EBook Library, Similar sites are at
Googolbase
East Brother Lighthouse
English Basketball League Home
English Basketball League is a semi-professional basketball league in
England. It forms the second-tier of competition below the fully professional
British Basketball League.
The EBL was established in 2003 by England Basketball to replace the former
National Basketball League, and currently operates several men's and women's
leagues in the British basketball pyramid, which is headed by Division 1. This
is effectively seen as the second tier of men's basketball in the United
Kingdom, along with the less celebrated Scottish Basketball League.
There are numerous leagues underneath the division 1 men's and women's
leagues. Currently there are a total of four men's national leagues and two
women's national leagues. The division 4 men and 2 women are regionalised.
Beneath the men and women's national leagues is a huge junior structure for
both male and female with leagues for under 18s, 16s, 15s, 14s, 13s. The England
Basketball website contains all the relevant information
There is no promotion and relegation between the EBL and the British
Basketball League, which operates a franchise system. Many teams have in recent
years made the step from EBL to the BBL, looking for greater
EBook Library Homepage
EBook LibraryAn e-book (for electronic book: also ebook: also ecobook) is the
digital media equivalent of a conventional printed book. Such documents are
usually read on personal computers, or on dedicated hardware devices known as
e-book readers or e-book devices.
An e-book is a specialized type of e-text.
History
Early e-books were generally written for specialty areas and a limited audience,
meant to be read only by small and devoted interest groups. The scope of the
subject matter of these e-books included technical manuals for hardware,
manufacturing techniques, and other subjects.
Numerous e-book formats emerged and proliferated, some supported by major
software companies such as Adobe's PDF format, and others supported by
independent and open-source programmers. Multiple readers naturally followed
multiple formats, most of them specializing in only one format, and thereby
fragmenting the e-book market even more. Due to exclusiveness and limited
readerships of e-books, the fractured market of independents and specialty
authors lacked consensus regarding a standard for packaging and selling e-books.
E-books continued to gain in their own underground markets. Many e-book
publishers began distributing books that were in the public domain. At the same
time, authors with books that were not accepted by publishers offered their
works online so they could be seen by others. Unofficial (and occasionally
unauthorized) catalogs of books became available over the web, and sites devoted
to e-books began disseminating information about e-books to the public.
As of 2008, new marketing models for e-books are being developed, formats are
beginning to homogenize, and dedicated reading hardware has been produced.
E-books have achieved global distribution, and electronics manufacturers are
releasing more e-book readers for general consumer use, such as Amazon's Kindle
model or Sony's PRS-500. E-books have seen tremendous market growth in Japan
throughout the 2000s and currently has an e-book market worth ￥10 billion .
(http://ivan.web.id/documents/32.html)
Formats
Comparison of e-book formats
Advantages
The e-book has several advantages over physical materials:
* Text can be searched automatically and cross-referenced using hyperlinks,
making the e-book format ideal for works that benefit from such functions.
* Less physical space is required to store e-books, and hundreds to thousands of
books may be stored on the same device
* Because they require little space, e-books can be offered indefinitely, with
no going out of print date, allowing authors to continue to earn royalties
indefinitely.
* Readers who have difficulty reading printed books can benefit from the
adjustment of text size and font face.
* Text-to-speech software can be used to convert e-books to audio books
automatically.
* E-book devices allow reading in low light or even total darkness by means of a
back light.
* An e-book may be more comfortable for some to hold because it need not be held
open like a physical book and can also be set down and read without needing to
be held.
* It costs little to reproduce or copy an e-book, which is ideal for archival
and backup purposes.
* Ease of distributing e-texts means that they can be used to stimulate higher
sales of printed copies of books.
* E-books can often be purchased from reading devices themselves and do not
require one to visit a bookstore to obtain.
* Although they require electricity to be read, the production of e-books does
not consume the paper, ink, and other resources that are used to produce print
books.
Disadvantages
* An e-book requires the purchase of an electronic device (and possibly
peripheral software) to display.
* As an e-book is dependent on equipment to be read, it can be affected by
faults in external hardware or software, such as hard disk drive failure.
* All e-book devices require electrical power.
