John Mark Ockerbloom

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John Mark Ockerbloom
John Mark Ockerbloom 5312847.JPG
Born
John Ockerbloom

1966 (age 5556)
EducationPhD
Occupation Software engineer
Employer University of Pennsylvania
Known for Online Books Page
Notable work
(see bibliography)
TitleDigital library architect
Notes
[1]

John Mark Ockerbloom (born 1966) is a digital library architect and planner in the library science field. Formerly at Carnegie Mellon University, [2] from which he earned a PhD in computer science, he now works for the University of Pennsylvania. He is the editor of The Online Books Page, which lists over two million books including project Gutenberg titles, all of which are freely available for reading online or by download.

Contents

Education

Mark Ockerbloom attended Carnegie Mellon University in the 1990s and earned a PhD in computer science. [1]

Career

Mark Ockerbloom works as a digital library planner [3] and researcher [4] at the University of Pennsylvania.

He is involved in the use of technology by the general public for the public good. He is the chair of the ILS-DI Task Group for the Digital Library Federation. [5]

Free speech

In 1994, Mark Ockerbloom created Banned Books On-Line in response to the censoring of usenet newsgroups on Carnegie Mellon's servers. [1] A number of organizations including Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union were opposing the Communications Decency Act around that time and took note of Banned Books On-Line, linking to it from their websites. [1]

In 1998, Mark Ockerbloom joined as a plaintiff along with columnist Rob Morse of the San Francisco Examiner , the ACLU and others in a federal lawsuit against a library using web filtering software. [1] [6] The Loudoun County Library in Virginia installed X-Stop filtering software created by Log-On Data Corporation. [6] The filtering software stopped library patrons from visiting the websites of the San Francisco Examiner, The San Francisco Chronicle and Ockerbloom's Banned Books On-Line. [6]

Mark Ockerbloom has pointed out some of the conflicts between web 2.0 and copyright law, describing how multimedia can contain unintended copyright violations. [7] Mark Ockerbloom runs the Online Books Page, which indexes books that are free to read over the Internet. [8] In 1993, while at Carnegie Mellon University, Ockerbloom started the Online Books Page which allows readers to find books by title, subject or author. [9] The site has been described as one of the largest [10] and most popular [3] resources for online books. He has said the Copyright Term Extension Act can have a chilling effect on websites that provide readers easy access to books online and is concerned about the conflict between the public good and the interests of for-profit enterprises. [11]

Personal life

Mark Ockerbloom's wife, Mary Mark Ockerbloom, is the editor of A Celebration of Women Writers website, which lists resources about women writers and works written by women that are freely viewable online. [12] [13]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

Project Gutenberg Online digital book library

Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of books or individual stories in the public domain. All files can be accessed for free under an open format layout, available on almost any computer. As of 3 October 2015, Project Gutenberg had reached 50,000 items in its collection of free eBooks.

The Online Books Page is an index of e-text books available on the Internet. It is edited by John Mark Ockerbloom and is hosted by the library of the University of Pennsylvania. The Online Books Page lists over 2 million books and has several features, such as A Celebration of Women Writers and Banned Books Online.

The Million Book Project was a book digitization project led by Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science and University Libraries from 2007–2008. Working with government and research partners in India and China, the project scanned books in many languages, using OCR to enable full text searching, and providing free-to-read access to the books on the web. As of 2007, they have completed the scanning of 1 million books and have made the entire catalog accessible online.

Digitization Process of creating a digital representation of a document or object

Digitization is the process of converting information into a digital format. The result is the representation of an object, image, sound, document or signal obtained by generating a series of numbers that describe a discrete set of points or samples. The result is called digital representation or, more specifically, a digital image, for the object, and digital form, for the signal. In modern practice, the digitized data is in the form of binary numbers, which facilitates processing by digital computers and other operations, but, digitizing simply means the conversion of analog source material into a numerical format; the decimal or any other number system can be used instead.

OCLC Global library cooperative

OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center, then became the Online Computer Library Center as it expanded. In 2017, the name was formally changed to OCLC, Inc. OCLC and thousands of its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog (OPAC) in the world. OCLC is funded mainly by the fees that libraries pay for the many different services it offers. OCLC also maintains the Dewey Decimal Classification system.

Hybrid library is a term used by librarians to describe libraries containing a mix of traditional print library resources and the growing number of electronic resources.

Artstor is a nonprofit organization that builds and distributes the Digital Library, an online resource of more than 2.5 million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences, and Shared Shelf, a Web-based cataloging and image management software service that allows institutions to catalog, edit, store, and share local collections.

David S. Touretzky

David S. Touretzky is a research professor in the Computer Science Department and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition at Carnegie Mellon University. He received a BA in Computer Science at Rutgers University in 1978, and earned a master's degree and a Ph.D. (1984) in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. Touretzky has worked as an Internet activist in favor of freedom of speech, especially what he perceives as abuse of the legal system by government and private authorities. He is a notable critic of Scientology.

<i>Svengoolie</i> American television show

Svengoolie is an American hosted horror movie television program. The show features horror and science fiction films and is hosted by the eponymous character Svengoolie, who was originally played by Jerry G. Bishop from 1970 to 1973, before Rich Koz succeeded him in the role from 1979 on. Before and after commercial breaks, Svengoolie presents sketches, tells jokes, and performs parody songs related to the films being aired. The show is a long-running local program in the Chicago area and in recent years expanded nationally, airing Saturday nights on MeTV.

Google Books Service from Google

Google Books is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in its digital database. Books are provided either by publishers and authors through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives.

Prentice Hall Publishing company

Prentice Hall is an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari Books Online e-reference service.

