futureofthebook.com

future…douper

Study of the future is just an engaging way of doing history. The future of the book, for example, is really media history of the 21st century. The fun aspect is that while methods of history study apply, the specialist also gets to live through the era. This double dynamic is something exclusive to futurist investigation.

So futurist study entails an oddness in routine historical methods such as archeology, documentary research, oral testimony, and impartial interpretation. While students of the 18th century or 19th can assemble evidences and interpretations without any need to live in the era, the futurist must work in the midst of history.

This queasy circumstance makes futurism un-academic when it is really ur-academic.

i.p.r. fotb

Today was another call-in show on the future of the book. Iowa Public Radio, “The Exchange”, had a one hour program with an independent book store manager, a university publisher and a library conservator. We all arrived dumbfounded that we were to talk about the death of the book. Without any prompting we all confirmed the prospects for the print book and, added to that, prospects for screen delivered books. The prospects for either inter-plays with prospects for the other and both are surging.

who is the zombie?

if:book blog of the FotB dot org has risen from the crypt to send print publishers to the hospice but print is still lingering. The only sign of exclusive migration to the screen is a small niche of addictive romance. All other screen books have print equivalents while about 50% of new publications are exclusive to print.

The poor publishers are greatly tried by this. Now they must sell each of their products, each of their titles, twice; once to a device owning market and again to a print market. Pathetic publishers with two different markets now for the same product. Adding to their woes, print sales only grow by double digits while screen book sales grow by triple.

Terminal types in desperation have innovated this double sales strategy by clever distinction between book ownership and book reading. Enjoy a book reading on the screen and then another and another. Enjoy book possession with an elegant reading exemplar of the work ready for positioning among others.

Silly, lingering publishers. Meanwhile FotB dot org has only managed two postings this month.

kindle 3

The minutes drag on. Will it prompt it’s own by-line: “Gary’s third Kindle”. How many if any of my previous titles will be displayed? What can I do to regard my three shadow libraries? Stay tuned…

expresso

There are now over forty 2nd generation Expresso machines in service; in book stores, printing companies, university libraries all churning out print books from digital books. This is certainly the back side of the e-book surge. And this Expresso combines print, publish and read on demand.

booklabs

It is probably about 25 years now since the start of BookLab. Craig has adventured across many concepts of fine hand book binding and BookLab has presented these concepts in practice. Let’s get a catalog of the recent retrospective to experience some of the engagement needed to fulfill his visions.

connectivity

Connectivity is associated with live internet display, but it is a useful word and perhaps it deserves some ambiguity of really useful words. At first there is the contrast of connectivity between a reading device with a direct connectivity to the mind and another that intrudes auxiliary transmission, display and de-encryption systems. This is the connectivity of the print book contrasted with the screen book.

There is another kind of connectivity that occurred as we visited near-by Amish farms. The farms have no electricity and yet the families prosper happily and enjoy an intense connectivity. Networks of live display decorate, conflict and fill up every day. These include a rich sense of past and future, a demanding social network with intensive social media and a constant engagement with the two great ecologies of nature and spirit.

One farmer recited a community of people who attended his grandfather’s barn raising, in 1935. Another, on a different farm, recalled his earliest memory when he was prevented from participation in that same event. This is vivid connectivity.

But you can imagine that the Amish must guard every door to prevent use of electricity and internet. That is not so and young people are free to go into town to mingle with the English and connect. What the Amish do manage is the convenience of such electrical connectivity and they guard against any addiction to instant gratification that can distort or damage the other connectivity that they depend on.

future of the book seminar

The first ever credit seminar on the future of the book is about to begin. Tuesdays, Aug 31 to Oct 5, 6 to 8:30 pm, South Conference room, Main Library, University of Iowa