* Certain e-book formats may become obsolete and incompatible with future
devices.
* Book readers are more likely to be stolen than paper books.
* Book readers are more fragile than paper books and more susceptible to
physical damage.
* If an e-book device is stolen, lost, or broken beyond repair, all e-books
stored on the device may be lost (this can be avoided by backup either on
another device or by the e-book provider).
* Screen resolution of reading devices may be lower than actual paper.
* E-books can be hacked, or disseminated without approval from the author or
publisher.
Digital rights management
Anti-circumvention techniques may be used to restrict what the user may do with
an e-book. For instance, it may not be possible to transfer ownership of an
e-book to another person, though such a transaction is common with physical
books. Some devices can phone home to track readers and reading habits, restrict
printing, or arbitrarily modify reading material. This includes restricting the
copying and distribution of works in the public domain through the use of
"click-wrap" licensing, effectively limiting the rights of the public to
distribute, sell or use texts in the public domain freely.
Most e-book publishers do not warn their customers about the possible
implications of the digital rights management tied to their products. Generally
they claim that digital rights management is meant to prevent copying of the
e-book. However in many cases it is also possible that digital rights management
will result in the complete denial of access by the purchaser to the e-book.
With some formats of DRM, the e-book is tied to a specific computer or device.
In these cases the DRM will usually let the purchaser move the book a limited
number of times after which he cannot use it on any additional devices. If the
purchaser upgrades or replaces their devices eventually they may lose access to
their purchase. Some forms of digital rights management depend on the existence
of online services to authenticate the purchasers. When the company that
provides the service goes out of business or decides to stop providing the
service, the purchaser will no longer be able to access the e-book.
With digital rights management, it is argued by some[who?] to be a more apt use
of money for commodity to be a rental or lease rather than a purchase. The
restricted book comes with a number of restrictions, and eventually access to
the purchase can be removed by a number of different parties involved. These
include the publisher of the book, the publisher of the DRM scheme, and the
publisher of the reader software. These are all things that are significantly
different from the realm of experiences anyone has had with a physical copy of
the book.
Production
Some e-books are produced simultaneously with the production of a printed
format, as described in electronic publishing, though in many instances they may
not be put on sale until later. Often, e-books are produced from pre-existing
hard-copy books, generally by document scanning, sometimes with the use of
robotic book scanners, having the technology to quickly scan books without
damaging the original print edition. Scanning a book produces an image file,
which must then be converted into text format by an OCR program. Occasionally,
as in some e-text projects, a book may be produced by re-entering the text from
a keyboard.
As a newer development, sometimes only the electronic version of a book is
produced by the publisher. Usually, it is possible to convert electronic book to
a printed book by print on demand.
E-book publishing as an industry is growing in the double digits yearly,
according to the quarterly reports put out by IDPF. Among the first
Internet-only publishers of new e-books were Boson Books, Hard Shell Word
Factory and Online Originals, all founded in the mid-1990s. Each pioneered
different aspects of what has since become common practice amongst e-book
publishers, e.g. the support of multiple formats including PDFs, the payment of
much higher royalty rates than conventional publishers, and the online
presentation of free samples. Hard Shell Word Factory set the first professional
standards for commercial e-books and pioneered author-friendly contracts. Online
Originals was the first e-book publisher to win mainstream book reviews (in The
Times) and a nomination for a major literary prize (the Booker Prize).
Since the late 1990s, the many newcomers to e-book publishing have included most
major print publishers. At the same time, many established e-publishers started
to offer print versions of some of their titles. Thus the line between the two
is fast blurring.
There are some parts of the industry where there are particularly notable
leading firms. In the general field of science-fiction and fantasy, Baen Books,
an American publishing company established in 1983 by science fiction publishing
industry long-timer Jim Baen (1943-2006) has a well-established position. It is
a science fiction and fantasy publishing house that specializes in space
opera/military science fiction and fantasy (though it does not restrict itself
to these subgenres). It is notable for releasing books without DRM in a variety
of formats, before hard-copy publication, and pre-releasing ebooks in parts
before the hard-copy release. Many older titles are available for free,
especially the first book in a series.
