Archive for the 'libraries' Category

Digitized books on Aceh – but are they accessible to Acehnese?

Monday, April 13th, 2009

From Klaus Graf, via Open Access News, The Royal Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies (KITLV) in Leiden has digitized more than 656 books in their collection about Aceh, in several languages (Indonesian, French, Dutch, etc). Their website, Aceh Books. This is exciting news for me, since I have found it very hard to [...]

Public domain books in many languages

Friday, March 20th, 2009

I’ve long been fascinated by book scanning projects, and written before about OpenLibrary and Universal Library, as well as Google Books. However, as neat as these projects are, we shouldn’t forget sites like Project Gutenberg, which have been around for much longer. Project Gutenberg relies on volunteers to scan, OCR and proof-read texts that have [...]

407 Indonesian textbooks openly available

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Background
Back in May 2007, when I attended the World Book Day in Jakarta, I heard about plans to purchase the copyrights for school textbooks, and make the books freely available, to alleviate the problem of students who could not afford to purchase them. I thought it was a very interesting idea, but hoped that they [...]

Large market for Spanish-language books in the US

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

I love seeing material in multiple languages, even languages I don’t understand. As populations have become more diverse around the world, public libraries have risen to the challenge, and whether you visit the Public Library in Oslo, or in Toronto, they have wonderful collections of children and adult books (and often films, DVDs, magazines and [...]

Article about Indonesian reading gardens in IFLA newsletter

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

The article below was written for the IFLA Section of Libraries for Children and Young Adults Newsletter, December 2008 (just published), edited by Singaporean librarian Ivan Chew, whose blog I have been reading for a long time, and whom I was lucky enough to meet in Singapore in 2007, while getting a new visa for [...]

What’s happening with OpenLibrary and OCA

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

Image via Wikipedia

I have previously written about the OpenLibrary, both how much I liked their interface, and how it frustrated me that they didn’t communicate better to the public about their progress. Recently, a workshop was held in San Francisco, “to share progress and plans for continued growth of open web access to digital books”. [...]

Mencerdaskan Bangsa – An Inquiry into the Phenomenon of Taman Bacaan in Indonesia

Saturday, September 20th, 2008

During my undergraduate degree in International Development Studies, we had to spend a year working in a developing country, and develop a thesis based on primary research conducted in that country. I spent my year working in Jakarta (for CARE). While there, I came across the phenomenon of community-run libraries, which was extremely widespread and [...]

OpenLibrary and Universal Library, guys work together!

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

The OpenLibrary
I wrote about the OpenLibrary previously, and since then they have only gotten better. They have added a lot of books, but more importantly, their website has turned into a real portal, where you can access all of their scanned books (over 234,000). This is only part of their quest, which is also to [...]

Many small improvements make a harmonious society (和谐社会)?

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

It was great being back in Hangzhou, where I spent half a year in 2004. Already, Hangzhou was known as one of the most beautiful cities in China, and the local citizens were very proud of it. Coming back this time, my friend told me of many small changes that in different ways improved the [...]

Some observations and suggestions about the Rural China Education Foundation library programs at two rural sites

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Below is a brief report I wrote for Rural China Education Foundation, based on my visits to two field sites, where they are experimenting with starting rural school libraries. This report was written for RCEF and based on their needs, and my observations. I am releasing it publicly, because it might offer interesting ideas or [...]

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