"vBookZ is intuitive, easy to use, and offers to the iPad users a whole new reading experience. Acapela speech synthesis comes in to turn the written content into pleasant speech, without ever having to watch the screen. vBookz is NOT 'books on tape': it is a live text-to-speech generator with no need for conversion nor stored books files. It is a new way to enjoy reading: eyes-free reading while on the move, driving or just relaxing, assisted reading for the sight impaired or audio feedback for children or those learning to read in a foreign language"

More than a million Second World War documents are to be made available to the public for the first time. Files from Bletchley Park, the UK's wartime code-breaking headquarters, are to be digitised and put online in a large-scale project expected to take up to five years to complete. Undercover mathematicians and military operatives produced high-level intelligence at the Milton Keynes base during the war, providing crucial assistance to the Allied effort. The work of the Bletchley Park staff, which included cracking supposedly unbreakable German codes generated by the Enigma and Lorenz machines, has been credited with curtailing the length of the war by up to two years. The Bletchley archive currently exists entirely in paper format and much of it is difficult to view, making it inaccessible to the general public. Until now, only limited access to the archive has been granted to academics and educators under strict supervision

"Biblioscape is designed to help researchers collect and manage bibliographic data,take notes while doing research,and generate citations and bibliographies for publication. Biblioscape Professional can compile your notes into a final draft with a table of contents and an index. Biblioscape Librarian can be used to manage a small library. You can use Biblioscape to manage all your research information" - Edition v8.05 now available for download

A series of mental health registers reveal the stark reality of how the mentally ill were treated in Yorkshire over 130 years ago. As part of the Archive Awareness Campaign, East Riding of Yorkshire Archives has catalogued the registers - the Men's and Women's Case Books - from the Broadgate Hospital archive. Comprised of case records of individuals admitted to Broadgate between 1871 and 1906, the registers paint a harrowing picture of life for those deemed mentally ill over a century ago. Ian Mason, Archives and Local Studies Manager at East Riding of Yorkshire Archives, said: 'Sadly, despite our modern preconceptions of mental hospitals, some of the patients admitted to Broadgate in its early days would not be diagnosed insane today. Cases such as epilepsy and depression, which we can treat relatively easily today, were not as well understood and were considered a form of "idiocy" or "stupidity".' - UK National Archives

The Idea of Order explores the transition from an analog to a digital environment for knowledge access, preservation, and reconstitution, and the implications of this transition for managing research collections. The volume comprises three reports. The first, "Can a New Research Library be All-Digital?" by Lisa Spiro and Geneva Henry, explores the degree to which a new research library can eschew print. The second, "On the Cost of Keeping a Book," by Paul Courant and Matthew "Buzzy" Nielsen, argues that from the perspective of long-term storage, digital surrogates offer a considerable cost savings over print-based libraries. The final report, "Ghostlier Demarcations," examines how well large text databases being created by Google Books and other mass-digitization efforts meet the needs of scholars, and the larger implications of these projects for research, teaching, and publishing

Cambridge University Library has announced visionary plans to become a digital library for the world - following a GBP1.5m lead gift pledged by Dr Leonard Polonsky. Home to more than seven million books and some of the greatest collections in existence, including those of Newton and Darwin, the Library will begin digitising its priceless treasures to launch its Digital Library for the 21st Century. University Librarian Anne Jarvis said: "Our library contains evidence of some of the greatest ideas and discoveries over two millennia. We want to make it accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world with an internet connection and a thirst for knowledge. This will not only make our collections available to the world; it will also initiate a global conversation about them"

CARL E-Lert # 378, June 4 2010 from Canadian Association of Research Libraries. Some of this week's items: Ryerson University Library and Archives joins CARL as its 32nd member; Ontario to appoint provincial chief scientist; AUCC welcomes new copyright bill; Investment in digital economy holds key to Europe's future prosperity, says Commission report; Behold, our digital future

CARL E-Lert # 377, May 21 2010 from Canadian Association of Research Libraries. Some of this week's items: Lynn Copeland winner of the 2010 CARL Award for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship; British Library to digitise 40m of its newspaper pages; 2010 Outstanding Service to Librarianship Award Announced by the Canadian Library Association; Recommendations for independent scholarly publication of data sets

The Radiology Legacy Collection is a searchable electronic archive of Radiology issues from 1923 to 1998. All covers, editorial information and advertisements are included. The Collection is accessible only to Radiological Society of North America members and institutions that purchase it

INFORMS has announced 2011 pricing for its 12 individual journal titles and Publications Suite package

The Friday Brain-teaser from Credo Reference - this week: Scientists. Answers here.

