By Hannah Johnson

At PubRants, literary agent Kristin Nelson writes about electronic rights and no-compete clauses in book contracts. According to Nelson’s interpretation of standard no-compete language, “even if you are able to reserve your electronic rights so as to as to set up your own deal with Kindle or Scribd (or whoever), your publisher could make an argument that sales of your reserved electronic right is materially damaging the sales of their licensed rights.”

Yesterday, Adobe released new versions of Flash Player and AIR that support multi-touch technology. Watch a video demonstration from Adobe (via ReadWriteWeb). Why is this a big deal for book publishers? Flash animation and videos can now be easily integrated into books that are read on smartphones and dedicated e-readers with touch screens. Whether that means embedded videos, integrated social media applications or just simulated page turning is up to you. But we can be sure that this will enhance the reading experience for smartphone and e-reader users.

What steps should libraries take to evolve with digitization and new reading habits? The creators of Library 101 are trying to answer that question on their Web site, which hosts essays about “new basics” for keeping libraries up-to-date and relevant, as well as a long list of resources about how information is created and consumed today (including a text message glossary and instructions for creating a podcast). If nothing else, watch the music video, which tells us to “improve digital access and content / or our dreams must die!”