Someone out there apparently loves visiting their local libraries even more than the average citizen.  Police seized about 2000 library books and numerous DVDs from a Vista, CA woman according to the San Diego Reader.

The woman, Maria Nater, brought her two sons (7 and 8 years old) and a rolling cart to the Carlsbad library last July with her.  One of her sons was leaving the library with materials that had not been checked out and the alarm sounded.  The library staff stopped the boy and retrieved the items.

Library employees contacted the police who began an investigation into Nater.  They ended up seizing around 2000 library books and lots of DVDs that were stolen from public libraries around Vista.  Nater admitted in a plea bargain that she was selling the books online through Amazon.  She will pay $7600 in restitution to the libraries and is set to be sentenced for up to three years’ custody in April.

It looks like she thought the books at the library really were “free”.  One can only imagine what her kids think when she says they are going to the library.  At least the libraries will get a lot of their books back and some of their funds back from the restitution.

The battle for the 7-inch tablet has just gotten more exciting.  Barnes & Noble hopes to cool the blistering hot sales of Amazon’s Kindle Fire by releasing a version of the NOOK Tablet priced at $199.

B&N announced today that they are offering a $199 version of their popular NOOK Tablet.  The $199 version will have half the storage space (8GB) and half the RAM (512MB) of the $249 model.  The 8GB NOOK is available for purchase starting today and the 16GB will still be available for $249.

B&N also reduced the price of their NOOK Color ebook reader to $169 from $199.

The moves are a direct response to Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet which sold anywhere from 4 million to 6 million units in just a month and a half of 2011.  The Kindle Fire is $199 and has 8GB of storage and 512MB of RAM.

B&N has made their intentions crystal clear with the new NOOK Tablet.  They are matching the Kindle Fire specs and pricing in the hopes that they can match the sales too.

Amazon launched its 7-inch Kindle Fire tablet just three months ago.  The tablet is the most successful non-iPad tablet so far with anywhere from 4 million to 6 million of the tablets being sold in about a month and a half of last year.

Amazon is not content to rest on its laurels and has chosen Foxconn to manufacture a 10-inch version of the Kindle Fire tablet.  A report from DigiTimes stated that Foxconn has received ODM orders for the larger size Kindle Fire and is set to begin shipments in the second quarter of 2012.

The 7-inch Kindle Fire was so popular for a variety of reasons, but the $199 price was a huge factor.  If the report is true, Amazon will now be trying to compete directly with Apple’s dominating iPad.

It’ll be interesting to see where Amazon prices a 10-inch Kindle Fire.  No doubt it will have to be aggressively priced to be able to put a dent in the 10-inch tablet market.

If the larger Kindle Fire does anywhere near as well as its smaller sibling you can expect to see a lot more demand for ebooks.

Ever wanted to get your picture taken with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, or Teddy Roosevelt?  Then hop on over to the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California.  Admission is free today and actors posing as the presidents from Mount Rushmore will be available for photos and fun from 10AM to 5PM.  The first hundred visitors to the library today even get a free piece of cherry pie.

This and many other special events are going on at presidential libraries all over the country to celebrate Presidents Day.  We celebrate Presidents Day on the third Monday of every February, even though the holiday is still legally known as Washington’s Birthday.

The JFK Library is celebrating Presidents Day with a week of special events.  The library is offering a “You Be the President” activity that has a podium setup in front of a scene replicating JFK’s January 20, 1961 inauguration.  There will a bunch of performances, activities, and exhibits for kids.  The library will even have a make your own sundae bar for several days during the week.

The Reagan Library is hosting its 20th Annual Presidents Day Celebration from 10AM to 3PM with look-alikes of presidents and first ladies, music, and entertainment.  The library also has a special exhibit of George Washington artifacts and displays.

These are just a few examples of some the great things going on at presidential libraries today.  Many presidential libraries are free today and most are hosting special events.  There is never a better time to take the family to a presidential library than on Presidents Day.

