Author Archives: John Mark Ockerbloom

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About John Mark Ockerbloom

I'm a digital library strategist at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

“There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands”

Posted on November 15, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

In 47 days, Agatha Christie’s first novel starring Miss Marple joins the US public domain. The Murder at the Vicarage, which also introduces her home village of St Mary Mead, is not the spinster detective’s most popular case, partly because … Continue reading →

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When it reads differently in your head

Posted on November 14, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Cimarron was 1930’s best-selling novel in the US, but more people now remember its movie adaptations than the story Edna Ferber wrote. As Taylor Jasmine notes, passages she meant as satire were taken as straight-up Western storytelling. And, while Ferber … Continue reading →

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Remarkably spry for a 95 year old

Posted on November 13, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Blondie Bumstead (née Boopadoop) and her family and friends have appeared every day in newspapers for over 95 years. Created by Chic Young in 1930, and still overseen by his son Dean, Blondie has stayed relevant by changing with the … Continue reading →

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Stoking creative fires: Counting down to Public Domain Day 2026

Posted on November 12, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Until I saw it performed earlier this month, I had doubts that one could successfully adapt an unthemed magazine issue into a stage play. But that’s what the New Classics Collective did with the first and only issue of Fire!!, … Continue reading →

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Will universities let Trump dictate what their libraries can do?

Posted on October 3, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

As has now been widely reported, the White House has sent a number of universities, including the one I work at, a set of terms it wants them to agree to, which indicate that not doing so may mean they … Continue reading →

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Meet the people behind the books

Posted on August 19, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

Today I’m introducing new pages for people and other authors on The Online Books Page. The new pages combine and augment information that’s been on author listings and subject pages. They let readers see in one place books both about … Continue reading →

Posted in data, discovery, libraries, metadata, online books, wikipedia | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Expanding access to current scholarship with JSTOR’s open access books

Posted on March 25, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

We’ve recently added more than ten thousand freely readable recent books from academic publishers to the extended shelves of The Online Books Page. These online titles are provided by JSTOR’s Open Access Books collection, and represent the first large-scale automated … Continue reading →

Posted in metadata, online books, open access, serials, sharing, Uncategorized, university presses | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Expanding access to current scholarship with JSTOR’s open access books

Support the IMLS

Posted on March 23, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

If you’ve found useful the many mid-20th century serials that are now freely readable online through The Online Books Page, you can thank the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The IMLS (as it’s generally known) funded the completion in … Continue reading →

Posted in copyright, libraries, preservation, serials | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Not by accident, but by action

Posted on March 2, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

I didn’t mean to create a sexist library collection when I set out to build one. But in 1994, when I showed Mary the catalog of online books I’d started the previous year, one of her first questions was “Where … Continue reading →

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Some important library values

Posted on February 11, 2025 by John Mark Ockerbloom

In challenging times, it’s good for organizations to remember what they exist to do, and what values drive what they do. They may be expressed in a variety of ways, but there are often common threads going through them. There … Continue reading →

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