Illegal number A number that represents information which is illegal in some legal jurisdiction

An illegal number is a number that represents information which is illegal to possess, utter, propagate, or otherwise transmit in some legal jurisdiction. Any piece of digital information is representable as a number; consequently, if communicating a specific set of information is illegal in some way, then the number may be illegal as well.

The Center for Research Libraries is a consortium of North American universities, colleges, and independent research libraries, based on a buy-in concept for membership of the consortia. The consortium acquires and preserves traditional and digital resources for research and teaching and makes them available to member institutions through interlibrary loan and electronic delivery. It also gathers and analyzes data pertaining to the preservation of physical and digital resources, and fosters the sharing of expertise, in order to assist member libraries in maintaining their collections. The Center for Research Libraries was founded in 1949, as the Midwest Inter-Library Center (MILC). The traditional role of CRL was as an aggregator of tangible collection materials, however this has been updated in the digital age into the CRL's current role as a facilitator of collection development, digitization, and licensing collections by individual libraries and interest groups. This transformation required CRL to adopt new funding models from partnerships with key organizations, and an updated use of current technology to support community outreach and engagement. The funding was provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the IMLS.

<i>Scribners Monthly</i> Former Magazine

Scribner's Monthly: An Illustrated Magazine for the People was an illustrated American literary periodical published from 1870 until 1881. Following a change in ownership in 1881 of the company that had produced it, the magazine was relaunched as The Century Magazine.

HathiTrust Digital library

HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally by libraries.

A digital library, also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, or a digital collection is an online database of digital objects that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital documents, or other digital media formats or a library accessible through the internet. Objects can consist of digitized content like print or photographs, as well as originally produced digital content like word processor files or social media posts. In addition to storing content, digital libraries provide means for organizing, searching, and retrieving the content contained in the collection. Digital libraries can vary immensely in size and scope, and can be maintained by individuals or organizations. The digital content may be stored locally, or accessed remotely via computer networks. These information retrieval systems are able to exchange information with each other through interoperability and sustainability.

State Central Library, Hyderabad

The State Central Library Hyderabad, known as the State Central Library (SCL) earlier known as Asafia Library, is a public library in Hyderabad, Telangana. The building was constructed in 1891. It is one of the most imposing structures in the city and was granted heritage status in 1998 by INTACH, Hyderabad.

The Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) at Columbia University was a unit of the University Libraries that partnered with researchers and scholars at Columbia to share their research broadly with the world. Using innovative new media and digital technologies, CDRS sought to empower the Columbia research community with online tools and services to enable them to make the most of scholarly communication, collaboration, data sharing, and preservation. CDRS was part of Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS).

Gloriana St. Clair is a pioneer in the field of academic librarianship, as well as a scholar of Norse Mythology and its relationship to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. She is currently the Principal Investigator of the Olive Executable Archive as well as the official University Liaison to the Pittsburgh chapter of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. She is Dean Emerita of Carnegie Mellon University Libraries (1998-2013). Before coming to Carnegie Mellon, St. Clair held leadership positions at several other universities. St. Clair attended the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a bachelor's degree in English in 1962 and a master's degree in library science in 1963.

Covenant University Library, also known as Centre for Learning Resources (CLR), is the library of Covenant University in Ota, Ogun State, Nigeria. It is housed in a three-story glass building with a seating capacity of 3,500.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Pollak, Michael (18 June 1998). "A Web Site To Fight Censorship". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. OCLC   1645522.
  2. Troll Covey, Denise (October 2005). Acquiring Copyright Permission to Digitize and Provide Open Access to Books (illustrated ed.). Washington, DC: Digital Library Federation, Council on Library and Information Resources. ISBN   9781932326222. OCLC   61448107.
  3. 1 2 Minkel, Walter (1 June 2004). "Chat Room: Yours for the Taking". School Library Journal . Plain City, Ohio: Media Source Inc. ISSN   0362-8930. OCLC   488620538.
  4. Cypher, Kimberly Anne (2008). The Impact of the Least Restrictive Environment for American Indian High School Students on an IEP. Ann Arbor, Michigan. p. 33. ISBN   9780549564850.
  5. Hadro, Josh (15 June 2008). "Berkeley Accord, ILS API Discussed". Library Journal . Plain City, Ohio: Media Source Inc. ISSN   0363-0277. OCLC   36096783. Archived from the original on 11 April 2013.
  6. 1 2 3 NYT staff (9 February 1998). "More Join Challenge to Library Over Blocking of Internet Sites". The New York Times . ISSN   0362-4331. OCLC   1645522.
  7. Brantley, Peter (19 October 2007). "Take the A Train". O'Reilly Radar . O'Reilly Media.
  8. Brogan, Martha L.; Rentfrow, Daphnée (2005). A Kaleidoscope of Digital American Literature. Washington, DC: Council on Library and Information Resources, Digital Library Federation. ISBN   9781932326178. OCLC   61247191.
  9. Peyton, Dave (6 December 1999). "A Likely Story: Finding And Reading Books On Net". Chicago Tribune . ISSN   1085-6706. OCLC   60639020.
  10. Peyton, Dave (7 January 2002). "Virtual bookshelves brim with free text". Chicago Tribune . ISSN   1085-6706. OCLC   60639020.
  11. Slaton, Joyce (13 January 1999). "A Mickey Mouse Copyright Law?". Wired . New York City. ISSN   1059-1028. OCLC   24479723.
  12. Still, Julie (2001). Creating web-accessible databases: case studies for libraries, museums, and other nonprofits. Medford, New Jersey: Information Today, Inc. ISBN   9781573871044.
  13. Mark Ockerbloom, Mary. "A Celebration of Women Writers" . Retrieved 5 June 2014.