1. Which English scientist wrote a book called "A Brief History of Time" (1988) which became an international best-seller?
2. Which Russian scientist used dogs in conditioned response experiments where he sounded a bell while presenting food to a dog?
3. Which British environmental scientist proposed the Gaia hypothesis, for which he is best known?
4. Which science writer collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" and conceived the idea of communications satellites?
5. Name the US scientist who invented the phonograph and the electric light bulb.
6. Name the British civil engineer who designed ships called the Great Western, Great Britain, and Great Eastern.
7. Which British chemist (1733-1804) discovered oxygen and 10 other gases?
8. What was the surname of the Swedish naturalist who, in 1735, devised a system for classifying plants into groups depending on shared characteristics?
9. What was the nationality of the inventor Marconi?
10. Which French chemist and microbiologist developed the germ theory of disease and created a vaccine for rabies?

"Bodleian Library Publishing has partnered with The All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon to reproduce the first rules of the game. John Barrett's introduction looks at the fascinating story of the origins and evolution of tennis, from its incarnation as Jeu de Paume in medieval and renaissance courts to the present day. The Bodleian Library holds a number of early rules of tennis. This book reprints in full the first two rules of the game from 1874 and 1878 as well as detailing the many alterations since then, including lowering the net height three times, introducing advantage sets in 1884, and banning the technique of double stringing, the spaghetti racket, in 1978"

"Kno, short for knowledge, is a unique two-panel, touch-screen tablet that blends textbooks, course material, note-taking, web access, educational applications, digital media, sharing and more into a more powerful and engaging educational experience. Kno was developed on open web technologies that welcome the publisher and developer communities and opens the door to unprecedented innovation in education. Its platform provides the opportunity to create new revenue streams for publishers and developers of content that can be delivered electronically to students"

Kno Movie from Kno, Inc. on Vimeo.

"ALA will again be hosting an Unconference. This year will feature new discussion styles, debates, media integration, and fun only chaos can create. The Unconference will be Friday, June 25, 2010 from 9am-4:30pm. The event will take place in 207A at the Washington Convention Center. An unconference is a participant-guided experience that harnesses the unstructured conversations people usually have between conference sessions into the conference itself. Unlike most conferences where talking heads and group leaders decide what is important, unconferences are organized by the crowd. Unconferences are about sharing the knowledge and passion we have for our profession and taking what we learn into the world to make a difference. Everyone has something to share. Everyone has something to learn. We can all change the world"

On November 12, 2010, two of California's largest library associations will present Navigating the New: Charting the Future Together, a premier continuing education and exposition that will combine both Associations' annual event into one extravaganza. The California Library Association and the California School Library Association have formally announced this collaboration, bringing together the state's library community with a focus on both current and future trends. By combining two Annual Conferences into one event, conference attendees will have the option to participate in a wide and impressive range of professional development workshops and networking events. Additionally, it is anticipated that the combination of each Association's Exhibition will nearly double the number of exhibitors on display at the Sacramento Convention Center

"Best Practices 2010: The New Face of Value is now available in a PDF version. Best Practices is a collaborative document that is put out annually on a specific topic of interest to government libraries and includes content submitted by government librarians and community leaders with an interest in government libraries. The 2010 edition includes over 70 articles and other submissions provided by more than 60 contributors from librarians in government agencies, courts, and the military, as well as from professional association leaders, LexisNexis Consultants, and more"

"The National Archives of Ireland has made the Irish Census of 1901 available online. On the website, people will be able to view the Census and perform a variety of searches under forename, surname and county as well as more advanced searches including religion, occupation, Irish language proficiency, specified illnesses and literacy status. The website was launched in December 2007 and the entire 1911 Census has been available online since 2008. The 1911 census was prepared first because the quality of the microfilm used to digitise the images is better than the microfilm of 1901 as well as the fact that there are much more microfilm reels available for 1911 than 1901"

"Are you inspired by the powerful symbolism of the Angel of the North? Does the speed of construction of the 2012 Olympic stadiums leave you in awe? Well, consider the architectural feats of engineers, stonemasons and craftsmen of the Middle Ages who built castles, cathedrals, churches and palaces without the benefit of modern technology. The British Library's latest book, Building the Medieval World contains vibrant illustrations from medieval manuscripts depicting buildings from farmhouses to churches, and castles to a dog kennel. It explores these amazing structures and what they signified to people in the Middle Ages"

Public Libraries in Wales received the biggest percentage increase in visitors and book issues in the UK last year according to the latest figures published by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy