The Department of Justice yesterday advised the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that while it should not accept the class action settlement in The Authors Guild Inc. et al. v. Google Inc. as proposed due to concerns of the United States regarding class action, copyright and antitrust law, the parties should be encouraged to continue their productive discussions to address those concerns. In its statement of interest filed with the court, the Department stated: "Given the parties’ express commitment to ongoing discussions to address concerns already raised and the possibility that such discussions could lead to a settlement agreement that could legally be approved by the Court, the public interest would best be served by direction from the Court encouraging the continuation of those discussions between the parties and, if the Court so chooses, by some direction as to those aspects of the Proposed Settlement that need to be improved. Because a properly structured settlement agreement in this case offers the potential for important societal benefits, the United States does not want the opportunity or momentum to be lost."

In its filing, the Department proposed that the parties consider a number of changes to the agreement that may help address the United States’ concerns, including imposing limitations on the most open-ended provisions for future licensing, eliminating potential conflicts among class members, providing additional protections for unknown rights holders, addressing the concerns of foreign authors and publishers, eliminating the joint-pricing mechanisms among publishers and authors, and, whatever the settlement’s ultimate scope, providing some mechanism by which Google’s competitors can gain comparable access.

The settlement agreement between Google and the authors and publishers aims to resolve copyright infringement claims brought against Google by the Authors Guild and five major publishers in 2005 raised by Google’s efforts to digitally scan books contained in several libraries and make them searchable on the Internet. The District Court’s hearing on the proposed settlement is scheduled to take place on October 7, 2009.
http://www.usdoj.gov

The September ATG is in the mail and we had to cut the following Rumors -- So, here they are on the ATG News Channel instead!

Plus the DEADLINE for the Early Bird Registration to the Charleston Conference is September 26!!! Hurry and register!

In case you haven't seen, some big news at NISO. They have received two new proposed work items. The first is to develop best practices for Physical Delivery of Library Items and the second on formally standardizing the NLM DTD markup for journals. More information on both is at www.niso.org.

I know. I know. Sometimes Standards are boring but not when so many important people are involved! And what helps cooperation and connectivity better? Listen up! Our input is needed. That’s you and you and you over there! Todd Carpenter’s column is about the mandatory e-only deposit proposal by the U.S. Copyright office. The deadline for submitting comments to the Copyright Office has passed but the larger issues surrounding implem=ntation will take some time to work out. See this issue, p.00.

More about NISO and SERU! The Collection Management and Development Section (CMDS) of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) has announced Judy Luther , president of Informed Strategies and Selden Lamoureux , electronic resources librarian at North Carolina State University libraries, as winners of the Coutts Award for Innovation in Electronic Resources Management. The award recognizes significant and innovative contributions to electronic collections management and development practice. The recipients each receive a $1,000 award generously donated by Coutts Information Services and a citation. Judy Luther and Selden Lamoureux were instrumental in developing SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding, currently a recommended practice of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO). They brought together librarians, publishers and subscription agents to address the labor-intensive process of negotiating licenses for electronic resources, a process that has increasingly overwhelmed both libraries and publishers. SERU offers a congenial and painless method for achieving a mutual understanding between publishers and libraries. With the potential for drastically reducing the amount of time and money it takes to bring resources to users, SERU is a significant step forward in the electronic resource acquisition process. Libraries and publishers can sign on to the SERU registry, which now includes more than 70 libraries and more than 25 publishers.

Another NISO initiative. NISO and OCLC announce the publication of a white paper on Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow, written by consultant Judy Luther (President, Informed Strategies), that analyzes the current state of metadata creation, exchange, and use throughout the book supply chain. With the number of book formats multiplying and the amount of digital content growing rapidly, the metadata required to support the discovery, sale, and use of content by a global audience is increasing exponentially. Through interviews with over 30 industry representatives, Luther has created a book metadata exchange map illustrating the workflow and metadata exchange and has identified opportunities for eliminating redundancies and making the entire process more economical. The white paper was commissioned by NISO and OCLC as a follow-up to the Symposium for Publishers and Librarians held by OCLC on March 18-19, 2009 to discuss book metadata. Both organizations share the vision of an environment where data can be exchanged seamlessly between different systems and both are focused on reducing the costs of this exchange for all participants in the supply chain of data and content. NISO and OCLC plan to hold ongoing events to continue the dialog among publishers, librarians, and metadata suppliers. Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow is available on the NISO Website.
www.niso.org/publications/white_papers/
www.oclc.org/publisher-symposium/