Lesson Plan, session topics,
1. Future of Reading, Aug 31
a. RIT conference
b. affordances of print reading
c. neurology and haptics of reading
d. slow or fast (cross platform) reading
e. tour of bibliography
2. Future of the Book, Sept 7
a. ALA strategic future of print
b. advance of the codex
c. book mimicry of reading devices
d. faculty format survey
e. interdependence of print and screen
f. (guest participation, CBAA Officer)
3. Future of Book Production, Sept 14
a. printing automation, electrostatic
b. image and binding transformation
c. (guest participation, UI Press Specialist)
4. Future of Book Mediation, Sept 21
a. storage, display and life cycle costs
b. academic and commercial views
c. google settlement
d. status of books
e. (guest participation)
5. (optional picnic, Saturday 25)
6. Project work session, Sept 28
7. Project presentations, Oct 5

machine reading

“The historian George Dyson has written that a Google engineer once said to him: “We are not scanning all those books to be read by people.” NYT

The trope of machine reading began with the photocopier. It turned the book up-side down.

print gone in 5 years

Telereaders have projected the disappearance of print books in 5 years. We posted this remark:

You guys are all smoking dirty socks. It is a false correlate to imagine that increasing screen delivery has anything to do with diminishing print delivery. To begin with all screen books have a print version. Even more relevant, screen delivery will compound any number of times without influence of print distribution. Annual print has increased sales consistently for the past eleven years at single digits over a huge installed base. Annual screen delivery has increased from a zero base over the same period. Last year print shot up annually to double digits in part from the new stream of print and publish on demand.

About twenty years ago I was in the back of the room at an ALA “big heads” meeting between research library directors and publishers. One publisher projected that by 2010 only 10% of all publication would be delivered in print (and yet it is still 100%). Ross Atkinson from Cornell immediately jumped up and said that a 10% print titles growth at the rate of increase of the 90’s would project to a doubling of the size of print libraries by 2010….and they would be the real books. That prophesy, based on 10% selection, has come true.

Those projecting the demise of print should watch the exceptionally small niche of books published exclusively for the screen.

hybrid strategy

Maybe local utilization was always inherently mismatched with local print while wider, electronic demand for print is also inherently mismatched with local print. In the first case demand was too narrow and in the second case demand is too extensive. It is beside the point that electronic access and ILL delivery can supply the needed response from somewhere. The challenge is justification of maintenance of local print collections that are both too large and too small.

Physical collections should not necessarily be managed as is they were electronic collections. It is only recently that we can even conceive of them or transact their access in that way and there are features of physical collections that have no counterpart in electronic access. For example, physical collections have overt content; you can confirm what is there and you can confirm what is not there. They also differ from their electronic simulations in features of navigation, legibility, persistence, authentication and display constraint. Another obvious difference between print and screen resources is that physical collections require physical space and electronic collections require electricity, display facility and connectivity.

Whatever the consensus on their maintenance, we should probably not accept a premise of simple equivalence of print and screen delivery of research library books. Given that condescension there is still the question if both print and screen collections need somewhat equivalent maintenance as a strategic hybrid library service or should one kind of collection prosper at the expense of the other? This is like the outdoor parka that is 60 % synthetic and 40% natural fiber: even as the percentages shift we can still advocate for hybrid strategy. It is appropriate at the moment.

niche

Bob Stein talks with Dan Visel and opens an immense niche. While engaging a great interview session in the Voyager tradition, the back story plays out. Here the history of the future of the book becomes the mandate so long in limbo for the Institute for the Future of the Book.

…ok, ok…

Kindle 3 has wi-fi, black chop sticks contrast, and battery shelf life. But most interesting is return from diversions of i-Pad. The Kindle 3 remains constrained by the attribute of the constraints of print. That decisive stance can also reflex back to attribute of print itself and an exact interplay well suited to Amazon. Books still have thickness…of one third of an inch.

