Archives for July 2014

METRO Digitization Docs Released to Commons

July 31, 2014 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

From the Metropolitan Library Council (METRO):

Two library-related publications written and edited within the METRO community have been released under Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution licenses.

Digitization in the Real World (2010) and The Global Librarian (2013) are now freely available for download and Internet Archive and unglue.it.

Both books highlight the innovative work our colleagues are doing to provide online access to digital materials, ensure communities remote and local receive equal access to information, and provide a global context for learning in our increasingly interconnected information environment.

“I’m thrilled that we’re able to reflect the excellent work being done in our community by opening these books to the commons,” says Jason Kucsma, METRO’s Executive Director. “It is our hope that releasing these titles under a Creative Commons license furthers the knowledge- and experience-sharing these publications were intended to foster.”

Considering that one of my own digital projects for the New York Academy of Medicine (The Resurrectionists) was made possible by a METRO digitization grant, I can only wish that we’d had these resources available to back then. We made do with what we had, but still . . . more information on best practices is always useful, as technology changes and application development bring new tools to the efforts of digital librarianship everywhere.

These items are free for the downloading, so read them and keep them around . . . something tells me we’ll be needing them for a long time.

My Books

[author_books amount=”3″ size=”150″ type=”random” name=”jonfrater”]

Dingo Librarian

July 28, 2014 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Dave Mauzy and I made a thing. Dave is my backboard for nearly everything I come up with because he’s good at poking holes in the sillier ideas and offers useful observation on the stuff that has potential. He was instrumental in helping me through the rough patches while writing Article 9. But sometimes we get stupid (all right, I get stupid) and Dave is usually good enough to go along with it. This was one of those times.

Thus, I present you with Dingo Librarian.

I’ll post more as I think of them.

Share this one, around folks. Let’s see if we can make it into a thing!

A New Book Cover

July 23, 2014 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

I’ve been pontificating about a project of mine here for years. I’ve called it the Blockade series because it is a planned hard Sci-fi series about a ring of thingies surrounding the solar system. The first book is titled Article 9, and I’m almost ready to hit the publish button on it.

I’m going through my final pass of the manuscript, managing tiny but important details like chapter length, proper quotation marks, making sure details make sense, etc. The good news is that I fully expect to upload this monster to the world in the next week or so.

And because a picture is worth a thousand words, here is the book cover we got for Article 9. Look at it . . .

The artwork was created by the enormously talented Chrysoula Artemis and it was worth every penny. Chrys is a joy to work with and had ideas rolling around her brain even before she’d gotten more than a fraction into the book itself. The title font is all kinds of awesome, to say nothing of the detail that went into that 9. The rivets, the scoring on the metal, the lines where the plates join . . . brilliant.

And if you’re really ambitious, take a look at the red tipped nose cone and the fins on that missile that’s about to slam into the moon.

We go live very soon. In the mean time, I haz cover!

My Books

[author_books amount=”3″ size=”150″ type=”random” name=”jonfrater”]

Digital Book Day

July 14, 2014 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Something that should absolutely, positively concern you–besides the fact that I am trying to do my job on only three hours’ sleep, and the fact that German sports fans will likely be insufferable for the next four years after their team’s crushing defeat of Argentina in the world Cup finals yesterday, and besides the incredible fact that the Griffon Pub in Niagra Falls, NY, has a multi-blend beer named Quadro Triticale which is amazing–is that today, July 14, is (besides being Bastille Day) Digital Book Day.

Unlike that ridiculous opening sentence, Digital Book Day is a surprisingly efficient way of saying that today, hundreds of worthwhile e-books are available free for the downloading in a variety of formats. Two of these books are from HDWP Books, namely Tiago and the Masterless, which I reviewed a few weeks back, and the first of their Theme-Thology Books, titled Invasion. I can vouch for both titles, not because I contributed in any way (beyond the review) but because I paid money for them and was not disappointed with my purchase. Click on the links and download the titles. For free!

But do it today, because at midnight tonight, all those links to free stuff expire.

Why should you be concerned about this? Well, besides receiving the gift of reading (for free!), there’s another consideration. Namely that this particular event is something that cannot be done with print books. Yes, I can give them away for free. I can declare an entire library of print volumes free for the taking, and make no mistake, those books will disappear. But it will take days or weeks to happen at the rate of a few books a day. I know this because we’ve done print book giveaways at the MCNY Library before. The pattern is consistent. It’s understandable. People who are rushed (and who isn’t) will not really want to have to schlep to a library and pick up a book and maybe browse a cart that looks more and more like a smile with missing teeth as time goes by.

Well, you say, we could print lists of the available titles and salt a few social media accounts with them. Well . . . yes and no. Twitter doesn’t really lend itself to that, although you could use it to link to a web page that had the titles already listed and linked. Neither does Facebook or Linked In. E-mail does, but it presumes that only people whose e-mail address you already have would be interested in your effort, which is at best a limited concept of media outreach.

On the other hand, all it takes is a link posted on each of your social media platforms to send a crowd of people a chance to download free books. That is something that Twitter et al, can do very effectively. (And hey, I have Twitter, Facebook, and Google Plus buttons on this blog. Click and share, folks. I cannot make this any simpler.)

Or, you just click on the website of digital books, click on a category or two–or do a basic title and author search–and then click on numerous links to download titles. (For free!)

Fair warning: this is a big deal and a popular website, so you may have to try a few times to get suitable traction. Additionally, the free books are made free by the authors, not the DBD website per se. Some authors may have underestimated the demand for thier work, and some websites may be temporarily unavailable.

But it beats carrying free print books.

(You can haz free! Hurry!)

Update 7/15/14: From the DBD website:

Due to popular demand (which crashed the website several times yesterday) we’ll be leaving the site open an extra day.
Please check ALL prices since not all authors will be able to keep their books for free.

One more day, folks. I just nabbed a few promising bits for my own use. (For free!)

My Books

[author_books amount=”3″ size=”150″ type=”random” name=”jonfrater”]