Good article worth reading in the Chronicle of Higher Education (September 10, 2009) by Jennifer Howard – “Choosing up Sides to Hate or Love the Google Books Deal.” All kinds of groups are now opposing the Google Books Settlement in the US and abroad. On the other hand there are many groups who want the Settlement to go through. But it’s now in the lap (or is it hands?) I guess it’s the court of federal judge Denny Chin (who by the way presided over Bernie Madoff’s trial). Says Howard: “how will Judge Chin decide what role the federal courts can and should play in the creation and oversight of what almost everyone agrees will be a digital library the likes of which we have never seen before.” Good question. And also worth reading -- Bob Holley’s OpEd (re, guess what, the Google Book Settlement) in the uncoming issue of ATG (September 2009) to be mailed to subscribers next week! http://chronicle.com/article/Choosing-Up-Sides-in-the/48357/ (password reqd)

All of us are familiar with the eBook market and have had numerous (or should I say countless) offers for these items thrown at us! Well – here’s another discussion of eBooks – the eTextbook. This recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Wednesday, September 2, 2009) by Jeffrey R. Young (“This Could be the Year of e-Textbooks, If Students Accept them.” http://chronicle.com/article/The-Year-of-e-Textbooks-/48305/ includes comments from several faculty and end users at Arizona State University who began an experiment last month to teach class using the Amazon Kindle eBook reader. The Amazon experiment includes seven other institutions but I have been unable to locate the names of the other institutions. If you know, please let us know!

Another article on eBooks and the Kindle was recently in The New Yorker (August 3, 2009) by Nicholson Baker. “A New Page: Can Kindle really improve on the book?” Baker is not overly complimentary of the Kindle interestingly enough. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/8/03/0908003fa_fact_bak...

More about eBooks and eReaders, Saw that the Sony eBook reader was featured at a recent event at the New York Public Library. Sony is reportedly committing to an open eBook standard enabling readers to download from a variety of locations on a variety of devices. See “Sony E-book Reader to Challenge Amazon Kindle.”
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/aug/26/sony-e-book-reader-to-cha...

And – guess what I just got in the mail? A PRINT BOOK!!!! It’s by Robert Darnton (Director, Harvard University Library) and the man who helped invent the discipline of the History of the Book.Darnton's book will be published October 2009 by PublicAffairs and is called The Case for Books, Past, Present, and Future. ISBN 978-1-58648-826-0. The book assembles the writings Darnton has done on this subject from a range of publications including the New York Review of Books where he is a regular contributor. I can’t wait to dig into this book!

Just learned that the awesomely energetic Bev Acreman will join BioMed Central as Commercial Director! As we all remember, Bev comes to BioMed Central from Taylor & Francis, where for 14 years! she has played a significant role in growing the company to its present position as a major player in STM publishing. With the proven success of the open access publishing model, BioMed Central is experiencing rapid growth in manuscript submissions, has many exciting new products in development, and sees many opportunities for exciting partnerships and relationships with academic institutions, libraries, and societies. In her new role, Bev’s extensive previous involvement with learned society journal publishing will be a major asset as BioMed Central continues to develop its own rapidly expanding society publishing program. Speaking of her appointment Beverley said "I’m tremendously excited to be joining BioMed Central and am passionate about driving the business forward. I am looking forward to working with authors, institutions and societies alike to help them realize the huge potential of open access".
Congratulations, Bev!!!
http://www.biomedcentral.com/info/presscenter/pressreleases?pr=20090908

Just back from Scotland and will be writing about it in my blog shortly! But, in the meantime, this was just posted on liblicense by Bernie Sloan -- "Reed Business Information (RBI) is putting Library Journal and its affiliated publications, School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly, up for sale. The transaction is part of RBI's strategy to divest most of its trade magazines in the United States."
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6674558.html