(Kindle and nook remain fulfillment devices; the retailers don’t care if you read books as long as you buy them. There may even be a clever reverse relation here as retailers induce more alluring single click book purchase habits that are fully decoupled from any book reading.)

century

“In 2010, Ox-Bow is strong. Ox-Bow’s programs and classes are up to the highest educational standards, our students and our artists in residence are making compelling, challenging, and innovative work, and our facilities continue to improve, while maintaining the historic nature of the campus. With a deep and constantly resonating connection to our past, a sense of pride and excitement for our present, and the knowledge that this special place will exist and continue to fulfill the core of its mission, we invite you to join in celebrating 100 years of history, 100 years of artmaking, and 100 years of changing how artists see the world.”

In 2011 OxBow will again host Paper and Book Intensive and PBI will be there for the next two years beyond. So PBI and OxBow begin to invigorate each other again as they did in the early 80’s. PBI, strange to say, once managed to engage hand papermaking, hand bookbinding and permaculture of literacy without cell phones, wi-fi, hand-held reading or real toilets. That will not happen again, but perhaps Richard will return to reteach Tango.

unplup your books

Library circulation statistics may miss this back current of desk-top imaging. The threshold is there for a reason; to give us that moment to realize an interdependence of print and screen.

ipad magazine

“The Amazon Kindle, released in ‘07, lacks the multimedia capabilities of the iPad with its HTML5 video, color photos and ability to run complex interactive apps. One of the the Amazon device’s advantages when it comes to text — that its screen doesn’t act like a glowing computer screen, but like a faithful electronic reproduction of a physical book — becomes a disadvantage with next-generation formats. These formats attempt not only to port the reading experience onto an electronic device, but to take fuller advantage of the capabilities of modern phones and especially tablets, with their larger screens.”Wired

Its no accident that magazine format migration to iPad is reported by Wired. High fashion has it that the Web is so over for serious reading. For librarians there has always been another skew. This is that journal trends need not prefigure book trends which, even together, need not prefigure trends for magazines. The periodic, elaborated reading experience of a well designed magazine is unlike other format genres.

The small question is if the iPad presents a “next generation format” or if the magazine was just momentarily sequestered in print.

forgotten characters

“As software obviates the need for Chinese to sketch by hand the characters that make up their written language, they are coming to realize that those characters are being erased from their memories.” Nicholas Carr

Meanwhile back in up-start Western reading, the real template of print, exemplified by the lock-up of metal type, has vaporized from our understanding of the image of text. As we watch silent delivery from the copier, sheet after sheet, it is mildly curious that they are all different.

“Does the page look like an original? A good page of letterpress is an original. It is not a picture of a page of type…” Warren Chappell

” Books are communicative instruments so vital to civilization that their production must not be consigned wholly to automatic means, whether industrial, technological, or economic; in the process of transmitting culture, they embody it, and therefore need to undergo the vicissitudes of the human condition so that they will reflect our common experience truly.” Harry Duncan

arl statistics

The Association of Research Libraries has been gathering statistics on unit time production of preservation department treatments. This has been going on for 25 years and absent a conversion to digital time measure, the unit durations of 15 minutes, 1 hour and 3 hours have not changed one second.

I suggest the ARL choose a standard treatment for each of twelve months. March can be drop-spine boxes, July can be recording disc or magnetic tape cleaning, and September can be book repair board rehinging…that’s the idea. Each library simply watches and counts that one procedure each month. At the end of the year we start through the same count categories again. In 25 years it will be easy to track trends in treatment services.

Such tabulation also generates incentives, treatment diversity and fun.

sharp

The long awaited revamp of the SHARP web site is realized.

ipad

“E-readers Should Be Worried: The biggest category that has been affected by the iPad is that of standalone e-readers. Beyond just Resolve’s own survey results, we’re already seen evidence of this in the marketplace; both Barnes & Noble and Amazon recently slashed the prices of their e-readers.”Mashable

“It could be that the real debate will not be books versus the Internet but how to build an Internet counterculture that will better attract people to serious learning.” David Brooks

I have the i-book library building on the i-Pad. The downloads come up within the same book as the Contacts motif, but a single page rather than a spread. Just as interesting are the tangled smudges of finger marks when the screen is off. These are better than eye trackings and show how busy our fingers are during reading.