An international coalition of book publishers that includes members of the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has taken legal action against www.library.nu and www.ifile.it.  The two file sharing sites were served court orders in Ireland alleging that the sites are hosting pirated ebooks and making them available for free.

The two sites were essentially shut down as a result of the court orders.  As of today, www.library.nu redirects to Google Books and www.ifile.it has a message saying that it is no longer accepting uploads.

The AAP issued a press release yesterday detailing the incredible efforts that the publishers had to go through to be able to take legal action against the file sharing sites.  The entire process involved an investigation firm and took over seven months and spanned seven countries.

The publishers claim that www.library.nu acquired over 400,000 pirated ebooks and posed as a legitimate internet library that offered free ebook downloads.  The sites made money primarily off of advertising with an estimated revenue of $10.6 million per year.  The file sharing sites also offered premium accounts with faster download speeds.  The sites also allowed users to support the “internet library” by making a donation through PayPal.

Amazingly, the online response is overwhelmingly sad at the loss of www.library.nu and www.ifile.it.  Comments posted at reddit include phrases like “heartbreaking”, “so sad”, “all good things come to an end”, and “disgusting” along with a lot more expletive loaded statements aimed at the publishers.

It looks like most of the ebooks hosted by the file sharing sites were educational titles.  If you read through the online comments you can clearly see that a lot of users of www.library.nu are upset that they will no longer have access to free textbooks.

The book publishers have definitely scored a victory against a large ebook piracy site, but they should consider the numerous responses from the users of their ebooks.  Publishers might want to take a look at their textbooks and consider adjusting the prices to account for a drastic change in the marketplace due to the proliferation of ebooks.

Apple launched etextbooks for iPad last month that allows publishers and independent authors to create their own etextbooks.  They are hoping that this will drastically reduce the price of textbooks.  Of course, they are also hoping that they will get a piece of the large revenue pie that is spent on textbooks each year too.

Piracy is a very tricky issue.  It’s kind of like speeding on the freeway.  It’s definitely illegal, but a lot of people do it.  The only way for book publishers to completely wipe out piracy is to make their products available conveniently and priced fairly enough that makes pirating them not worth it.

One way book publishers could wipe out the majority of ebook piracy is if they made their ebooks available at public libraries.  If people could download a legal copy of an ebook for free from a real library, they wouldn’t need to go download a pirated copy from a file sharing site pretending to be an “internet library”.

It’s been said that love is eternal.  That saying definitely applies to two famous poets thanks to a college in Texas that is known for this year’s Heisman award and a Massachusetts college that has a collection of love letters written by the poets.

Baylor University and Wellesley College have collaborated on digitizing 573 handwritten courtship letters from Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.  The letters belong to the Margaret Clapp Library at Wellesley and have been digitized and added to the Baylor Libraries’ digital collection.  They can be viewed online for free at the Browning Letters project.

The love letters were written almost daily by the two poets during their courtship from January 1845 to September 1846.  The courtship letters are famous among romantics as well as fans of the the two poets.

The Browning Letters projects is also home to 842 other letters written by or to the Brownings that have been digitized from the more than 2,800 letters stored at Baylor’s Armstrong Browning Library.

This digital collection is a great example of how a National Digital Public Library could really benefit digitization projects.

Wellesley chose to partner with Baylor University because Baylor has done over 30 digitization projects and has the infrastructure in place to host this project.  Of course, the fact that Baylor already had a large collection of Browning letters was also a factor in the decision.  But the digitization experience and resources of Baylor played a large part in the decision to partner with them.

Baylor has become proficient at digitizing large projects and providing online access to them.  They understand storage requirements, scalabilty issues, and security for digital collections.  They gained this proficiency through experience and through scale.

A National Digital Public Library would have even more proficiency because it would be responsible for storing and providing access to so many more digital collections.  Anyone with a historic or cultural collection that wanted to digitize that collection and store it somewhere would have access to an organization that exists solely to store digital collections.

