OCLC has announced the beta release of their copyright evidence registry. From their PR:

The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry is a community working together to build a union catalog of copyright evidence based on WorldCat, which contains more than 100 million bibliographic records describing items held in thousands of libraries worldwide. In addition to the WorldCat metadata, the Copyright Evidence Registry uses other data contributed by libraries and other organizations.

Digitization projects continue for books in the public domain, but books whose copyright status is unknown are destined to remain in print and on shelves until their status can be determined. The process to determine copyright status can be lengthy and labor intensive. The goal of the Copyright Evidence Registry is to encourage a cooperative environment to discover, create and share copyright evidence through a collaboratively created and maintained database, using the WorldCat cooperative model to eliminate duplicate efforts.

This is a good effort, although there are some obvious concerns and issues. Molly Kleinman at the Univ. of Michigan notes:

1. OCLC claims and enforces copyrights in its bibliographic records. While it grants member libraries permission to make broad use of those records, my understanding is that the same is not true for non-members. If OCLC extends that policy to the Copyright Evidence Registry, it risks becoming just another walled garden that is useful only to a select (and paying) group of members, and less useful even to that group than it would be if it were truly open.

2. Right now the registry is sparsely populated. It will take a critical mass of records and contributors to become a trustworthy source of copyright evidence. Where will that critical mass come from? What is OCLC doing to build it quickly? How will users know when the registry has reached it?

And Martyn Daniels is also rightfully concerned that this would be bounded by libraries, and not inclusive of publishers, who actually hold much of the rights data that is out there for books:

Unfortunately it is librarian and library based and these are not the rights owners nor party the rights acquired or available for sale they can only record the status of the rights as they know them. OCLC even state, ‘The rules will help libraries analyze the information available in the Copyright Evidence Registry and form their own conclusions about copyright status.’

I had a long talk with Bill Carney yesterday at OCLC; Bill is the "owner" of this product. Although OCLC is concerned about the sustainability of this service, I stressed the need for an open and free api that would permit use of the contents of the registry by any (machine) comer, providing at least essential rights information; perhaps through payment tiers, OCLC could offer fuller, more complete data, for example, the inclusion of rights-holder provided notes.

Bill was definitely supportive of such an api, and is actively soliciting feedback from others about the registry's desired functionality.  An api (of any sort) does not yet exist, but OCLC has discussed its need, and is giving it at least a modest priority (lagging, I believe, behind constructing the necessary authorization infrastructure for user-submitted write updates). If you wish to provide feedback to OCLC, it can be left at the OCLC CER website.

There are myriad issues with this registry, of course. I did raise the publisher buy-in issue, as has Martyn, and OCLC does not yet perceive how to encourage publishers to participate en masse, although Bill reiterated his strong willingness to engage them in a conversation; he also perceives that there might be a place for a conversation with the Authors' Guild, noted after one author contacted them about a metadata error (title/author). OCLC would love to receive -- from any willing publisher -- bulk records for reversions and other critical rights profiles; these data are either entirely missing or nearly so from the registry. (Update: I have since learned that the AG's director has now been directly notified of the copyright evidence registry by a publishing industry consultant). 

Another issue is that there is no provision for embedded rights, and afaik, the foreign rights issues are avoided, although there is no reason they could not also be recorded.  OCLC is also considering other forms of content, although for many different reasons, book content has pre-eminence for them.

Although I have had various fruitful conversations recently with a variety of organizations about more general rights registries, including some hopeful starts with Creative Commons, there is nothing else close to being a living service at this point, and OCLC deserves both encouragement and engagement; I have pledged my organization's support - the Digital Library Federation - to their effort, in whatever forms make sense for both of our respective organizations and memberships.

In the absence of energectic and diverse participation, over (at very least) the category of possibly-orphan books, there is a real danger of rights resolutions becoming too easily the intellectual property of large dominant actors, such as Amazon or Google. This would be particularly likely if there is a settlement in the AAP/AG v. Google suits, creating an ensuing landrush on these titles by publishers and authors to determine rights holders.

Whatever Google (particularly) might provide in reassurance, I would dearly love to aid any guarantee that these rights data remain available to the commonweal, and not solely to the corporation most advantaged by their resolution. A public statement of commitment by both Google and Amazon that essential rights data will be shared with the public would be quite helpful.

From the perspective of publishers, I believe cloud (network)- based purchase/access models for books are compelling, and the existing blob-download model (as Kindle presently supports) will be a relatively fleeting one. Among other problems, the download scenario assumes that books will stay static and unconnected as a dominant characteristic, and I don't believe that will be the normative case.

While I don't think everything will present a multimedia "whiz-bang" gaming interface, I do think readers will ultimately come to assume that their stories are bound into broader network information spaces such as location and street mapping, online reference, social/ collaborative interactions, and so forth.