E-books have their own bestseller lists, including those compiled by IDPF,
BooksOnBoard and Fictionwise. There are two yearly awards for excellence in
e-books. The longest-standing and most inclusive of these is the EPPIE award,
given by EPIC since 2000. The other is the Dream Realm Award, first awarded to
speculative fiction e-books in 2002.
A digital library is a library in which collections are stored in digital
formats (as opposed to print, microform, or other media) and accessible by
computers. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via
computer networks. A digital library is a type of information retrieval system.
The first use of the term digital library in print may have been in a 1988
report to the Corporation for National Research Initiatives The term digital
libraries was first popularized by the NSF/DARPA/NASA Digital Libraries
Initiative in 1994. The older names electronic library or virtual library are
also occasionally used, though electronic library nowadays more often refers to
portals, often provided by government agencies, as in the case of the Florida
Electronic Library.
Types of digital libraries
The term digital library is diffuse enough to be applied to a wide range of
collections and organizations, but, to be considered a digital library, an
online collection of information must be managed by and made accessible to a
community of users. Thus, some web sites can be considered digital libraries,
but far from all. Many of the best known digital libraries are older than the
web including Project Perseus, Project Gutenberg, and ibiblio. Nevertheless, as
a result of the development of the internet and its search potential, digital
libraries such as the European Library and the Library of Congress are now
developing in a Web-based environment. Public, school and college libraries are
also able to develop digital download websites, featuring eBooks, audiobooks,
music and video, through companies like OverDrive, Inc.
A distinction is often made between content that was created in a digital
format, known as born-digital, and information that has been converted from a
physical medium, e.g., paper, by digitizing. The term hybrid library is
sometimes used for libraries that have both physical collections and digital
collections. They consist of a combination of traditional preservation efforts
such as microfilming and new technologies involving digital projects. For
example, American Memory is a digital library within the Library of Congress.
Some important digital libraries also serve as long term archives, for example,
the ePrint arXiv, and the Internet Archive.
Academic repositories
Many academic libraries are actively involved in building institutional
repositories of the institution's books, papers, theses, and other works which
can be digitized or were 'born digital'. Many of these repositories are made
available to the general public with few restrictions, in accordance with the
goals of open access. Institutional, truly free, and corporate repositories are
often referred to as digital libraries.
Digital archives
Archives differ from libraries in several ways. Traditionally, archives were
defined as:
1. Containing primary sources of information (typically letters and papers
directly produced by an individual or organization) rather than the secondary
sources found in a library (books, etc);
2. Having their contents organized in groups rather than individual items.
Whereas books in a library are cataloged individually, items in an archive are
typically grouped by provenance (the individual or organization who created
them) and original order (the order in which the materials were kept by the
creator);
3. Having unique contents. Whereas a book may be found at many different
libraries, depending on its rarity, the records in an archive are usually
one-of-a-kind, and cannot be found or consulted at any other location except at
the archive that holds them.
The technology used to create digital libraries has been even more revolutionary
for archives since it breaks down the second and third of these general rules.
The use of search engines, Optical Character Recognition and metadata allow
digital copies of individual items (i.e. letters) to be cataloged, and the
ability to remotely access digital copies has removed the necessity of
physically going to a particular archive to find a particular set of records.
The Oxford Text Archive is generally considered to be the oldest digital archive
of academic primary source materials.
Project Gutenberg, Google Book Search, Windows Live Search Books, Internet
Archive, Cornell University, The Library of Congress World Digital Library, The
Digital Library at the University of Michigan, and CMU's Universal library are
considered leaders in the field of digital archive creation and management.
There are hundreds of regionals such as the Wisconsin Historical Society. The
Vatican maintains an extensive digital library inventory and associated
technology. The Packard Foundation maintains digitization facilities near the
Acropolis in Athens, Greece, as examples.
The future
Large scale digitization projects are underway at Google, the Million Book
Project, MSN, and Yahoo!. With continued improvements in book handling and
presentation technologies such as optical character recognition and ebooks, and
development of alternative depositories and business models, digital libraries
are rapidly growing in popularity as demonstrated by Google, Yahoo!, and MSN's
efforts. Just as libraries have ventured into audio and video collections, so
have digital libraries such as the Internet Archive.
