Clear Blue Dei

Per the World Public Library website: “July 4th to August 4th Download Your Selections From 500,000+ eBooks for Free.”

According to their site: “Hosted in World Public Library’s multi-terabyte server network is the world’s largest digital archive of PDF ebooks and edocuments.  Our collection hosts more than 500,000+ PDF ebooks and edocuments.  As a member you will have complete access to the entire collection.  Our collection is constantly growing and our projection is to reach 600,000 by fall of 2008″

Here is a link to their Facts, Questions and Answers page. According to their price sheet, it is $8.95 per year to become a member, or $2/year per FTE institutional rate (for public librarie, priced per number of cardholders - which could possibly be adjusted).

I downloaded the Northwind Trilogy by David Drake and Bedlam Boyz by Ellen Guon to check it out.  It downloaded quickly and I was able to save it to my hard-drive to read.  I did go to the public access page to do a search and got an error message, but I could browse collections and download from home page without any problems.  And I just did a search using the member search on the home page and it worked for me (but I couldn’t download), although I couldn’t really find anything I was looking for .

Another thing of note is that on the Baen Books site, they have a free library also of a selection of their books you can download in several different formats for free.  Both Ellen Guon and David Drake have free downloads of several of their books as well as many other authors.  I downloaded Sunrise Alley by Catherine Asaro in a very nice html format.

And of course, a search for free ebooks through Google turns up several more sites that I didn’t check out.  You can though!

So go “check it out”!

~Susan Mellott

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A long, long, time ago, when Compuserve was one of the major players in internet connectivity like AOL (it dominated the field in the 1980’s), back before it had a GUI interface and was still all line-based, I belonged to a group called Church of the Bunny. This was in the early ’80’s and it was definitely bleeding edge for the times. I remember 300 baud modems that you put the handset of the phone into to use. I was lucky enough to be working with PCs so I had access to some things that were somewhat unaffordable or inaccessible to a lot of people outside the ‘geek’ fringe.

Anyway, Church of the Bunny was a community and we talked and laughed and had our inside jokes and it was an important part of my life for several years. We used files to store and pass around our Church of the Bunny manifestos and credos and whatnots and we had a newsletter that was was published and mailed to the members. We would meet up when we got out each other’s way. I still have the old newsletters and thank goodness because they are some of the only existing pieces of the Church of the Bunny I can find. Since this originally started pre-web and on Compuserve, the files pretty much went away and the few websites that were created are no longer in existence and it is all gone. In my searches I found this little blurb about The Holy War between the Church of the Gerbil and the Church of the Bunny. That’s about it. There are still several references but all the links are broken or changed.

We had a community built up and a whole “world” so to speak with a very detailed society and many, many writings and files and correspondence and articles and it is all gone. Vanished into thin air. People left Compuserve so all that archival information was gone and people created web sites on various servers and hosts that folded, or moved or just disappeared. And that was a minuscule portion of what has been lost that was on Compuserve. And there were many other hosts that folded or people moved away from, like Tripod or Geocities or any number of others.

So here’s a thought to ponder as we move into Web 2.0 and the online collaboration and social networking tools. How can we preserve all the collaboration and information and social networks as the various platforms evolve and change and come and go? I am sure we can all think of a tool we have used on-line that has been replaced by something newer and more popular. How can a migration of data be accomplished or at least, who is able to catalog and store this data?

If Web 2.0 is a new way of writing and spreading information, what role does Library 2.0 play in keeping that data intact and able to be accessed by other people? Just like libraries are the archives for books and have played a major part throughout history in preserving mankind’s writing and knowledge, what is the equivalent in the 2.0 world?

And what risk do we incur by going electronic and putting information on an electronic medium without a methodology in place to catalog and store it?

Just some thoughts on a rainy day.

~Susie

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My husband and I went out to dinner last night and as we are wont to do, we got into a discussion about the meaning of x (x being in this case, Web 2.0, or more precisely, the definition of 2.0 as applied to different things such as Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Learning 2.0, etc). What started it was that we’d both read a post by John Blyberg about whether or not Library 2.0 required technology and being ‘plugged-in’, or if Library 2.0 was something more or different than just technology (to poorly paraphrase).

