Blue Electrode Lite

Recent articles from Blue Electrode

I have been remiss in sharing our blog posts lately, so here are links to the articles from the past couple of weeks. We’ve got some exciting projects underway!

March 19 - Digital Library Expands Into Audio With Philadelphia Ceili Group Collection

We’ve gone beyond paper collections and are now digitizing audiovisual collections. We’re super-excited to have our first audio items in the Digital Library — and it’s really great music, too! You can stream the music online or download the mp3s.

March 28 - Proofreading the Digital Library

Another exciting new venture is putting some of our stuff into Project Gutenberg’s proofreading project to improve the text OCR and create an ebook version of some of our materials. Let us know if there are any items you would particularly like to see get the Gutenberg treatment!

April 2 - Villanova history comes alive in the pages of The Villanovan

We recently celebrated our digitization of The Villanovan, the student newspaper at Villanova University. Read about the event and the process. This collection showcases not only the history of Villanova, but also how global events affected the campus and changes in advertising over time. There’s some really interesting stuff, even if you’re not affiliated with Villanova!

Link Round-up: Amazon & the Kindle Fire

Just a few links on the Amazon News of the Week, not exhaustive at all!

TCTV: Hands On With The Kindle Fire

“The Kindle Fire is the device we were all waiting for and when it arrived it did not disappoint. The Fire is a 7-inch media device that plays well with all of Amazon’s media services including the book store, the video store, and the music store. It includes a web browser and supports Amazon’s own Amazon App Store, a branch of the Android App Store that focuses on apps optimized for this device.” [With video demo.]

Amazon’s Android Tablet May Be the Best and Kill the Rest

“The failing point of many existing 7-inch tablets as that they thought of the iPad as their competition. But a 7-inch “tweener,” as Steve Jobs dubbed it, is an inherently different device, and Amazon, with the Kindle Fire, has embraced that difference.”

Why There’s No Such Thing as a Cheap Kindle

“The reason Amazon will succeed in selling millions upon millions of Kindles is that Amazon is obscuring the price, just like wireless carriers do with the price of cell phone handsets. Behavioral economists know that people are willing to pay more for things when they have no basis on which to judge its value.”

How Amazon Got Fire

Comic/modern myth [or, try not to starve in the cold and the dark].

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Speaking of Amazon, also in the news this week is their deal with Overdrive to allow Kindle users to check out books from their public library, so here are a few blog posts on that topic.

eBooks, Privacy, and the Library

“Once a user takes advantage of this new Kindle/Overdrive service, his or her library card number and eBook checkout history (if they’re using a Kindle) becomes part of Amazon’s database. Whether this is a good thing or something to be concerned about is up to the library and the individual user.”

Public Library eBooks on the Amazon Kindle – We Got Screwed

“The public library systems in America (and elsewhere) spend a great deal of money each year on books. Money that goes to publishers and authors and instead of standing up as a unified body we’ve taken the pitiful ebooks scraps we’ve been given.”

Library Books on the Kindle, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Amazon

“I have to admit that I don’t entirely get the “libraries got a raw deal” vibe that is wandering around the blogosphere. Yes, the Kindle is still locked in proprietary hardware as well as using DRM software on its content. This was true before and after Overdrive made the deal to gain access to their devices.”