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Keith Kyle – Historian and writer dies aged 81

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A brilliant historian and writer, he made sense of the world for television audiences. Keith Kyle, who has died aged 81, was a distinguished historian and a prolific writer and broadcaster with an extraordinary capacity for making sense out of complex, politically sensitive scenarios. Those who watched him on the BBC Tonight programmes in the […]

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Children’s Book Banned for Single Word

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An award-winning children’s book has been banned from some US schools and libraries because it contains the word “scrotum”. Susan Patron’s The Higher Power of Lucky, which won this year’s prestigious Newbery Medal for children’s literature, has incurred the wrath of teachers and librarians over a passage on the opening page in which a character […]

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Germany Plans New EU-Wide History Book

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Europe is more likely to be agonising about its future, but now it is the past that is proving contentious. Yesterday it emerged that Germany was hoping to exploit its EU presidency to promote a new school history book for the European Union. At a meeting in Heidelberg next week of EU education ministers, Berlin […]

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Creating Accessible Digital Media – WGBH Guidelines

Create eBooksNews

Following is an excerpt from the Introduction of the Accessible Digital Media guidelines produced by WGBH. These guidelines, providing step-by-step solutions for making a variety of electronic media accessible to users with sensory disabilities and are available free of charge. Accessible Digital Media Design Guidelines for Electronic Publications, Multimedia and the Web Properly designed e-books, […]

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Word for Word

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Electronic publishing is replacing print, changing reading as well as society. Cavemen used charcoal to write on walls. Ancient Egyptians scrawled hieroglyphics on papyrus scrolls. Medieval monks penned illuminated manuscripts on parchment. Then Johannes Gutenberg changed the world with movable type, making writing available to all. Now a revolution is under way that is rapidly […]

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Under the News – Sony “RootKit” Settlement

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It would appear that Sony has reached some kind of unpublicized settlement with the FTC? concerning their “RootKit” malware the corporation used in its music CDs last year, that was basically a virus that then left their victims open to more viruses. Sony agreed to pay a fine of $4.5 million and up to $150 […]

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Steinbeck sale sets new world record

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A rare edition of John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath has sold for $47,800 (£24,380), doubling the estimated price and setting what is believed to be a world record for a book by the Nobel Prize-winning author. The sale was part of an auction of first editions previously owned by Steinbeck’s sister, Elizabeth […]

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Trench on Words – A Review c.1928

Book ReviewsNews

Recently Brett Fishburne was going through some donated books and came across a copy of “Trench on Words”, which is already in the PG collection (text #6480), that had a newspaper review glued to the front. The newspaper title from which the review was printed was not in the information that was glued to the […]

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Digital Text Masters: A Future for Public Domain eBooks?

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The following article was posted by Jon Noring on the TeleRead blog in February 2007. This is an excellent discussion on why Digital Text Master files should be created along with ideas on how to implement it. — Ed ‘Digital Text Masters’ (Digitizing the classic public domain books) by Jon Noring The recent TeleBlog articles […]

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The Ecstasy of Influence

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This is an extract from Jonathan Lethem’s article on copyright in Harper’s. It’s a long article but well worth the read.   Literature has been in a plundered, fragmentary state for a long time. When I was thirteen I purchased an anthology of Beat writing. Immediately, and to my very great excitement, I discovered one […]

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Nelson W. Polsby, 72, Author and a Scholar of Politics, Dies

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Nelson W. Polsby, who marshaled intellectual rigor, lucid writing and a knack for drawing striking lessons from real-life observation in his enduring studies of Congress and the presidency, died on Tuesday at his home in Berkeley, Calif. He was 72. The cause was complications of congestive heart failure, his daughter Emily Polsby said. Mr. Polsby, […]

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