I’d been mulling over this ever since I first heard the term applied and I thought it was a very interesting question. Sean felt that technology (specifically, the web) was inherent in 2.0. That without the web and all the things it now allows people to easily do, 2.0 (as is defined) would not exist. (My apologies to Sean for trying to quote him. I’m sure he will be writing a blog on the same thing and I will put a link to it when he does).

I felt that 2.0 was a concept of a web that was facilitated and enhanced by technology, but that it was a mindset/concept rather than something concrete that requires the web and/or technology. I believed that many of the 2.0 tools could be replicated in other, non-technological ways (albeit on a smaller scale and/or not as easily or well). In fact, I felt they already have been, it just was not recognized as being a valuable way to interact and worth evaluating how it fits into the business, learning, library, etc. models.

I think from a social and a “geek” (for lack of a better word) standpoint, it has been around for quite a while. People who share strong common interests will always find a way to interact. Through conventions or clubs or contests or meeting places or correspondence or any number of other ways, they will find a way to interact and to share ideas, discoveries, passions, etc. I also believe though, that the value of that interaction and sharing was not recognized as something that is of value for more standardized, generic, broad-based things, like learning or libraries or businesses and that this is where 2.0 comes into play.

However, that all being said, I realized that I don’t really know the accepted definition of generic 2.0, much less the definition is of Web2.0, Library2.0, Learning2.0, etc. And I’m not sure there is a definition of 2.0 in general. It seems to have started with (been coined by) a conference brainstorming session between O’Reilly and MediaLive International. in 2003 or 2004, as near as I can tell. Here is a quote of his “compact definition of Web2.0“:

“Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an “architecture of participation,” and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.”

That does seem to be referring to it as specifically a platform, rather than a web of people, ideas, sharing, etc. Here is the long version of his creating and defining Web2.0 (it goes into a lot of detail and the thought process they went through). And here is another view of Web2.0, the Web2.0 Cheat Sheet. After just browsing for Web2.0 definitions and reading the many, many comments they get, I still have not figured out exactly what it is and encompasses (although I have a better idea of what it “means”).

And I wonder if it really matters if we can say definitively what is and isn’t “2.0″. Perhaps the value of the 2.0 label is to get people to broaden, examine, enhance and change how they view doing things. To see what other people have done by doing what I am doing, by trying to find out what is Web2.0, Learning2.0, Library2.0. And then, by that process, seeing what has been done and what can be done and using it to start thinking of ways to incorporate the various tools or ideas or creations that they find in the process.

I guess that for me, it is like the famous quote on obscenity: “I know it when I see it“.

~Susan Mellott

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Well, my first post. How strange this seems. And how strange that it seems strange. I’ve been chatting and posting to bulletin boards and email lists and groups and what not since before the internet had web pages, but somehow, Web 2.0 came along and suddenly everything old is new (and different) again. And I need to catch up.

As an example, I remember the whole “Second City” social/avatar/world thing from way back. I can’t even remember the name of the place anymore, but I remember hanging out in people’s “pads”and chatting to all sorts of interesting people (and admiring their avatars) and having quite a good time. But do I know anything about Second City and who is using it? No, I don’t.

Somewhere along the way, a whole new (dare I say) paradigm appeared, with all the supporting jargon, acronyms, tools, languages and uses and I was busy programming business apps and missed it.

Then I started paying attention to what my husband was doing as head of the Information Technology Services Department of the ACPL (Allen County Public Library) and it blew me away. All the things I used to do that were just considered playing or obscure or geeky or “kid’s stuff”, suddenly have a real and practical (and accepted) use. And it is not just acceptable, it is valuable.

And the possibilities are screaming at me. I want to learn and see and do and create and be involved in making a place and finding the opportunities in this new land. I have so many ideas that I want to implement and so many contributions that I want to make. But I need to learn the tools and words and ways to do it. It is frustrating since I have been programming all my life and there is typically nothing I want to do that I can’t do without too much trouble. So now I feel humbled by the amount of things I don’t know.

So hang with me and you can watch me on my path and hopefully we can share with each other along the way. It is a new way and a new day. It’s all things Web 2.0.

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