This unified digital library would be able to benefit from massive economies of scale.  Things like storage space, internet bandwidth, servers, and software would all be drastically less expensive than it would be for every single college library to purchase on their own.

The staff at a national digital library would be much more experienced in dealing with digitization projects.  They would have standards in place for digitizing and storing projects.  They would have a scalable search engine for accessing the digital collections.  They could even lend their expertise to provide assistance in the actual digitization itself.

Baylor University Library and Margaret Clapp Library have opened up a truly romantic and historic love story to the world this Valentine’s Day.  The love between two famous poets that was expressed almost daily through 573 handwritten letters is now available in digital form to anyone with a computer.  It’s amazing that we have access to these courtship letters that are over 165 years old.  It’s even more amazing that those love letters are now eternal.

Even the libraries at the most prestigious of all the Massachusetts colleges are not immune to staff reductions.  The President of Harvard University, Drew Faust, sent an email last Wednesday that outlined her future vision for the Harvard Library.

The email discussed the history of the Harvard Library and how it has always been the finest library at any university in the world.  Faust also brought up the findings of two studies that the University had conducted over the last couple years that carefully examined its library system.

The studies were the Library Task Force and the Library Implementation Working Group (LIWG).  The detailed studies came to the conclusion that the Harvard Library would have to undergo significant changes if it wanted to remain the world’s preeminent university library.

In particular, Faust noted the disadvantages of the current policy of “coordinated decentralization” that the University uses at its 73 libraries.  She expressed that the University needed to unify its libraries.  This would the Harvard Library to make strategic decisions about new technologies, gain economies of scale, avoid duplications in services and acquisitions, and drastically reduce overhead costs.  Faust pointed out that Harvard uses 29 percent of their library budget on materials while other university libraries use an average of 41 percent of their budget.

Faust stopped short of providing details on the changes, but it was clear that she wants a unified Harvard University Library with lower overhead costs.

The Harvard Crimson reported today that Harvard University is offering a Voluntary Early Retirement Incentive Program to library employees.  Library staff need to have worked for at least 10 years and need to be at least 55 years old to be able to participate in the program.

According to the article, there are about 275 library employees that are eligible out of a total of 930 full-time employees.  They would receive 6-12 months’ pay depending on experience.

There seems to be a lack of details coming from the University as what their future plans are.  There have been no announcements as to how many employees the Harvard Library will ultimately employ once they operate as a unified entity.

The lack of information has caused library staff and concerned students to protest the proposed changes.  A large crowd of library staff and students gathered last Thursday night to protest potential library layoffs.  On Sunday, a small group of Harvard students claiming to be part of the Occupy movement entered the Lamont Library Cafe and plan to stay there until 10 PM this Friday in protest of any library cuts.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Harvard University Library system ends up if Faust’s changes are successfully implemented.  Her arguments for a unified library system instead of 73 independently operating libraries makes a great deal of sense.  Library systems all over the country reap great benefits from operating as a unified entity.

The President of Harvard revealed that she wants spending on materials to be a much larger part of the library budget.  All we know so far is that that means Harvard Library will have less librarians.

Starting today, Penguin is no longer selling ebooks or audiobooks to libraries through OverDrive.  Penguin is a “Big Six” publisher and represents a huge portion of the ebooks available at public libraries.  The impact of this move will be absolutely devastating on ebook lending at public libraries.

Penguin was one of the two remaining “Big Six” publishers that still offered most of their ebooks to libraries through OverDrive.  Last year, Penguin stopped lending ebooks at libraries for a few days.  They cited “concerns about the security of our digital editions” as the primary reason to stop library lending back then.  When Penguin restored ebook lending at libraries just a few days later, they mentioned that Amazon’s decision to work with them to resolve their security concerns was the reason they were able to restore their ebooks at libraries.

So Penguin has been pretty consistent with their message of security concerns with Amazon.  But that seems a little strange.  Amazon is the largest online retailer on the planet and probably has some of the best security in the world for their transactions.  How is it possible that a book publisher has a problem with Amazon’s security for loaning out their ebooks?  Especially when that same book publisher is perfectly comfortable with Amazon selling those same ebooks?

