Imagine having visual problems and trying to deal with the new world of ebooks and digital information. Most ebook vendors (and especially Amazon) have been dragging their feet when it comes to accessibility.

I was asked to look at this for a blog entry in Information Today's NewsBreaks and gladly took on the assignment. It allowed me to look at Amazon's activities with Kindle over the past few years. How they

I was able to get the reactions and comments of many experts whose opinions I respect on all of this. One of these is Jim Denham, assistive technology coordinator at the Perkins School for the Blind. He made this important comment:

"The accessibility improvements to the Amazon Kindle iOS app opens a whole new library of reading materials for persons who are blind. Historically, titles available in the Amazon Kindle store have been, at best, only marginally accessible to individuals who rely on screen reading software. As many books and magazines are available only via Amazon, this meant individuals who were blind had very little access to this content. This long awaited app upgrade finally resolves these issues and has resulted in individuals who are blind gaining full access to all text-based materials available from Amazon. As an individual who is blind, I appreciate these long-awaited accessibility improvements and am thankful that I, as a screen reader user, now have the same access to Amazon Kindle books that my sighted colleagues have enjoyed for years."

Accessibility isn't just a good idea - it's the law. More than 40 years ago, Section 502 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 legally codified the concept of accessibility--and this was followed by the Architectural Barriers Act of 1968 (amended in 1976), the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (amended in 2009), and Section 255 of the Telecommunications Act (2009). Simply put, these laws require businesses (with 15 or more employees), government agencies, and those nonprofit service providers to make accessibility accommodations to enable the disabled to access the same services as non-disabled. For a company such as Amazon, which has been courting educational markets for years, this lapse in planning and execution of products is a mystery.

If this is something of interest to you, you might want to give the article a good read.

Finally, all of the major trade publishers have committed to at least test new models for distributing books - and especially ebooks - into libraries. This may seem like a no-brainer (after all when you think of books, you think of information which means books, journals, etc.), however, publishers are caught in a bind with changes brought on by technology. Self-publishing is now very real, aggregators like Amazon are squeezing them for better margins on sales, and they need to develop whole new models for their activities as they move from paper to digital.

After this was purchased, even Hatchette announced efforts to provide some testing of ebook sales to libraries.

In years to come, we will all hopefully be able to laugh about all of this - but for libraries and information professionals this has created very difficult situations. Books have to be sold through third-party aggregators (like ebrary) and many dislike their interface (me too). Again, things are slowly improving. So, hang in there with us!

Give my article a look for more information @ http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Simon--Schuster-Joins-Big--in-Moving-Ebooks-Into-Libraries-89200.asp

Think back for a minute: Do you remember your college class in research methods? Was it inspiring? Fun? Innovative? Engaging? Well, perhaps not. Mine wasn't. It was more something to survive. However, a Sussex University professor is proving that apparently any class can be made engaging and yet successfully convey the concepts and information needed.

I was asked if I would cover the first book in the planned SAGE MobileStudy series - Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics, 4th edition. It's officially being released next month in both print and ebook formats. However, I found that MobileStudy and other innovations of the series were far less interesting and important than the author - so the just-released NewsBreak on the book instead focused on the author's approach not only to learning but also his relationship to his readers. In this age of social media, Andy Field, the author, has much to teach other academics.

From his experience and perspective, it was clear that textbooks as we have come to know them, are probably going to change massively - in many ways. Here at the University of Minnesota we are doing far more eReserves an linking from course Moodle pages to course materials. We are buying more ebooks as well - although the interfaces for many are still a major issue. Open Access is another key change-maker.

However, another key element is the author - his experience, expertise, approach to his subject and relationship to his audience. This is something that Andy Field excels at. He has his own Facebook Andy Field facebook-149856.htmlaccount, TwitterAndy field twitter-149859.html account, webpage - called Statistics Hell - and his own View imageAmazon page that links not only to his books but to his favorite heavy metal rock albums.

Not your average academic! But a truly successful academic at that! And one from which the rest of us can learn a great deal. For the article, I found ten major aspects of his example that I think are key for any academic writer today:

1. Texts are no longer limited to the printed (or e-printed) page.

2. Add value where it counts: Creating community

3. Using technology where it counts (mobility for students, teaching aids for faculty)

4. An author that is present, & approachable

5. Connections to the real world in terms of examples and and applications

6. Branding is key to the new altmetrics

7. Focus on the audience as much as the content

8. Embrace creativity and change

9. Accept criticism, as well as plaudits, as part of the game.

10. 'It isn't over 'til it's over' Always look for improvements and enhancements.