There is also a strange ghosting of recto print on the verso during page curls. This must compensate for the otherwise blank which you can pause in mid change. It is also fun to curl the turn on a skew, playing with differently prompted contours all along the foredge. But be careful with your left hand thumb in the gutter; it can trip you forward 2 or 3 pages.

“Here’s a weird bit of news. In a patent application filed in January, 2009, Microsoft laid claim to the idea of virtual page-turning, the way iBooks does it—creating a visual facsimile of a turning page, complete with transparency to see through to the words on the back of the page as you turn it. Obviously, Microsoft originally intended to use this with its Courier tablet, which it recently axed. But could Microsoft go after Apple for infringement if this patent is granted?”Teleread

My next escapade will be setting at a Linotype from a live i-Pad feed. I may be the first.

tramps and boomers

One day Otto walked into the book bindery in Austin. He was a tramp compositor and told us that he had set type in all 260 counties of Texas. He was a legendary character like the boomer telegraphers who wandered the pre-telephonic railroads. Both tramp compositors and boomer telegraphers were media technologists of their era and their skills made them mobile across the networks of type setting and train dispatching.

This mobility was real in a sense that computer work station mobility is not: it required physical relocation and tramps and boomers were addicted to constant movement and wandering. They were allured by endless places rather than endless connectivities. These traveling compositors and telegraphers worked within an infrastructure of wire and rail. The wire conveyed the news and dispatched the trains and it was a third rail of the track. Another layer of the infrastructure consisted of rooming houses and railroad hotels.

Today a railroad and print shop continues to operate in Homestead Iowa. There is also an old rooming house. Legend has it that Die Heimat was the original stagecoach stop for the Amana Colonies. As early as 1858, it was used as an inn for travelers. From 1906 to 1932, Die Heimat operated solely as a communal kitchen. Even today a wandering compositor will find a room and breakfast at Die Heimat. I was there one morning and the cook mentioned that the old Colonists ate in the same room and “went out that back door to their farm work”. She described the old German communalists as “60’s hippies except without the sex and drugs”. They were from the 60’s….1860’s.

Students in the University of Iowa Center for the Book only need to experience the trip to Homestead once. Afterward each of them can reflect on the long legacy of digital encoding, network connectivity, instantaneous transmission and texting.

booklab ii

Be sure to visit the redesigned and revised site of BookLab II. Craig has achieved elegance and precision in his edition binding. Long work, concentration, clever intelligence and quick sense of proportion; all there. The new BookLab catalog echoes Doors of Perception as another classic.

“Perhaps to conceive of useful things as objects of integrity rather than traffic is old-fashioned, but surely it isn’t completely unheard of even in this age of rapid communication and utility when things are apt to be ‘consumer goods’ more than embodiments.” Harry Duncan

first impression

My first impression of the i-Pad came from the Contacts icon. Its a perfect depiction of a book binding featuring the correct shadows of the tail edge and case construction release of the spine from the back at the perfect set-back of the joint. Also the perfect corner miters and endbands. But best, I noticed a perfect half square of the papyrus book…but then I accidentally tipped it and the horizontal transformed to medieval proportion 5:7.

Now I wander between nodes to keep it refreshed. It does seem perky and lighter than my e-Books. Will it will allure us from the old nooks and Kindles? “Although born of a completely different heritage, one of the devices that best represents the completion of the Internet appliance vision is Apple’s iPad. Press a button and the device is instantly on and with one more push of a finger one is on the Web in seconds. The Kindle, meanwhile, shows how the Internet can be used, almost invisibly, for a single purpose, such as buying and reading books. (CNN)

convergence not yet deciphered

(emailed to PreScan ) The convergence not yet well deciphered is that between library preservation at ALA and library preservation at AIC. The alien appears to be emerging first in the library preservation sector and it may be that neither organization wishes contamination or distraction of its larger membership. Both agendas, the art conservation agenda (AIC) and the administrative agenda (ALA) have been unable to contain the surge to digital research and screen based communication. Separately they have both been somewhat unsustainable in library preservation specifically.

the web is so over

The web is so over as a serious reading platform. This came up in the RIT Future of Reading conference as well. Magazines, understanding their print attributes of dedicated reader experience, periodicity and formal structure, have moved to the new paradigm using recent i-Pad generation devices.

