from O'Reilly on the Stanza reader on the iPhone -
direct
from O'Reilly - not from Stanza.  If you are a reader, you may think that
there is
nothing too staggering about that, but if you are a publisher, this is
pretty amazing
stuff.  Stanza is supporting the bookserver technology, and supporting the
purchase
of products direct from publishers or any other retailer using their
technology as
a delivery platform.  (Again, friends in publishing, give that one a minute
to sink
in.)
The last demonstration was not a new one to me, but Raj came back on and he
and Brewster
demonstrated how using the Adobe ACS4 server technology, digital books can
be borrowed,
and protected from being over borrowed from libraries everywhere.  First
Brewster
demonstrated the borrowing process, and then Raj tried to borrow the same
book but
found he couldn't because it was already checked out.  In a tip of the hat
to Sony,
Brewster then downloaded his borrowed text to his Sony Reader.  This model
protects
the practice of libraries buying copies of books from publishers, and only
loaning
out what they have to loan. (Contrary to many publishers fears that it's too
easy
to "loan" unlimited copies of e-Books from libraries).
In the last piece of the night's presentation, Brewster asked many of the
people
involved in this project to come up and say a few words about why they were
here,
and what motivated them to be part of the project.  The sheer number of
folks that
came out were as impressive as the different constituencies they
represented.  By
the end of this the stage was full of people, including some I know, like
Liza Daly
(Three Press), Mike Tamblyn (Shortcovers), and Andrew Savikas (O'Reilly).
Others,
I didn't know included Hadrien Gradeur (Feedbooks), the woman who invented
the original
screen for the OLPC, a published author, a librarian from the University of
Toronto,
Cartwright Reed from Ingram, and a representative from Adobe.
After the night was over, I walked all the way back to the Marina district
where
I was staying.  The opportunities and implications of the night just
absolutely made
my head spin.  I am completely humbled to be asked to be here and to witness
this
event.
In one fell swoop, the Internet Archive expanded the availability of books
to millions
of people who never had access before, bringing knowledge to places that had
never
had it.  Who knows what new markets that will create, or more importantly
what new
minds will contribute to our collective wisdom as a result of that access.
In the
same motion, Brewster demonstrated a world where free can coexist with the
library
borrowing model, and with the commercial marketplace.  Protecting the
interests of
both of those important constituencies in this ecosystem.  He also, in the
smoothest
of ways, portrayed every 'closed system' including our big retail friends
and search
engine giants, as small potatoes.
I will have to post again about the implications of all this, but people
smarter
than me - many of whom I was able to meet today, will be far more articulate
about
what just happened.  I'm still too blown away.  I know this, it was a 'game
changer'
day.  It may take a couple of years to come to full fruition, but we will be
able
to pinpoint the spot in history when it was all shown to be possible.  I
need to
thank Peter Brantley for inviting (or should I say tempting) me to be there.
Wow.

-----end article-----

Regards Steve
Email:  srp at internode.on.net
MSN Messenger:  internetuser383 at hotmail.com
Skype:  steve1963
Twitter:  steve9782