INFOdocket posted an email sent yesterday from OverDrive to its partners:

Starting tomorrow (February 10, 2012), Penguin will no longer offer additional copies of eBooks and download audiobooks for library purchase. Additionally, Penguin eBooks loaned for reading on Kindle devices will need to be downloaded to a computer then transferred to the device over USB. For library patrons, this means Penguin eBooks will no longer be available for over-the-air delivery to Kindle devices or to Kindle apps.

We are continuing to talk to Penguin about their future plans for eBook and digital audiobook availability for library lending.

The email to OverDrive partners says that libraries can still loan out any ebooks that they already purchased, but they can no longer lend them from their website directly to the Kindle device.  Penguin is requiring that ebooks be downloaded to a computer first and then loaded onto the Kindle via USB.  This requirement gives some credibility to Penguin’s security concerns.

Penguin is perfectly comfortable with library patrons borrowing their ebooks through OverDrive as long as they download them to their PC first and then load them onto their Kindle.  This makes it seem like there might be a security problem with downloading a loaned ebook from Amazon directly to a Kindle device.

Library patrons that want to borrow an ebook currently go the their library’s site hosted by OverDrive.  They find the title they want and then enter their library card info.  They are then directed to Amazon.com where they can login and download the ebook onto their Kindle.  Penguin’s requirement seems to indicate that they have an issue with the final step of downloading the ebook directly to a Kindle.

Of course there are several other possibilities for Penguin’s move.  The book publishers believe that loaning out ebooks at libraries will result in lower sales of those ebooks.  This is why only one of the “Big Six” publishers is fully participating in library lending of their ebooks.

Another possibility is that Penguin does not want to give lending statistics to Amazon.  Since the final step is completed at Amazon, they will gain a lot of valuable user data through library lending.

Penguin might be angry at Amazon because of their Kindle Owners’ Lending Library or their moves into publishing.  Pulling the plug at libraries could be a way for Penguin to strike back.

It’s hard to know for sure why Penguin has decided to stop lending their ebooks out at libraries.  All we know for sure is that library patrons are going to have a much smaller selection of ebooks to choose from.

You would think this is a pretty stupid question.  Aren’t all things the price they are because of basic supply and demand?  Normally that answer would work as a satisfactory explanation, but the prices of ebooks don’t seem to make sense in a lot of cases.

The Salt Lake City Public Library in Utah found out that ebooks are more expensive than print books.  They offer thousands of ebooks to their patrons through OverDrive.  Their conclusion was that ebooks cost roughly eight dollars more per copy than physical books.

A quick trip over to the Amazon Best Sellers books list shows the paperback version of “The Hunger Games” as the #1 print book for $5.39.  If you go to the Amazon Best Sellers Kindle books list, you find “The Hunger Games” as the #1 ebook for $7.49.  So the best selling ebook on Amazon is $2.10 or 38.9 percent more expensive than the physical paperback copy of the same book.

How can that be?  Don’t ebooks cost less to make than paperback books?  There are no printing or shipping costs for ebooks.  All you have to do is make sure it’s formatted correctly, test it on a few ereaders, and send the file off to all the retailers that you want to sell it.  Ebooks should cost less to make than print books.  How is it that they cost more at the store?  The answer lies in print books.

Print books have an established business model that has existed for a very, very long time.  The traditional book publishers have controlled the flow of books to bookstore shelves essentially forever.  The publishers would screen potential books and provide advances to potential authors.  They would act as the gatekeepers to the customers that authors so desperately wanted their books to reach.  Bookstores loved the publishers as they worked as a filter for all the books that wouldn’t sell well.  The entire system worked for decades.

That system rewarded the book publishers very well.  They were the most valuable party in the bookstore, author, publisher equation.  As such, they received the lion’s share of the reward.  Authors make somewhere between 5-15% of the retail price of their books.  Bookstores make 10-15% and the rest goes to the publisher.  The printing and shipping costs are somewhere around 10%.