Searching
Most digital libraries provide a search interface which allows resources to be
found. These resources are typically deep web (or invisible web) resources since
they frequently cannot be located by search engine crawlers. Some digital
libraries create special pages or sitemaps to allow search engines to find all
their resources. Digital libraries frequently use the Open Archives Initiative
Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) to expose their metadata to other
digital libraries, and search engines like Google Scholar, Google, Yahoo! and
Scirus can also use OAI-PMH to find these deep web resources.
There are two general strategies for searching a federation of digital
libraries:
1. distributed searching, and
2. searching previously harvested metadata.
Distributed searching typically involves a client sending multiple search
requests in parallel to a number of servers in the federation. The results are
gathered, duplicates are eliminated or clustered, and the remaining items are
sorted and presented back to the client. Protocols like Z39.50 are frequently
used in distributed searching. A benefit to this approach is that the
resource-intensive tasks of indexing and storage are left to the respective
servers in the federation. A drawback to this approach is that the search
mechanism is limited by the different indexing and ranking capabilities of each
database, making it difficult to assemble a combined result consisting of the
most relevant found items.
Searching over previously harvested metadata involves searching a locally stored
index of information that has previously been collected from the libraries in
the federation. When a search is performed, the search mechanism does not need
to make connections with the digital libraries it is searching - it already has
a local representation of the information. This approach requires the creation
of an indexing and harvesting mechanism which operates regularly, connecting to
all the digital libraries and querying the whole collection in order to discover
new and updated resources. OAI-PMH is frequently used by digital libraries for
allowing metadata to be harvested. A benefit to this approach is that the search
mechanism has full control over indexing and ranking algorithms, possibly
allowing more consistent results. A drawback is that harvesting and indexing
systems are more resource-intensive and therefore expensive.
Construction and organisation
Frameworks
A digital library can be built around specific repository software. The best
known examples of this are DSpace, Eprints, Fedora, dLibra, and Greenstone
Digital Library Software.
Selection Criteria
A strategy with defined selection priorities for digitization is critical and
should be informed by a convergence in the consideration for both preservation
and access. The focus should be based on traditional preservation decisions such
as the value of materials; the condition of materials; use of materials; and
material characteristics ensuring a high level of success. For the Library of
Congress, items of national interest are prime candidates and digitizing these
objects improves access while reducing the wear and tear on the originals.
In the early discussions about digitization of library materials the selection
decisions were proposed based on a desire for better access to that item's
content and not on the condition or value of the original item. In 2001, Paula
De Stefano wrote that a use-based criteria was promising, as it is “fundamental
to collection development and is the common thread in all selection decisions”
however her own study showed that use was not the most popular approach – in
fact, most digital projects at the time focused on special collections, which
are generally not the most popular items in the overall collection.
The persistent risk of disappearing "last copies". and the declines seen in the
condition of national treasures, as exemplified by the 2005 Heritage Health
Index Report on the State of America's Collections provide the rationale for
establishing priorities and balancing access with preservation needs. The
transient nature of electronic information can contribute to a phenomenon called
"memory loss." This is a result of data extinctions as technologies become
obsolete. There is also a drift away from original bibliographic contexts as
time passes. A 1998 Council on Library and Information Sources white paper
identified the following comprehensive considerations for selection: assessment
of the intellectual and physical nature of the source materials; the number and
location of current and potential users; the current and potential nature of
use; the format and nature of the proposed digital product and how it will be
described, delivered, and archived; how the proposed product relates to other
digitization efforts; and projections of costs in relation to benefits.
Digitization
Digitization is the process of representing an object, an image, or a signal
(usually an analog signal) by a discrete set of its points or samples. The
result is called "digital representation" or, more specifically, a "digital
image", for the object, and "digital form", for the signal.
Analog signals are continuously variable, both in the number of possible values
of the signal at a given time, as well as in the number of points in the signal
in a given period of time. However, digital signals are discrete in both of
those respects, and so a digitization can only ever be an approximation of the
signal it represents. The digital representation does not necessarily lose
information in this transformation since the analog signal usually contains both
information and noise.