Take a minute to look at the article and then check out Field's credentials (which are impressive) as well as his use of social media. Engagement is one of the big themes of academe today - and Andy Field is way ahead of the rest of us on that one! Change is coming and Field gives us an excellent example of how to weather the change and come out a winner!

Enjoy!

In the past 20 years, we've all come to rely on the Internet for quick information, for commerce, communication, cloud storage and more. What if the Internet as we know it - a reliable, relatively free and open 'information superhighway' - was gone? This may sound like some bad science fiction - but it could be a reality.

At last December's WCIT conference, leaders from the world's countries met to talk about the Internet and many of the global leaders were pushing for more controls and less centralization in setting standards.

I'm not an alarmist, but the pressures of many governments today is for a much less free and open Internet. Add to that the recent statement from President Obama noting that some of the cyberattacks on Western governments and companies are, in fact, state-sponsored.

I was happy when asked by Online Searcher magazine to look into the meetings in Dubai for an article. The article is available freely here and you might want to give it a good look. Just like our freedoms, the Internet is something we can't take for granted, but requires the diligence of everyone to protect its future.

As soon as I read some of the first reports of the new Library Publishing Coalition I knew this was going to be a milestone. Paula Hane of Information Today's Newsbreaks asked me if I wanted to research and write up a news report for the blog - I was thrilled just to be asked!

The NewsBreak was just published this morning and is available here.

Anytime you do interviews or research there is always so much that just doesn't fit into the article. Here is some background information and perspective on the motivation to establish this two-year effort from Rebecca Kennison, Director of Columbia University's Center for Digital research and Scholarship:

"The LPC arose from the perception - rightly, I believe - that the existing organizations were limited venues for discussion and collaboration among those of us within academic libraries who provide services in support of scholarly communication endeavors on our campuses. Are we publishers, so should we attend publishing conferences? Are we librarians, so should we attend library conferences? Or are we "liblishers," as John Unsworth famously put it in his keynote address to the Society for Scholarly Publishing meeting in 2005, "Pubrarians and Liblishers: New Roles for Old Foes." (I know my colleague Charles Watkinson of Purdue University Press has proudly claimed that title: http://librarypublishing.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/my-name-is-charles-and-im-a-liblisher/.)

While, as Unsworth observed, library-based publishing was already starting to emerge more than a decade ago, the number of libraries engaged in publication support has exploded in the last few years - for several reasons. First, the barrier to entry into publishing has been lowered by increasingly easier-to-use software and open-source platforms. Second, several university presses have recently undergone reorganizations that have resulted in their now reporting to the university librarian/director of the library/dean of the library. Third, many university librarians/directors of the library/deans of the library have embraced scholarly communication services as a primary role to be played by their libraries and have created positions and (in some cases, such as Columbia's Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, the group I head) entire units devoted to fulfilling that role.

To that last point, the reason Columbia is a founding member of the LPC is our commitment not only to library-based publishing, a role in which we are seen to be leaders, but also to forging collaborative partnerships with our colleagues. As you observe, the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship provides robust support throughout the entire research and scholarly communication life cycle via an operation that enjoys backing from the highest levels within the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services. Even so, we recognize that we cannot and should not "go it alone," as it were, and we are always looking for collaborators and collaborative projects with others. Our hope for the LPC is that more of these collaborations will develop among members of the community, so that we can be even more effective on our campuses."

If you have any interest/concern about the future of scholarly communication, new roles for libraries or potential publishing futures, you will want to give this article a read!

Do you see a future for libraries as publishers? Feel free to share your thoughts here.

In a second NewsBreak blog entry on what's happening with ebooks, I focused on the changes in publishing, self-publishing and how this is impacting authors, readers and publishers.

For Barnes & Noble, the challenge will be to look beyond the device to position themselves against online vendors, self-publishing models that parallel music distribution and the increasing encroachment of retail titans. I'm a read who longs for spaces where readers can discover serendipitously ideas, authors and good reads - in both libraries and bookstores. However, both libraries and bookstores are in peril, especially as places for discovery, contemplation and learning. And the social web is no replacement.

Publishers face their own issues in terms of redefining their roles in the new publishing ecosystem which allows anyone to master publishing, writing and promotion. And, for authors themselves, taking on these tasks forces them into new relationships with readers but also with their creative works. If you are actively marketing yourself, it can't help but influence the development of your work.

I've mentioned some of my concerns, do you have some of your own to share?

The role of digital in the publication, access and consumption of information - in whatever format - is no longer in any doubt. I was asked recently to try to look at what I think are some of the key trends for ebooks and publishing in general in the coming year. I've been covering ebooks since the emerging days of what was then called multimedia in the 1980s. The pace of change is quickening due to the snowball effect of standards, platforms, and other issues.

