Apple Sued Over eBook Pricing and Kindle Gets Advertising

The face of evil.

Apple and five publishing companies have been hit with a class action lawsuit by the firm Hagens Berman over ebook price fixing.  The lawsuit claims that Apple, HarperCollins Publishers, Hachette Book Group, Macmillan Publishers, Penguin Group Inc. and Simon & Schuster Inc. conspired to illegally fix prices of ebooks and shut down the competition created by Amazon's lower priced ebooks.

Anybody feel like this is just a big advertisement for Kindles?  Oh, Kindle ebooks are so cheap that the big boys had bring us down.  Why can't we all be friends?  Those big meanies are trying to stop us from giving you the best prices around.  So cheap in fact that we feel crazy.  We must be crazy.  We are giving the site away!  So come on down to Crazy Larry's Amazon eBookland and we'll have us a good old time.

Also, you know the folks over at Google Books are loving this.  Their main completion are having a slap fight while they just put out their first eReader. Of course, they could feel left out.  This is the first major ebook court battle that they have not been apart of.

AppleInsider
ZDNet
DetNews
Wired

Newspaper Company Developing Electronic Newspaper Tablet, or eFail

Pictured: Not Real Paper

Newspaper giant Tribune Co. is developing a tablet device dedicated to reading newspapers.  The company owns some of the largest newspapers in the nation, including the Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune, and the Delaware WhyTheHellAmIinDelaware, all of which would like to stay in business and not become crunched underfoot by the slowly rolling electronic behemoth that is the Internet. 


In the news article I read online on my phone, a person familiar with the matter had this to say:  "They're having to reinvent many wheels... If it turns out to be a failure, it'll be a fantastically interesting failure."


Well, that sounds optimistic as hell.

Blog Bash 2011: I'm Reaching Out!

This post is for the Blog Bash 2011, a great idea from www.brittanyciara.com and littlemisshannie.blogspot.com to introduce blogs to each other.  Click on them for the rules.  Let's make a community.  Here's my intro: 

doo do doo do doo do doo do doo do doo

You open this door with the hand of 'magination. Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of books, a dimension of DVDs, a dimension of Innernetz. You're moving into a library of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas that are often wrong.

You've just crossed over into the Banned Library.

The Banned Library is a place for comedy, news and reviews about libraries, technology, and stuff we are interested in.  The point of the blog is to make people laugh, maybe think a bit.  Too many librarians I have met are funny and interesting people that paradoxily treat the profession way too seriously.  This blog is my way of poking fun at something I love, a world of information and people that are dedicated and fun.  As the world changes, the electronic takes over with the likes of clouds and The Google, I also want to document my experiences.  So that is what the Banned Library is.  If I did not care about my profession, I would not make fun of it.

The questions and answers for the Blog Bash 2011 Summer Fun are after the jump!

1.) What's your favorite memory from Summer 2011?
ALA 2011 in New Orleans was probably the most fun I have had as a librarian.  Meeting and sharing ideas, technologies and drinks with my fellow library folks is a precious gift.  And, man, those folks can party.

2.) What's your dream summer vacation?
A porch somewhere in the mountains where they serve cold beer, thick, medium-rare burgers, and steak fries.  In front of me is a stack of books and a broken cell phone.  At night thunderstorms boom and shake while I sit and write.  At some point I slow dance with the most beautiful girl in the world.

3.) What's your favorite thing to do in the summer?
My favorite thing to do in the summer is to sit outside under a ceiling fan, eat a burger, drink a beer and read.  See #2.  I am pretty simple.

4.) What's your "blog goal" for 2011?
My blog goal for 2011 is to make people laugh and see the lighter side of the profession.  I have a couple of projects (including a certain 100 books project that I have procrasinated on) that I would like to finish but my ultimate goal is to put a smile on some public servants face.  I would also like to get some more contributers for the site to get some more perspectives on the profession. And maybe make a lot of money.

5.) Let's hear the story behind your blog title! :)
The blog really started as a twitter account.  I was hearing things about this whole "twitter" thing a year and a half ago, and thought, "Well, I can do that."  I thought it would be funny to tweet the things my patrons said, changing up the words to make them generic but still true to the ideas and not get me fired.  The first name was called heardatlibrary, and after six months I had about 200 followers. 
This made me worry because there is an institution already called the Heard Library at Vanderbuilt University, and I could bet they had a few lawyers that might stop me if this took off.  So, I rebranded as Banned Library because I really liked the name, could get the web address, and it was Banned Books Week.  The name fit with the little essays and information I started putting out on the blog and I came up with a fun logo.  To make a long story short, I made it up and used it before someone else did.

