Publishers Weekly is reporting that not only are they up for sale by their publisher, Reed Business Information, but that Library Journal and School Library Journal are available as well.

Without knowing the cost/profit information for each of these, I do wonder how  they are affected by the various pressures in the publishing world as well as the shifting of library information to the web (including social media such as blogging and Twitter).

found via LISNews

If you are involved with the selection or ordering process, then you are very likely to be familiar with searching for items by the International Standard Book Number, or ISBN.  The newer, 13-digit ISBN is actually based on the European Article Number, or EAN, which makes books consistent with most international trade goods.  The EAN was developed as an expansion of the common Universal Product Code, or UPC.

Enough theory?  How about web sites that offer lookup services that can help you find booksellers, prices, and even reviews and summaries of the books you wish to acquire?

• BookFinder – This site returns a large number of booksellers (many, many used booksellers!), although it seems odd that it doesn’t display the book’s title.
• CheckUPC.com – A good summary, and a variety of printable bar codes make this a decent site for book information.
• ISBN.nu – This is one I have used for years, and is still the one I turn to when our primary vendors don’t have a book in stock.
• ISBNdb.com – With summaries, subjects, similar items, and physical details, this site is a great resource for information about books.
• OCLC’s xISBN service – This service returns a list of related ISBNs, other editions of the book whose ISBN you append to their base URL ( http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/ ), in XML format.  It isn’t pretty, but when you need it, it is very helpful.
• ThingISBN – Similar to xISBN, LibraryThing provides a service where you append your ISBN to the end of their base URL ( http://www.librarything.com/api/thingISBN/ ) and get a list of related ISBNs in XML format.
• UPC Database – This site returns a large number of booksellers of the group; it also lets you know that the UPC is associated with that fictional country that so many people enjoy visiting:  Bookland.
• Wikipedia’s Book Sources – If you want a service that can give you dozens (and dozens!) of places where you can “Find This Book”, then you need to try this one.

For comparison, here are links to results for the same book (Stephen King : The Dark Tower):

• BookFinder.com
• CheckUPC.com
• ISBN.nu
• ISBNdb.com
• OCLC’s xISBN service
• ThingISBN
• UPC Database
• Wikipedia’s Book Sources

Sources and further information:

• Bibliographic Wilderness (and again)
• Comparing xISBN and ThingISBN (FRBR Blog)
• Official Web Site of The Dark Tower (The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed….)

Peter Murray has an incredibly good selection of links about the Google Book Search Settlement on the Disruptive Library Technology Jester blog.  Really.  Spend some time perusing them.

Ever hear of the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine?  Sounds official, as well as medically specific.  Did you know it was published by Elsevier?  That is is Peer Reviewed?  And that it published an article on the effectiveness of Fosamax?

How about that it was cooked up by Merck as a promotional tool, and that they paid Elsevier to publish it?

I worked in a pharmacy for eight years; I have seen first-hand the differences between the drug manufacturer’s publicity and the actual usefulness of medicines.  I am not too surprised that someone at Merck did this (though not as surprised as I will be if the FDA doesn’t lift a finger to make it clear that this level of deception is unacceptable), but am a little surprised that Elsevier went along (though maybe not too surprised (here, too)).

This is a horrible situation, and library organizations should be demanding that Elsevier establish the bona fides of the journals we pay for, and that our patrons use for their research.  Sure, we can probably trust that the big-name journals are what they say they are, but there are hundreds of obscure journals, with titles sounding just as official as the fake one, that we cannot know for sure who they represent, and how they conduct their research, without a great deal of research.  Elsevier needs to salvage their credibility, and soon.

found via Bibliographic Wilderness

Publisher Confidential is a creation by the Unshelved crew that strives to convey to publishers what libraries wish they would know.  It consists of brief statements illustrated with the familiar Mallville Public Library staff.  The booklet is being distributed to the BookExpo America (BEA) mailing list, so a lot of publisher’s representative will see it and hopefully take heed.

Some of the selections I especially like upon first reading:

• Start your periodical with Vol. 1, Issue 1.
• Unusual packaging creates problems.
• In the book, tell us how to pronounce the author’s name.
• Free Ebooks from the shackles of D.R.M.
• Not all fonts are created equal.

There are many more… and all are worth reading.

via the Unshelved Blog

Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab is an article in today’s New York Times on how this one area of publishing is booming, while it seems all other areas are scaling back.

The headline itself doesn’t quite fit the article (but oftentimes the headline is written by someone other than the article’s writer) in that many of the prominent self-publishing companies don’t require much of a payment in advance (if any payment at all – see Lulu.com).

The downside of self-publishing, according to the article, is the lack of advance payments and the absence of the marketing efforts that traditional publishers offer.  However, when one is publishing a niche book, the marketing offered by a publisher, unless they specifically serve that niche, won’t necessarily do much for sales.

This is, as many things seem to be, reflecting a trend.  With web sites, blogs, wikis and other “new” media flourishing, it makes sense to apply many of those principles to the publishing world.  I want the traditional publishers to do well; they provide access and support to writers that we would sorely miss if they went out of business.  However, I suspect that in five years we will see more self-publishing (especially if you combine the small publishing companies that will form around the idea of print-on-demand and small press runs).

For libraries: prepare to widen your search for materials.  Traditional vendors will eventually need to find ways to include these “niche” publications in their offerings; in the meantime Amazon and others will be the primary nesting ground for these books.  There will be a period of time in which it will seem that it is harder to find the right books than before; afterwards it will be easier than ever.

There is a concept for all this, not mentioned in the article:  The Long Tail.

The Creative Commons blog has a thought-provoking post about CC licensed music.  It seems that the latest Nine Inch Nails album, Ghost I-IV, is available under a CC license.  This means that you can legally download it from any of the dozens (if not hundreds) of dowloading services on the web… for free.

However, the album is listed as the best-selling album for 2008 on Amazon.com’s MP3 store.  Give that some thought, because it signals that the transition to a new business model is well under way.  If that many people are paying for the download, you know many more are downloading the CC version; people are still still paying for Amazon’s download because they feel that NIN is worth it.

The music industry has been the razor’s edge of this new business model’s birth, though not without conflict.  Those of us who work with books and journals should pay attention, because at some time in the not-too-distant future, our media will undergo these sorts of transformations.  What do libraries need to do in order to adapt?  What do we need to do in order to lead the way?

found via the Lessig blog

TeleRead has an excellent post dissecting the recent ruling against the author of the Harry Potter Lexicon.  It examines the Fair Use aspects of copyright as they apply to this particular case.

via LISNews