Inkubate aims to digitize the slush pile with a portfolio-building site for writers. Publishers and agents will subscribe to the service and pay to access portfolio materials from authors.

Pros:
The site is clean, adorable, and simple to navigate. The focus of the frontpage is a visualization of the connection process echoed in the logo. The site also has many librarian-approved features including snippet-view for manuscripts, a hardcore database search, and “document audit” so subscribers can see the portfolios that have attracted attention from other publishers. There’s a lot of information on the site for a beta. The blog is already pretty substantial and is aimed at attracting authors to the site with user profiles, news, and tips for aspiring writers.

Mega academic publisher Springer has just announced that they will be digitizing their entire backlist of an estimated 65,000 titles. The list dates back to the 1840’s and includes headliners like Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Sir John Eccles, Lise Meitner, Werner Siemens, and Rudolf Diesel. Unlike most digitization projects, which focus on orphan or public domain works, many of Springer’s authors are still in-copyright and the service will likely be offered as a subscription. I wholeheartedly agree with Springer’s quote that, “a book will never die, but out of print will.” They hope to debut the service before the end of 2012 and it's sure to be an enticing offering for research libraries.

Washington state recently announced their teacher of the year and it’s not who you’d expect. Amid mass layoffs and growing reliance on paraprofessional and volunteer management of school libraries, Washington’s choice of a teacher librarian as an example of excellence in education is even more poignant. Mark Ray, the librarian in question, works at Skyview High School in Vancouver, WA. He’s led his school in tech literacy, pioneering “BYOD” a program that encourages students to bring their own devices and become familiar with a variety of platforms for accessing information and assistance.

His principal describes him as a “slayer of ignorance,” which is pretty core and he seems to represent a paragon of school librarianship in his classroom involvement and attention to validation in reference transactions. He’s a member of a dying breed, but for every Mark Ray, there’s an isolated school librarian being thrown out with the p-book bathwater. It’s imperative, especially in a tight-budget climate, for school librarians to embrace teaching information literacy and providing technology assistance. I think school librarians face much confusion over their role in education but have an opportunity to impact opinions about librarian roles in the future. I’m surprised and glad that Washington state has recognized a librarian as a truly innovative and adaptive member of their educational community.

Vook, formerly a publisher of video enhanced e-books, has changed its focus from content to platform. The new incantation will allow individual authors and groups to build their own vooks on a tried and tested system. The first project is a line of instructional v-books for yoga company Gaiam. The move from content-production seems prudent for a company like Vook, their produced content was amusing and informative, but limited. Their new business model utilizes their expertise in the creation of video e-books and opens up new content possibilities.

Pros:
Scoop.it is a blog site without all the tedious writing. It allows users to curate a home base around a topic of interest and makes it easy to contribute content with a browser extension and in-house feed aggregator. The result is a cool-looking, newspaper-esque front page that’s maximum bang for minimum effort. It’s also adorably French.

Cons:
The site is pretty slick, but the name could be better. I’d also like to see more customization in the pages. Users are able to change the banner on their front page, but not any of the look elements and that leaves most pages looking depressingly similar. That said, it’s a good look. Large, colorful pictures and pleasant size difference between stories gives a very credible newspaper look.

EdLab Relevance:
Kate’s on it! It’s great to see new sites and ideas aimed at curation of information. I have a feeling that’s going to be a big trend as the pool continues to deepen. Maybe it's the librarian thing, but I'm irresistibly drawn to technologies that facilitate the corralling of resources. Move'em on! Head'em up!

Harvard’s libraries have a new organizational structure meant to foster collaboration between buildings and units. Under the new vision, Harvard’s 90-some libraries will be separated into 5 affinity groups based on service and focus. The groups are fairly amorphous to allow for differences in mission, explanations from Harvard Magazine:

"libraries focused on application of theory in practice, including those of the schools of law, business, education, and government; a group focused on physical and life sciences with shared research responsibilities, including the medical school library and the science libraries; a group formed around content areas, such as the humanities and the social sciences, including major collections such as those of Widener and Lamont;
libraries of arts and culture such as fine arts, architecture, music, theater, and film; and finally, a group of special collections libraries such as Houghton and the University Archives."

A new website has sprung from the primordial internet soup of e-textbook piracy. Library Pirate aims to create a community around student file sharing in an effort to circumvent what the creators see as corruption in academic publishing. Their strategy is twofold, users can “rent a pirate” by purchasing a gift card for a semester e-textbook rental. Pirates from the site will rent the textbook using the gift card, strip the DRM and return the open pdf to the student for use and sharing.

Pubslush has a lot going on. It’s gearing up to be the TOMS of books, with a buy one/give one policy. It also aims to be a Kickstarter of books, with crowdsourced funding and video solicitations. It’s wide-ranging and whiffs of some intense funding without a clear business plan, but it’s clear they’re spelunking into something and it’s pretty exciting.

Pros:
The Interface is snappy and the overlapping dialogue logo is very cute. I am a fan of the concept, though Unbound may be doing it more feasibly. Though there are few entries for consideration right now, they are extremely wide-reaching. This may be the harbinger of an impossibly large pool of proposals, but at the moment it seems fresh and varied.

The school library world has been in a state of jubilation over the surprise Kindle library lending launch today, with many headlines touting the promise of accessibility in 11,000 school and public libraries across the country. The general sentiment seems to be a favorable reaction to a new service. In reality, Kindle has simply become amenable to the Overdrive service though Kindle users have a variety of extra steps towards accessing the same old Overdrive content. The benefits of Kindle use are slim: Whispersync, Amazon’s marginalia holder and page numbers that correspond to print, in light of the fact that Overdrive has been lending books to other devices for years.

Just thinking about the Smithsonian archives makes me swoon a little. A peek at the historical timeline feature on their brand new website may explain why. In its 165-year stint as the repository for America’s scientific knowledge, it has amassed a veritable menagerie of resources and artifacts. Many of these are available digitally and the website also provides clear instructions for physical visits. A snappy new UI with nice nesting collections and an awesome zooming picture viewer are just icing on the cake.