A digital signal may be represented by a sequence of integers. Digitization is
performed by reading an analog signal A, and, at regular time intervals
(sampling frequency), representing the value of A at that point by an integer.
Each such reading is called a sample.
A series of integers can be transformed back into an analog signal that
approximates the original analog signal. Such a transformation is called DA
conversion. There are two factors determining how close such an approximation to
an analog signal A a digitization D can be, namely the sampling rate and the
number of bits used to represent the integers.
In the past few years, procedures for digitizing books at high speed and
comparatively low cost have improved considerably with the result that it is now
possible to plan the digitization of millions of books per year for creating
digital libraries.
Collaborative digitization projects
There are many collaborative digitization projects throughout the United States
and in Europe, Australia and Asia (see below). Two of the earliest projects were
the Collaborative Digitization Project in Colorado and NC ECHO - North Carolina
Exploring Cultural Heritage Online, based at the State Library of North
Carolina. These projects helped to establish and publish best practices for
digitization and work with regional partners to digitize cultural heritage
materials. Additional criteria for best practice have more recently been
established in the UK, Australia and the European Union. Wisconsin Heritage
Online is a collaborative digitization project modeled after the Colorado
Collaborative Digitization Project. Wisconsin uses a wiki to build and
distribute collaborative documentation. Georgia's collaborative digitization
program, the Digital Library of Georgia, presents a seamless virtual library on
the state's history and life, including more than a hundred digital collections
from 60 institutions and 100 agencies of government. The Digital Library of
Georgia is a GALILEO initiative based at the University of Georgia Libraries.
Advantages
The advantages of digital libraries as a means of easily and rapidly accessing
books, archives and images of various types are now widely recognized by
commercial interests and public bodies alike. You can also access any user
account simply through a link like this.
Traditional libraries are limited by storage space; digital libraries have the
potential to store much more information, simply because digital information
requires very little physical space to contain it. As such, the cost of
maintaining a digital library is much lower than that of a traditional library.
A traditional library must spend large sums of money paying for staff, book
maintenance, rent, and additional books. Digital libraries do away with these
fees.
Digital libraries can immediately adopt innovations in technology providing
users with improvements in electronic and audio book technology as well as
presenting new forms of communication such as wikis and blogs. An important
advantage to digital conversion is increased accessibility to users. There in
also availability to individuals who may not be traditional patrons of a
library, due to geographic location or organizational affiliation.
* No physical boundary. The user of a digital library need not to go to the
library physically; people from all over the world can gain access to the same
information, as long as an Internet connection is available.
* Round the clock availability. A major advantage of digital libraries is that
people can gain access to the information at any time, night or day.
* Multiple access. The same resources can be used simultaneously by a number of
institutions and patrons
* Information retrieval. The user is able to use any search term (word, phrase,
title, name, subject) to search the entire collection. Digital libraries can
provide very user-friendly interfaces, giving clickable access to its resources.
* Preservation and conservation.Digitization is not a long-term preservation
solution for physical collections, but does succeed in providing access copies
for materials that would otherwise fall to degradation from repeated use.
Digitized collections and born-digital objects pose many preservation and
conservation concerns that analog materials do not. Please see the following
"Problems" section of this page for examples.
* Space. Whereas traditional libraries are limited by storage space, digital
libraries have the potential to store much more information, simply because
digital information requires very little physical space to contain them and
media storage technologies are more affordable than ever before.
* Added value. Certain characteristics of objects, primarily the quality of
images, may be improved. Digitization can enhance legibility and remove visible
flaws such as stains and discoloration.
Problems
The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for
Wikipedia.
Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to
writing better articles for suggestions. (May 2008)
With the ever-expanding digital collections in today’s library’s and archives we
are facing new preservation challenges that seem to have no concrete solutions
or universal standards in which to guide us. For centuries we have seen the
evolution of paper based materials and have been able to successfully meet many
of the challenges that these materials present to the realm of preservation. Our
digital world, however, is far too young and mercurial to have any long-term
sense of how this new media can be preserved for long-term future access.