Remember Tom Leonhardt's ATG columns about publishers' catalogs? I miss them. I know that printed publishers' catalogs are an endangered species but I still like them better than emails, so I was interested to read this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (June 26, 2009). "A Turn in the Spotlight: How Publishers Pick Books to Showcase in Catalogs," by Jennifer Howard. This is about university press catalogs and how the "lead position" is determined.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/ (subscription reqd)

Y'all I am supposed to be in Washington but I came down with some sort of bug (not flu, I am sure) and ended up staying home for two days which gave me some time to catch up on some reading. Have been reading several interesting books -- "The Art and Politics of Science" by Harold Varmus (W.W. Norton, 2009) and "The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch," by Michael Wolff (Broadway Books, 2008). As we all know, Varmus was head of NIH for seven years and is now President of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where our friend JoAnne Sparks was the Director of Library Services (did you meet her in Charleston last year?) for five years. By the way, JoAnne is now Assistant Director for Research and Learning Services at Oxford University Library Services (OULS) and plans to be in Charleston this November. Remember Mary Ann Liebert talking about Varmus in her Charleston Conference keynote several year ago. I wonder if she has read/is reading this book? And reading about Rupert Murdoch brought back memories of Robert Maxwell (characterized as Murdoch's nemesis) who is mentioned more than once usually not in the most complimentary fashion.

Oh! And there was a hopeful sign on the front page of our newspaper Charleston Post and Courier yesterday. Public schools in Charleston County are getting $2 million to build up their library collections! It sounds like there will be print books and electronic reference books. Great news in the midst of the negative. "Schools to bolser library collections," by Diette Courrege (P&C, 6/22/09, p. A1)
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2009/jun/22/schools_bolster_library_c...

Okay. We have changed the theme of the 2009 Charleston Conference to NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION. Used to be “There’s a Whole Lotta Changing Going on”. But in reviewing the themes, I noticed that we had used the “change” theme in two other conferences – 1987 (Plus ca Change) and 2001 (The Trends They are A’Changing). And this year we have changes but also chances to invent new solutions to our issues/problems/world. NECESSITY IS THE MOTHER OF INVENTION is from Plato’s Republic and since I am a Greek, it resonated with me.
Not to mention there are a lot of quotes that can build on that quote that seem relevant and may help in presentations. How about – “If necessity is the mother of invention, discontent is the father of progress;” (David Rockefeller) or “Necessity is the mother of taking chances;” (Mark Twain), “Necessity is the author of change;” (Tim Hansel) or “Discontent is the first necessity of progress.” (Thomas Edison)

Anyway, we already have nearly 30 requests for papers or presentations which have been sent from our website or sent directly to me or Beth or Leah. If you turned in a request that used the old theme, please do not worry. You don’t have to change. The Charleston Conference is nothing if not flexible and dynamic.

So many Rumors and I am way behind. Here are a few.

Was interested to see that, in the midst of all the gloom and doom about newspapers, Amazon has launched a wireless Kindle DX with a tabloid-fomat for ease of reading digital newspapers and magazines. Apparently, The New York Times and The Washington Post are planning to launch pilot editions for the Kindle DX this summer. As they say, the South will rise again!
See—“The Rise and Rise of e-readers,” by Michael Fitzpatrick. May 7, 2009, BBC News.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/8037058.stm
And watch for Cris Ferguson’s upcoming article in ATG, June 2009 (v.21#3), “The Demise of the Print Newspaper.”

And, speaking of the NY Times, see this recent article from the New York Times --
Google Book-Scanning Pact to Give Libraries Input on Price,” by Miguel Helft. Apparently Google has signed an agreement with the University of Michigan that gives some libraries input over the prices that might be charged for the digital library that could be the outgrowth of the proposed book-scanning settlement.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/technology/companies/21google.html
See also – “Google to Give Libraries Say on Prices for Scanned Books,” by Nancy Gohring, Computerworld, 5-22-09. http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=6CF2D981-1A64-67EA-E4C691C6FE23AC3A

The amened agreement is reproduced here. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gwyaLgbe76jYT67hjn_0es...

Also worth looking is the excellent ALA Website on the Google Book Settlement. http://wo.ala.org/gbs/

Y’all. I have lots more, but grandson Trifon is awake and I have to go … Have a good Memorial Day. And I will try to be back tomorrow.