(2009-10-20) Kahle Book Server

Fran Toolan says: Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive Founder and Chief Librarian, introduced what he calls his "Book Server" project. Book Server is a framework of tools and activities. It is an open-architectured set of tools that allow for the discoverability, distribution, and delivery of electronic books (EBook) by retailers, librarians, and aggregators, all in a way that makes for a very easy and satisfying experience for the reader, on whatever device they want... Brewster announced that the number of books scanned at libraries all over the world has increased over the past year from 1 million books to 1.6 million books. He then announced that all of these 1.6 million books were available in the EPub format... Raj Kumar from Internet Archive demonstrated how the Book Server technology can deliver books to the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) XO laptop, wirelessly.

Brewster took a break from the demonstrations to elaborate a couple of facts, the most significant of which was the fact the books in the worlds libraries fall into 3 categories. The first category is Public Domain, which accounts for 20% of the total titles out there - these are the titles being scanned by IA. The second category is books that are in print and still commercially viable, these account for 10% of the volumes in the world's libraries. The last category are books that are "OutOfPrint" but still in copyright. These account for 70% of the titles, and Brewster called this massive amount of information the "dead zone" of publishing. Many of these are the Orphan titles that we've heard so much about related to the Google Book Search Settlement - where no one even knows how to contact the copyright holder... Brewster went on to talk about how for any digital EcoSystem to thrive, it must support not just the free availability of information, but also the ability for a consumer to purchase, or borrow books as well.

Stan Za is supporting the Book Server technology, and supporting the purchase of products direct from publishers or any other retailer using their technology as a delivery platform.