On one hand multiple copies of a physical volume can exist in different
libraries, but can only be viewed by visiting the library or repository
directly. On the other hand, a digital object can be viewed from multiple
locations but more than likely exists only as a single copy in a single location
on one server. Access to digital libraries and their collections is dependent
upon a stable information technology infrastructure (power, computers,
communications links etc.). Hence, despite the egalitarian potential of the
digital library, many of those who could most benefit from its global reach (for
instance in the Third World) are not able to do so. Smaller libraries and
repositories in developed countries may also have limited resources in dealing
with long term digitization projects. There are complex technological steps
involved with capturing images, and librarians must evaluate the ability to
commit to long term projects.
Technological standards change over time and forward migration must be a
constant consideration of every library. Migration is a means of transferring an
unstable digital object to another more stable format, operating system, or
programming language. Migration allows the ability to retrieve and display
digital objects that are in danger of becoming extinct. This is a rather
successful short-term solution for the problem of aging and obsolete digital
formats, but with the ever-changing nature of computer technologies, migration
becomes this never-ending race to transfer digital objects to new and more
stable formats. Migration is also flawed in the sense that when the digital
files are being transferred, the new platform may not be able to capture the
full integrity of the original object. There are countless artifacts sitting in
libraries all over the world that are essentially useless because the technology
required to access the source is obsolete. In addition to obsolescence, there
are rising costs that result from continually replacing the older technologies.
This issue can dominate preservation policy and may put more focus on instant
user access in place of physical preservation.
Some people have criticized that digital libraries are hampered by copyright
law, because works cannot be shared over different periods of time in the manner
of a traditional library. There is a dilution of responsibility that occurs as a
result of the spread-out nature of digital resources. Complex intellectual
property matters may become involved since digital material isn't always owned
by a library. The content is, in many cases, public domain or self-generated
content only. Some digital libraries, such as Project Gutenberg, work to
digitize out-of-copyright works and make them freely available to the public. An
estimate of the number of distinct books still existent in library catalogues
from 2000BC to 1960, has been made.
Other digital libraries accommodate copyright concerns by licensing content and
distributing it on a commercial basis, which allows for better management of the
content's reproduction and the payment (if required) of royalties. The Fair Use
Provisions (17 USC § 107) under copyright law provide specific guidelines under
which circumstances libraries are allowed to copy digital resources. Four
factors that constitute fair use are purpose of use, nature of the work, market
impact, and amount or substantiality used.
Intellectual Property and Art Digitization
The ease of digital reproduction has pushed art institutions into a more
conservative stance on the issue of intellectual property rights (much in the
same vein as it did the music industry.) But to whom do what the J. Paul Getty
Museum’s Kenneth Hamma labels “public-domain works of art” belong? Public domain
works that are too old to be included in ongoing copyright protection, yet still
remain out of the public’s view and also “of educators, and of the general
milieu of creativity”.
A museum’s decision to guard this information hinders research and halts
digitization efforts. If the Internet fosters the free-exchange of ideas for the
sake of educational access, then these assertions undermine the mission of the
museum and more general of digitization. Still, some proponents of intellectual
property claim that controlling ownership of public domain artwork generates
revenue through licensing fees, and this accrued funding directly benefits
institutional operation, but no publicly available statistical data to
effectuate this belief exists.
Excluding fiscal concerns, institutions often assume the role of guide and seek
control over educational usage, thereby influencing the creative processes that
result from these visual resources. For instance, an art historian developing
critical theory on a particular issue in the Dutch Renaissance may be granted
usage of certain works and not others as decreed by the curatorial
interpretations of museum staff. This practice narrows the possibility for a
unique, fresh perspective somewhat by limiting the intellectual freedom of the
scholar.
The issue overlaps other digitization obstacles that initiate debate in the arts
community. For example, the usage of digital images for physical reproduction of
artwork presents a common problem and also provides a more relatable model for
those just beginning to grasp digitization. Few people take offense to
Impressionist works featured on stationery sets, umbrellas, canvas tote bags and
the like.
An ethical obligation to retain rights on certain pieces may validate
relinquishing accessibility. In spite of the current intellectual property
rights issues, perhaps both leaps in technology and the ideas of Kenneth Hamma
and his like-minded colleagues will inspire a growing acceptance and ultimate
embrace of digitization.
