Mission

The mass digitization of books promises to bring tremendous value to consumers, libraries, scholars, and students. The Open Book Alliance will work to advance and protect this promise. And, by protecting it, we will assert that any mass book digitization and publishing effort be open and competitive. The process of achieving this promise must be undertaken in the open, grounded in sound public policy and mindful of the need to promote long-term benefits for consumers rather than isolated commercial interests.

The Open Book Alliance will counter Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors' Guild's scheme to monopolize the access, distribution and pricing of the largest digital database of books in the world. To this end, we will promote fair and flexible solutions aimed at achieving a more robust and open system.

This is an experimental tool that lets people compare what book covers are available through different APIs. It uses four underlying services to lookup that information: LibraryThing's covers API, OpenLibrary's JSON API, Amazon's Associates Web Service, Google's Books API and Worldcat's xISBN.

Washington DC--The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) announce the release of "A Guide for the Perplexed Part II: The Amended Google-Michigan Agreement." The amendment represents important additions and this guide provides an overview to help librarians better understand the revised terms.

Nice piece about the Gotham Book Mart collection

LOLA lists the book, journal, and government document holdings at the Biddle Law Library.

This is a re-telling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from Mr. Darcy's viewpoint.   Interesting, but disappointing. This is the first of a trilogy, and apparently the author plans to take three books to tell a story that Austen handled in one.

Washington DC-The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association (ALA) have released "A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement," by Jonathan Band, JD.

The guide is designed to help the library community better understand the terms and conditions of the recent settlement agreement between Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers concerning Google's scanning of copyrighted works. Band notes that the settlement is extremely complex and presents significant challenges and opportunities to libraries. The guide outlines and simplifies the settlement's provisions, with special emphasis on the provisions that apply directly to libraries.

Video of the Espresso on-demand printer

Safari Tech Books Online (PennKey required for access) offers several books on web design topics such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, as well as at least one Dreamweaver-specific book, "Dreamweaver CS3 The Missing Manual"

"A few days ago, just before hitting thirty million books, we hit one million user-uploaded covers. So, we've decided to give them away-to libraries, to bookstores, to everyone."

All you need is a LibraryThing Developer Key and simple code in an image tag to image on your website. catalog,e tc.

Enormous collection of books, pamphlets, broadsides and other materials published in the United States between 1639 and 1800. It does not include journals or newspapers.

More on using the Google Book Search cover images

A bibliography of american novels published in the first half of the 20th century that include social themes. Westerns, detective stories and juvenile literature are mostly excluded. The extensive subject index includes themes such as adolescence, alcoholism, prostitution, race problems and socialism.
Van Pelt Library: PS374.U5 H35 1985

Bibliography of English language novels, anthologized short stories, and fictionalized personal narratives about the immigrant experience in America. Themes covered in the index include places, states, political and social activities (intermarriage, union involvement, generational conflict, etc.), and types of employment. Van Pelt Library Reference: PS374.I48 S56 1995

Annotated bibliography of novels about films, the film industry, film-related characters, and film-related settings.
Van Pelt Library: PS374.H55 S54 1995

This bibliography is old but has a valuable subject index to historical novels and tales.
Van Pelt Library: Z5917.H6 N6 1929b

Van Pelt Library: PS374.J48 B59

Annotated bibliography of British gothic novels. The extensive motif index includes terms such as convent, abduction, corpse, ghost, wedding, and other typically gothic motifs.
Van Pelt Library: PR868.T3 T7

Valuable index to works of fiction written in English and published 1945-1960. Useful supplement to the Short Story Index, covering novels and other works not included there.
Van Pelt Library: Z5916 .C78 1960

An effort to index every book ever published. It includes publication, author and date information as well as links to full text versions provided by Google books and the Internet Archive. However, it does not proivide links to books in Windows Live, the Million Book Project or other full text digitization projects.

Use BorrowDirect and EZBorrow to get books from our partner libraries delivered in 3 to 4 business days.

Images of Fore-Edge Paintings from Boston Public Library

    Beyond The Godfather, Italian American Writers Writing about the Real Italian American experience is a collection of stories from various Italian authors who offer an intimate and unique insight into what there lives were like completely disconnected from the experiences depticted in a movie like “The Godfather”. This work is not so mucha response to the film “The Godfather” as it is a reaction to those that have seen the film and can not distinguish between reality and fiction or are simply content to place stereotypical

    The first story in the book is that of Louise Desalvo called “Finding My Way” and his experiences as a young boy growing up in Hoboken, New Jersey and going to grammar school. This interesting little story shows how important education was this Italian American family and the pride that they felt to become integrated into American society as opposed to the extra legal activities that you would experience in “The Godfather.” Moreover, his real-life experiences at school prove him to be quite astute and polite. This quaint story ends as it had began ground in the real experience of family, one that has no connection to the mafia.

    This book takes a step back from the stereotypes that one might decide to adopt from the portrayals of Italian Americans in The Godfather. Understanding the distinction is important not only because stereotyping a group of people is ignorant, but because in realizing that the book or the movie are a work of fiction should increase one’s appreciation of the work.  

Description: A group for those interested and involved in entering the library catalogs of famous readers.