So how does that translate into ebooks costing so much?  At the very least, shouldn’t ebooks cost 10% less since there are no printing and shipping costs?  The answer lies in self-publishing.

Book publishers are paying higher royalties on ebooks because of self-publishing.  Authors can easily self-publish their ebooks at Amazon, B&N, Apple, and others.  Authors that choose to self-publish get 35-40% of retail for ebooks priced below $2.99 and 65-70% of retail for those priced at $2.99 or above.  Self-published authors get to keep 70% of the retail price of their ebooks if they choose to self-publish.  This is massively disrupting the control that the book publishers have had for decades over authors.

This seismic disruption in control is causing the royalties that publishers are paying for ebooks to be way higher than they pay for print books.  A typical publisher will pay around 25% of net or 18% of the retail price for an ebook to the author.  This is much higher than the average of around 7.5%-10% for a print book.  This is a very large factor in why ebooks are so expensive.

Book publishers treat ebooks like print books with 10% lower production costs.  To them an ebook is no different than a print book.  Both are simply a copy of an author’s work that publishes with them.  If you sell a digital copy to someone, it means that they will not buy a physical copy.  They just care about copies sold and the price that they are sold at.  They control the prices and they want to make sure they don’t lose money if they sell a digital copy instead of a physical one.

Assuming 10% less in printing and shipping costs, a publisher could set the price of an ebook 2.5% lower than the print book and still make the same profit.  This assumes a 10% royalty for the print book and a 18% royalty for the ebook.  Obviously, these numbers vary from publisher to publisher and from author to author.  At only 2.5% though, it’s easy to see that publishers don’t have much flexibility on their ebook pricing if they want to make the same profit per copy.

So book publishers still have a great deal of control in the marketplace for books, but they are losing that control due to the self-publishing of ebooks.  As such, they have to pay out a greater percentage of ebook revenue to authors to be able to sign them up.  This along with the book publishers trying to maintain (or grow) their revenues is the main reason ebooks are so expensive.

The National Science Foundation awarded a grant last year to digitize millions of photographs of insects into a national database.  The idea being that researchers and other interested parties could access this database to view insects quickly and easily.

Scientists at a college in Illinois give an example of a how the database is being built.  The Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) is part of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois and is home to one of the largest collections of insects in the country.  The insects are currently stored in little drawers with information about each specimen handwritten on a label attached to the drawer.  There are over 7 million insects at INHS with some of the oldest added to the collection 150 years ago.

The specimens are carefully stored in a climate controlled environment and some can be quite fragile.  High-resolution photos will be taken of each of the specimens from a variety of angles.  The images will then be stored in a searchable database along with the notes written on the label.

The INHS digitization project is just part of a larger database.  A site called InvertNet is where users can go to search for and view the images of the insects.  InvertNet will give access to insects and their history that was previously only available to a very small number of people.  The first goal is to provide universal access to 22 collections in the midwestern United States with a total of 55 million digitized specimens.  Of course the platform is designed to be universal and could theoretically contain digital images of every specimen on the planet.

InvertNet is a perfect example of the benefits of a standardized digitization project.  They are combining insects and other specimens that are stored in different places and that are owned by different organizations.  The are bringing images and searchable data on all of those specimens into a common repository with standardized storage parameters.  Anyone in the world will be able to search for and view the images.  The servers that the database is stored on will be scalable, redundant, backed up, and secure.

This project demonstrates the advantages of a National Digital Public Library.  Such a library would essentially do what InvertNet is doing.  It would combine digital collections from everywhere in the United States and store them in a standardized, scalable, redundant, backed up, and secure database.  Such a library would store our cultural heritage and our history in a searchable, digital format that could be accessed from anywhere.

Opening up valuable data to everyone in the world is one of the greatest benefits of the Internet.  It also happens to be one of the main reasons we have public libraries.  Isn’t it time we had a National Digital Public Library of America?