E-Book Museum at Library of Congress?

David H. Rothman writes "E-books and other digital publications in the U.K. are about to go into a national archive, and in fact the Brits and others have even shown an interest in the e-book technology of yore. Goodness knows, as some have pointed out, we already have enough virtual e-book museums--unwittingly created by the march of technology. But how about an International Electronic Book Museum in the Real World, ideally the Library of Congress? Before Luddites and crypto-Luddites keel over at the thought, they should keep in mind that the technology is already several decades old and that it would be helpful to collect the artifacts in a systematic way before it's too late. More at TeleRead."

my only complaint...

[chmod_localhost]

What happens when the software for reading these e-books is no longer supported? By using proprietary formats, it is inevitable that one day, the stuff in our nation's own library will be unreadable.

Only by creating an open standard, which anyone can choose to implement on the system of their choice (open source it, while you're at it!), can the information truly be timeless.

Let's just hope...

[CountBrass]

They don't make the same mistake as the BBC's Doomsday book project where they stored all the data on quickly obsoleted BBC Micro controlled laser discs using a proprietary format - woops! A real pain for them to recover it only a decade later.

Books on Tape Archive?

[sporkboy]

How many eBooks have been released as eBook only, not counting prereleases of excerpts or first chapters with "special intros". Aren't most of them just existing publications in a different format? If the format dies then there is a reason, and if the work continues in some sort of archival medium then how is it a loss? Would the same lamentations be heard over cassette recordings of books on tape?

Why the LoC?

[azzy]

> ideally the Library of Congress?

Why? What's so ideal about the Library of Congress to hold an international collection of e-books?

misconceptions about e-books

[bcrowell]

Above all, as no printed material is produced during the delivery of a 'book', the cost of publishing the book is significantly reduced and the whole process of publication is environmentally green.
That's not true. Here (pdf file) [nacs.org] is some info on college textbooks, for example. Printing, paper, and binding (PPB) are almost never a significant percentage of the retail price of a book.

I would like to see the Library of Congress start accepting digital books for copyright registration, however -- it's a drag to have to send them hardcopies.

In the early 1990s, Adobe's Acrobat reader was released. Although it is not a software specifically for eBooks, its multi-platform file format (PDF file) is an attractive feature for eBook publications. The digitization of both texts and graphics into a compact file that can be recognized in every platform is an important concept in eBooks. However, we still do not have an eBook publishing standard at the moment, though work in that direction is being done.
Well, actually PDF is the defacto standard for digital books. It's just that none of the handheld devices use the standard; they all use their own nonstandard, proprietary formats instead.

There are standard subsets of PDF that have been defined that are appropriate for archiving books. For example, the subsets don't allow you to include video or programs.