Includes Thomas Jeferson, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Marie Antoinette, Sylvia Plath and more

In chapter six, Jenkins discusses the role of popular culture in emerging political communities. Jenkins (as is the case throughout Convergence Culture) is focused on how old and new media interact and the dynamics of collaboration and participation. While Jenkins recognizes the scoff-factor when implying the concept of “photoshop for democracy” (user-generated images that often map themes from popular culture onto the political campaign) is any sort of substitute for real political activism, he insists that this kind of user-generated content and mass dispersion is a serious act of citizenry. In fact, using popular culture as a means of engaging voters might just be the most effective way of re-establishing interest in politics as a part of our everyday lives. Jenkins focuses on the 2004 election and recognizes that the next step is to think of “democratic citizenship as a lifestyle.” Furthermore, online political communities seem to be segregating voters, as opposed to encouraging dialogue across ideologies. Although he seems to offer popular culture as a kind of national balm for the ailments of political fragmentation, Jenkins recognizes the inherent limits of its role in (or applicability as a model for) contemporary political communities.

For me, the most useful parts of this argument is the attention he pays to the increasing participation of average Americans (now as monitorial citizens as opposed to informed citizens) in the media landscape and the possibilities for the integration of politics and popular culture. However, he doesn’t seem to offer any real solution for the acutely polarized political landscape.

Ch. 1: “Electronic Political Discussion”

This chapter offers an overview of various online communications, including electronic email lists, Usenet and blogs. Davis addresses the question of whether or not online discussions make any difference in political processes, institutions or societal behavior and ultimately decides that the prophesized utopia of direct democracy has not yet been achieved. The obstacles facing such restructuring include: inequality in the levels of accessibility and the fragmented nature of electronic political discussion. Even the more tempered notion of deliberative democracy faces hurdles - most notably human reliance on technological solutions.

This chapter is a helpful summary of current online discussion forums and briefly pulls apart the kind of Trippi-esque claims of revolution. I'm going to utilize the rest of this book in order to examine the broad claims of internet revolution which, in the case of much writing about the internet, seem devoid of factors like accessibility.

This chapter analyzes five cases of online politics, including the use of the internet by Bush and McCain in 2000, the phenomenon moveon.org, Web White and Blue and the “instant response meter” developed by Speakout.com. The moveon.org case study discusses the evolution of the wildly successful organization which proved to have a mobilizing capacity beyond all expectation. It summarizes its strategy of providing a voice for those unheard during the Clinton scandal as well as using the Internet to broaden the early donor pool. The article mentions in the last few sentences that there is no conservative counterpart to the MoveOn model, perhaps because “grassroots action works better in opposition – and the conservatives are in power.” I think this is a valid point and worth examining in relation to the Democratic takeover in the midterm elections although at the moment it seems too early for a conservative backlash.

As the chapter points out, Joan Blades and Wes Boyd (the founders of MoveOn) are not political candidates. They (in the vein of many environmentalists or human rights organizations responding to a specific problem) started their site/online petition as a reaction to the Clinton impeachment issue and grew to become a kind of brand of endorsement for selected democratic candidates. Also, they bundle donor choices to make sizable contributions to a slate of candidates. Would any one candidate be able to mobilize the kind of broad support this portal of the people harnessed?

These are two most practical how-to books on glass blowing. Ed Schmid couldn't find text books for the glassblowing classes he was teaching, so he created them. Fully illustrated (actually hand drawn and lettered) and full of sensible advice.

Collection of clinical textbooks, journals, and reference materials. Excellent source for background information.

Access Medicine - McGraw-Hill's AccessMedicine.com is an online reference resource that includes Harrison's Online, Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment, other core medical texts, Lange clinical review library, USMLE review, drug information, patient education, and many more resources.

MD Consult - Web portal containing full-text content of over 50 publishers and other organizations. Access includes full text textbooks, Clinics of North America, full text journals, practice guidelines, drug information, yearbooks and patient education.

The book Beyond the Godfather: Italian American Writers on the Real Italian American Experience, is a collection of essays written by writers of Italian descent. The book is in response to the wide popularity of The Godfather. The popularity of this book and movie has overshadowed the culture of Italians. As a result, these essays were compiled in order to give an overview of the styles of writing of the Italian Americans.

There are three main sections of the book: Memories and Memoirs, Italian American Literature and Identity Politics. Memories and Memoirs are full of anecdotes from Italian American everyday lives. In Louise DeSalvo’s story, “Finding My Way,” he discusses his education experience growing up. From this essay, it is apparent the importance of family as well as education in the life of this Italian American. The Italian American Literature section mainly discussed the different types of styles of writing. This is used to show the diversity in terms of its culture. Lastly, Identity Politics discusses the role that Italian Americans have in the United States. In the essay, “Italian Americans and American Politics,” Michael Barone discusses the influential role of Italians in the U.S. government, and the prominent figures, such as Fiorello LaGuardia, that were present in society.

The purpose of this book was to respond to the stereotypes of Italian Americans that was created by The Godfather. Although Mafia is an aspect of Italian Americans, the book highlights other aspects of their culture. Most notably, it shows the power that Italian Americans have in America. However, this power is through respectable positions in government and not through illegal ways. In addition to this, the importance of family is evident through the essays written, which is mirrored in the movie.

The literary map of Pennsylvania is a graphic display of the literary history of our Commonwealth. On the map you'll find writers of novels, plays, short stories, technical manuals, legislation, children's literature…just about anything you could imagine connected to writing.

Click on a county to see authors from that county with biographies and lists of works.