Put another way, I don't think any of these network pieces will be transformative of fiction (perhaps they will be more so of non-fiction), but they will be increasingly assumed by readers. And in their turn, more importantly, readers will be increasingly assuming they can write as well - maybe not directly into the published work, but in a way that enables a creative process and personal integration with art and science nonetheless.

This is a revolution afoot.

Among several others, Michael Cairns pens thoughtful comments on the desirability of publishers embracing mobile platforms such as the iPhone:

To bring us back to the iPhone circumstance, as long as publishers continue to think in terms of traditional functional silos and roles and responsibilities they limit themselves in their ability to leverage their assets. In contrast witness Amazon which has never considered any aspect of the publishing value chain to be off limits and more publishers need to think in this manner if they want to redress some of the advantages Amazon and others retain (or new competitors develop) in the marketplace.

I agree with this.

I argue that moving onwards now, not with haste but with speed, is about setting the groundwork, about moving in advance of requests to go digital (which you will not ever get from the majority of current authors and readers). This is a market space where transforming what publishing is has rarely been more vital and important. As Ryan Sholin observes,

All the market research and focus groups in the world can’t tell you how readers, or customers, or users will feel about the product of innovation until they have it in their hands.

Although currently negotiated rights with authors may usually be restrictive and compel the use of distribution limitations broadly writ as DRM, I think the concept of ebooks as a downloadable blob will be belied by a class of networked applications that assume connections to content, or cached content, in a manner that will greatly empower appropriate repository architectures. Is that DRM? In a way. And I suspect (even as I wear a library / public sector hat) that is the direction I would want to take things as a publisher, or a content vendor and licensor.

This trend is already apparent in video, where NetFlix, Google, Apple, and Amazon are competing to provide real time "purchase and experience" offerings.  Amazon recently moved from downloads to a pure network based model:

Not only is Amazon utilizing streaming in order to deliver "instant" playback but it also means that content doesn’t have to be permanently stored on a user’s hard drive. As a result, Amazon is able to offer another potential benefit to customers: a virtual video library of previously purchased content, stored in the ‘cloud’ (on the company’s own servers) ready to be streamed as many times and to as many compatible devices as the user has access to.

The explosion of interest in mobile platforms is an opportunity to get authors excited for the future, and publishers revitalized - and potentially reorganized. When publishers no longer have "head of digital" directors, that will be a good sign - it will mean digital is integral to the business, critical to publishers' vision of themselves. Just as the CIO is a passing ghost on the landscape of technology accommodation, these positions should evolve into directors of content access, or somesuch. We have some years yet before this is commonplace, but a few will get there before the many.

Sara Lloyd writes at The Digitalist in "Work in Progress" on why publishers have been slow to embrace the iphone space, noting that they would have to be software developers to be "Day One" participants.

But apart from a few digital PR points scored against competing publishers, there doesn’t seem to me to be any huge value in first mover advantage here for publishers, unless we want to make the decision to become software developers. The perception is that the App Store has ‘opened up’ the iPhone to publishers and to e-reading. The reality is that the iPhone has always been enabled for e-reading: you could read a PDF on the iPhone when it launched; you could preview books via online widgets in a browser; you could utilise the ‘TextonPhone’ application. So, whilst we have been awaiting the launch of the App Store with interest, we didn’t see enormous advantage in, for example, creating a reading app ourselves or Being There on Day One, just for the sake of it. Will it really have been a huge mistake if we wait six months to see how things develop and then start to make our books available on the iPhone? I don’t think so, actually. "

This is exactly my point - publishers and libraries must be part of constructing a new channel, an active part of distribution instead of passive content providers.  (Sitting silently looking pretty has also been the historical place for libraries, and it is the wrong place to be.)  Thriving in an iPhone world means making markets, and that in turn means creating compelling experiences. 

Making this kind of impact means making great software. It's not rocket science; it happens all the time.  And theoretically publishers might know something about what the experience of "reading" involves.  What if Pan Macmillan had written a cool iPhone reading app and released it last week, and it beat the socks off its ereader competitors?  What if such an application pushed at the boundaries of our understanding of what online, connected reading looked like? 

Jeff Jarvis writes about the success of Pandora's iPhone app:

How could others use apps like [Pandora] grow? Simply putting content up — a la the New York Times' fine but not revolutionary app — is not enough.

I think winning apps for mobile will be, like Pandora, completely personal; my Pandora is nothing like yours. They will feel live and constantly connected — I can satisfy as much musical restlessness as I can imagine without having to download.

The Cyberinfrastructure 2.0 blog recently carried a comment that Apple's CEO Steve Jobs made at the 2007 All Things D conference, concerning the compelling, competitive strength of networked client applications:

So people are figuring out how to do more in a browser, how to get a persistent state of things when you’re disconnected from a browser, how do you actually run apps locally using, you know, apps written in those technologies so they can be pretty transparent, whether you’re connected or not. But it’s happening fairly slowly and there’s still a lot you can do with a rich client environment.  At the same time, the hardware is progressing to where you can run a rich client environment on lower and lower cost devices, on lower and lower power devices.  And so there’s some pretty cool things you can do with clients.  What I’m saying is, I think the marriage of some really great client apps with some really great cloud services is incredibly powerful and right now, can be way more powerful than just having a browser on the client.

