The American Library Association, along with the Carnegie Corporation of New York, on May 17 announced six finalists for the inaugural Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. The awards honor the previous year’s best fiction and nonfiction books written for adult readers and published in the United States.

After several months of beta testing, 3M has launched the 3M Cloud Library eBook Lending Service.

As part of the work of ALA’s Digital Content and Libraries Working Group of ALA (which is tackling our many ebook-related issues), we are seeking some focused feedback before the 2012 ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim next month. If you are experimenting with the creation, publication, and preservation of digital content, we need to hear from you by June 1.

If you give something away for free, why then would anyone buy it? And yet people pay for free every single day. We go to restaurants and order bottled water, or drive our cars instead of riding public transportation. People are willing to pay a premium for a higher quality item (or the perception therein) or for convenience.