That's what I am all about. Here's some of the most loved viewed posts from the site

 5 Reasons Libraries Should Not Use Ebooks... Yet.
How to Get Banned From a Library
7 Reasons Porn Should Be Allowed in the Library
The Public Library Vs Netflix: DVD Battle Royal
Twitter: Celebrity Endorsed #BPLRAMPAGE #WINNING

Archivist Has Not Learned of TV Show Hoarders; Tries to Collect Every Book

In a move that would make the Library of Congress blush, archivist Brewster Kahle is attempting to collect a copy of every book in print.  Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, has collected about 500,000 books so far.
Dude, think about this.  Alexandria burned.  The Library of Congress went crazy and decided to collect Twitter, of all things.  Sean Connery and Chrisian Slater had to fight evil monks.  Hoarding books like this cannot end well, trust me.  All you are going to end up with is a warehouse full of crates of books that we will have to play campfire with when the robots take over after the greenhouse effect turns half of us into zombies. 

Heyyyyy... maybe you are on to something, Kahle ole pal...

[courier-journal] has some cool pics of this project, too.

Homeless to Be Turned Away from Bethlehem Public Library, Insert "No Room at the Library" Joke Here

Please, sir.  I can haz Internetz?

The Bethlehem Public Library of Bethlehem, PA has had to revise their policies that allegedly targeted their transient (i.e. homeless) population. The library administration feels the transients have begun to drive away regular patron use.  Local transient advocates feel that the rules, including rules regarding sleeping, having sleeping bags, and having offensive body odor, target the transients the advocates bus to the library and drop off.

There are many ways to be banned from a library.  Simply being homeless is not one of them.  A public library is just that, public.  My heart goes out to anyone in this economy that has lost a roof over their head.  The library is a community place where many often spend all day honestly doing nothing and that is okay.  Whether or not the Bethlehem Public Library went too far and far too specific with their "policies" and should have just handled each incident as it came up is not for me to say. *cough*

The problem with this is not the homeless themselves.  I have a problem with the people that treat adults like children.  Picking anyone up and dropping them off at a public location to spend the day without supervision is the act of a negligent parent, not community outreach.  This is like dropping adults off at the playground and getting pissed when they cannot get on the swings.

The library is a community institution.  It is not a day care for anyone.  It is not a daylight motel.  If other patrons complain about another patron's smell, activities, or general behavior, the library must attend to them.  If you have taken the responsibilty of getting a person of any age from point A to B, then you should also make sure they are bathed, well rested and do not have to carry their whole lives on their backs. 

And for God sakes, if your town is named "Bethlehem," don't get into trouble that lends itself to so many easy jokes I can't pick just one.

[lehighvalleylive]

Harry Potter's Pottermore Attracting Conmen



Be a Gryffindor for $15.50

The Harry Potter eBook site Pottermore has been attracting a lot of attention (as I previously wrote) even though it will not open for business until October.  This has not stopped many, many different hoodwinklers and nar-do-wells from scamming everyone under the sun.  Notices of "subscription fees" and "early openings" have been popping up promising early entry into the website for hundreds of dollars. 

Do not be fooled by this people!  This ain't no "it fell off the website so now we are giving you a discount" kinda operation.  This is the kind of operation that can kill your computer, your credit score, and possibly your pet owl.  Stay away from anyone wishing to sell you early access to Harry Potter ebooks!  I mean, it is not like you can find Harry Potter ebooks on the Internet.  Especially not a torrent file that is a direct scan of the book because finding those would be ridiculously hard.  On the Internet.  With just a search or two and a rudimentary knowledge of how torrenting works.  Can't be done.

[PCWorld]

Vonnegut Library to Give Students Books, Not Take Them Away

I feel like I may have slacked a bit and for that I apologize.  For a website called Banned Library, I have overlooked an important issue that has happened in the past week.  A Missouri school district banned several books, including the classic Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  I did give a small retweet on the subject, but that was not enough.  Now I hear that the Vonnegut Library is offering free copies of the book to students of that school and my heart swells.

When I was younger, I had the great fortune and honor to hear Mr. Vonnegut speak.  I was a dumb high school kid with visions of writing the great American novel and yet had not read enough to know who the hilarious and cultured man on the stage was.  I only went because my art teacher gave me credit to give a short review of the speech.  The man on stage drawing on a chalk board and telling jokes changed my life, in how I view books, plots, characters, authors, and the people around me, the audience.  Afterward, I read most if not all of Mr. Vonnegut's books, some I got from the local library and some I scrounged from used book stores.  This man changed my life when I was young, stepped in at the right time and told me what literature should be, could be and was.  I am forever grateful.  I am sorry, Mr. Vonnegut, for allowing this injustice to pass.  Everyone should be allowed contact with your art, your message that the world is a strange, upsetting, hilarious mess. 

To the school district in Republic, Missouri: May you be humbled that while you refuse to teach your children the ways of the world, the world does not give a damn and will teach them anyway.  Please prepare them with our best weapons: books.

"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true, that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice."
- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five