The article is posted at the Information Today Newsbreaks page. Take a look at the first part of this piece and it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on ebooks today!

Enjoy!

Over a year ago, I spent months working on what I hoped would be a comprehensive guide to Open Access repositories for data in Anthropology & Archaeology. The resulting list is impressive in size if nothing else (see it here). After getting it on the web and appropriately linked, I checked back recently to see what kind of traction the site has gotten - little. Folks in my departments were thrilled to have - many, in fact, helped create it - but their information seeking behavior just didn't allow for rummaging around the web - even with a guide.

In an environment of research - and in a time of decreased financial support - getting the best information is what is essential. Just as with web searching, I've found people in my departments will rarely go beyond the third page of results....The answer with web searching is to become much more skilled in the search so you don't have pages and pages of potentially great results to shift through.

I think that is also true for data discovery. There are fabulous resources for Open Access - or not OA but just great sources - of data out there. So how do we help researchers in this quest?

I think that Thomson Reuters has it right with their new Data Citation Index product. I was asked to write a quick summary as a NewsBreak for Information Today on the product - and you may want to give it a look. Even if you loathe the idea of a commercial company's involvement, the critical issue today is sorting out the wheat from the chaff in terms of finding quality data for research. Even ICPSR and other esteemed repositories are on-board with this effort. Since there isn't an alternative, I'm just happy that someone is willing to invest in giving this the due diligence that it clearly deserves.

Would you agree?

What do you think of the changes in book publishing today? It seems like the only common denominator in the industry is change. Options range from the death of books or chaos to comments like this from blogger "Passive Guy:"

"Twenty-five years from now the creative destruction of legacy publishing we are witnessing today will be regarded as a major cultural turning point, a literary renaissance. We will celebrate countless brilliant books created by authors who would never have been published by the corporate cretins that slithered into control of the levers of Big Publishing."

Where do you stand?

The latest chapter in this cultural shift is the contraction and/or reinvention of publishing itself. The 'Big Six' will be the 'Big Five' next year - if not less as Random House and Penguin merge. I was asked to cover this as a NewsBreak for Information Today. You might want to give it a read.

One image that I can't get over comes from long-time Penn State University Press editor Sandy Thatcher. In an email to me, jokingly noted that "they missed a real opportunity at renaming: this should have become Random Penguins in the House!"

I love the image in my mind that could have become the logo!

In 2009, New York Times columnist David Carr wrote that "with newspapers entering bankruptcy even as their audience grows, the threat is not just to the companies that own them, but also to the news itself." Will enhanced technology make micropayments any more attractive or compelling now than twenty years ago? "Remember that when iTunes began," Carr continues, "the music industry was being decimated by file sharing. By coming up with an easy user interface and obtaining the cooperation of a broad swath of music companies, Mr. Jobs helped pull the business off the brink. He has been accused of running roughshod over the music labels, which are a fraction of their former size. But they are still in business."

According to industry trade group CTIA, wireless data traffic doubled from 2010 to 2011, to an incredible 341.2 petabytes -= 341,200 trillion bytes of data. Since voice traffic remained constant, this shows that people are clearly finding new ways to use their cellphones. The adoption rates in Africa are most compelling.

The 2012 Afrobarometer survey found that 93% of their survey communities had cellphone service - amazing when compared to only 23% having a post office, 30% a police station, 51% a health clinic and 82% an electricity grid.

A recent World Bank report finding that in Kenya "basic mobile savings is already partially filling the gap, answering the acute need many Kenyans, particularly the poor, have for a secure place to store funds." For developing countries, without the existing financial infrastructure, micropayments has already taken a strong hold.

Clearly mobile is hot today - and a major device for the 21st century for communication, information and now finance as well: "Mobile services are changing the way that billions of people around the world live, work and socialise," notes Michael O'Hara, chief marketing officer for the international trade group GSMA, "and we are seeing a steady evolution towards a fully digital life."

Timetric's recent market research report on mobile banking reports that "at the beginning of 2011, 30% of mobile phone users in developed markets used a mobile banking service on their mobile phones at least once. By 2015 however, a number of forecasts expect at least 50% of US mobile users to be conducting transactions from their mobile devices."

I was fortunate to be able to look at this new phenomenon for a NewsBreak for Information Today. Google, Apple, Walmart,PayPal and now Isis are some of the non-traditional companies hoping to move into 21st century banking. You might want to give my report a read. Are you ready to switch from banks and cash to mobile? Who do you trust with your banking?