Redefining what mobile reading is, and how it works, could put publishers in a very compelling place -- able to create new services, new opportunities, and most importantly, new communities.  Instead, by choosing to be a mere content provider, they let all of that go. 

It's great place for Google to be.  And a stronger place for Amazon. 

Over the weekend, it became apparent to most observers that Apple had another huge success on their hands. Not the iPhone, although obviously that has turned into wildly successful mobile phone bling bling. The App Store has been the more fundamental venture. Apple noted:

Apple today announced that iPhone and iPod touch users have already downloaded more than 10 million applications from its groundbreaking new App Store since its launch late last week. Developers have created a wide array of innovative mobile applications ranging from games to location-based social networking to medical applications to enterprise productivity tools. Users can wirelessly download applications directly onto their iPhone or iPod touch and start using them immediately. More than 800 native applications are now available on the App Store, with more than 200 offered for free and more than 90 percent priced at less than $10.

It would be difficult to make more obvious the implicit comparison with Amazon's Kindle, which also supports the wireless download of applications otherwise known as "books" - and not coincidentally, ebook readers had relatively modest success during this phone holiday weekend. But in the midst of the euphoria of all things Apple, the missed opportunities were all the more glaring. Kassia Krozser observed:

Since there has been significant interest in using the iPhone as an ereader, I was, well, expecting amazing things from the publishing industry. Hopes. Dashed. On a weekend when headlines were there for the grabbing and customers were searching for both toys and content, the publishing industry, perhaps practicing summer hours, was curiously silent. Not a single major initiative, announcement, horns-blaring call to check out these great offerings on iTunes.

Call me crazy, but I’d expect an industry that salivates over moving 150,000 units to be all over the potential for reaching seven million 'mobile is the future' customers. Are you not out there, listening to readers, gauging their interest? They want, you have, and you’re still hiding the goods. I get this isn’t the largest market you have, but is that an excuse to sit on the sidelines?

Of course, the same complaint should be made against publishing's fraternal twin -- libraries. Where, for example, were the software library vendors like Ex Libris or Sirsi, or even open source alternatives like Evergreen, in espousing their new iPhone applications? OCLC should certainly have a georef WorldCat application, like NOW, that would show me WHERE my nearest library is when I do a book search on my iPhone (or GPS equipped Nokia phone).

Was there some mysterious barrier that prevented libraries, and publishers, from grokking that their content might be desirable to have on a hip phone? That reading can be portable? That the sooner they figure out how to facilitate the integration of their content into the media flow of the user, the better off they will be?

Hello in There?

Most importantly, there is no end point here. That's somewhere else, just a little bit further in the distance. Ilya Vedrashko writes in AdLab:

The obvious future of in-store experience: you find something you like, reach into your pocket for a small device, scan the barcode, and the device tells you whether and where the same product is available for a lower price. Brick-and-mortar stores become little more than showrooms for merchandise bought elsewhere.

This future just got one step closer today with the release of an iPhone app Checkout SmartShop, "a shopping assistant meant to help you fine online and local prices when you’re out and about shopping." For now, you still need to type in the UPS code; they are working on converting the iPhone camera into a barcode scanner.

How much time do you give for this app to hit the market: you go into a Blockbuster, scan a box, and the movie is cued up for download on your BitTorrent client?

In a post last January on online experiences and offline expectations, I wrote, "Retailers gotta act quick if they want to have some control over the converging experiences. In a few years, people will be carrying web browsers in their pockets and won't be needing all this retail innovation. Then they would go to Barnes & Noble to browse books and order the ones they like on Amazon right from the store ... "

Not that far, actually, because KDDI of Japan has partnered with Bandai, which in turn has partnered with an American firm, Evolution Robotics, to embed product image search and information retrieval into their au line of phones. And several months ago, Michael Cairns wrote about using Amazon's TextBuyIt SMS application to compare prices in bookstores with Amazon's.

It doesn't take a lot to imagine this world not merely impacting book and video stores, but other mausoleums of physical artifacts, like, ur, libraries. Indeed, one could imagine libraries becoming essentially product showrooms for the generations of material past and future that are represented as books. There's no reason why Google could not develop an application for iPhones, or their Android mobile stack, which would link an ISBN or imaged book title page with Google Book Search, where one could download books for PPV or via licensed access to one's iPhone under whatever terms and conditions were appropriate for the publishers or content partners.

That seems like a reasonable path forward for at least some part of what the library is in the future. Of course, whether libraries transform themselves into that future, or other entrants -- like Google and Amazon -- occupy that space instead, is not yet established. It should not take long.