LibraryThing developer Tim Spalding may have warned in LJ four months ago that public libraries were more scared of user-contributed data than academic ones, but he’s found a taker in the Danbury Public Library (DPL), CT...It went live May 13, and initial promotional efforts are under way, DPL coordinator of library automation Kate Sheehan said. DPL’s tags are "keywords and labels used by regular people to categorize books," explains DPL in its catalog.

Patrons can’t add their own tags at the moment, said Sheehan; it would require more work with the library’s automation product from Innovative Interfaces, Inc., and DPL users couldn’t generate the number of tags needed for effective use.

Pearson said eCollege will continue to work with other publishers to develop course materials, while Pearson will work with other distance learning provides to distribute materials through their services.

"Information comes in different packages and if we sit back and say we’re all about books and nothing else, we’re going to lose our market.”

The new IDPF standard will eventually allow publishers, converters, distributors and retailers to work with one file format, rather than five or six.

Suppose, as I’ve written here before, that e-books on occasions could precede more polished p-books—a kind of beta approach, in techspeak. For example, if a project were close to completion and major news unfolded, or if another publicity break happened, such as an Oprah appearance, then the publisher could get an e-book online almost instantly. Thoroughly edited and perhaps longer editions, in E and P, would appear later on, reflecting input from readers. Rather than junk, the end result would be superior books, with the writers and editors free to pick up the smarter suggestions and ignore the rest.

Participating user-partners will be treated as other content partners and will have the ability to control the monetization of the videos they create. Once they’ve selected a video to be monetized, we’ll place advertising adjacent to their content so participating user-partners can reap the rewards from their work.

The publisher is committed to a flight of 40 videos that will be personality-driven rather than focusing solely on specific new titles. The videos, which be produced by TurnHere Inc., based in Emeryville, Calif., will last two minutes and feature such best-selling authors as Mary Higgins Clark, Zane, and Sandra Brown.

On March 26, the day the show was broadcast, iTunes’ home page highlighted “Grammar Girl’s Quick & Dirty Tips to Clean Up Your Writing,” an hourlong audiobook that could be downloaded for $4.95. By the end of that week, Ms. Fogarty’s presentation had bumped “The Secret,” the advice book that espouses positive thinking which also had been promoted by Ms. Winfrey, from the top spot.

Google’s court filing gives few new details of its legal thinking, which relies heavily on the so-called “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, enacted in 1998. Those provisions generally hold that Web sites’ owners are not liable for copyright material uploaded by others to their site as long as they promptly remove the material when asked to do so by the copyright owner.

[f]or all the democratic -- and clearly lucrative -- allure of MySpace and blogs and an environment that makes "You" Time magazine's person of the year, the offer is affirmation of a model in which traditional information gathering and storytelling is a valuable commodity.

And as more and more print advertising migrates to the Web, the Online Journal, MarketWatch and a soon-to-be-launched personal-finance joint venture with Barry Diller's IAC are among Dow Jones Internet media that add to the company's attraction, BusinessWeek points out. They would seem complementary to a stable that currently includes the likes of Fox News, the New York Post, "American Idol" and MySpace, as the Los Angeles Times says.