“This is not a magazine or an app or a digital version of a magazine,” Fiber Division vice president and publisher John Bolton says. “Quilting Arts Magazine readers have been accustomed to digital issues of our print magazines for several years, but this is an entirely unique digital product unlike any we’ve been able to deliver before.”

And print is not standing still. Wired print has had its best year ever and April was exceptional generally: “Adult Hardcover Show a Marked Increase of Nearly 50% for the Month and 16.2% for the Year. New York, NY, June 16, 2010— Book sales tracked by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) for the month of April increased by 24.8% percent in April to $629.8 million and were up by 11.8 percent for the year through April. The Adult Hardcover category was up 49.2% percent in April compared to last year with sales of $142.9 million; sales through April are up by 16.2% percent. Adult Paperback sales increased 19.6 percent for the month ($128.2 million) and increased by 19.4 percent for the year.”

E-Book sales (still working their zero based trend lines) are up triple digits. But no one is looking at the back side of e-books driving print.

forum at ala annual

The forum Strategic Future of Print Collections attracted over 300 librarians. The forum was sponsored by the Preservation and Reformatting sub group and the Rare Books and Manuscripts sub group of the American Library Association. The program featured three presentations offering three perspectives on print delivery in a context of digital technologies.

Walt Crawford, commentator on role of libraries in society, offered an overview of the current dynamic use of print and screen resources in research libraries. He suggested that libraries promote “inclusionary” or “multiplatform” reading that combines use of print and screen resources. He also projects such interplay into the future; “We don’t know how interdependence (of print and screen) will play out – but can guess that all-digital is an inherently unlikely future except as an ideological assertion.”

Shannon Zachary, preservation librarian at the University of Michigan, described the intensive interaction of print and screen resources caused by Google Print reformatting. This processing has features of selection and de-selection that indicate a continuing role for print in a context of digital delivery. While Google reformatting of print books exponentially improves access there is more conflicted appraisal of the preservation implications. As with microfilm conversion, digital conversion progresses in context with a continuing role for print.

Doug Nishimura, senior researcher at IPI, continued a theme of interplay between print and digital technologies. He discussed how print on demand books enabled by digital sources and electrostatic printing promises to project the role of print far into the future. Research at the Image Permanence Institute is assessing the digital printing technologies and evolving diagnostic tools for performance and permanence of print on demand books.

The program proved very cohesive and conveyed a consensus across the wide perspectives presented. This consensus was that there is a digital future for print in libraries collections as screen access, digital book manufacturing technologies and print reading all invigorate the future of books.

library conservation/preservation training

Resources for library conservation training are regrouping in the aftermath of the Kilgarlin Center training program. In one response the Delaware conservation program will team up with Simmons library school but there is a mood against embedding the program in a library school and that indicates that the degree or certificate may be from Delaware. The shift from a library school hosting not only reflects the death star experiences at Columbia and UT, but also reflects a shift from LIS focus in the current retooling of preservation.

What is disconcerting here is not a shift from LIS focus but a return to a museum training paradigm. Modern library and archive training began as a mimic of art conservation. Another syndrome preserved here is the simple binary of bench and administration training. A whole new sector of practice, driven by digital preservation and oversight services for digital reformatting, is now wedged in between bench and administration components.

predicting the past

College and University faculty enthusiasm for digital research and screen based learning continues to grow. This is well elaborated in surveys conducted by ITHAKA S+R. These results were presented again at an ALCTS Forum.

The analysis of the surveys certainly has predictive capacity but the researchers should glance not only at the future, but should also extend their trend lines to the past. Doing so they could see that their trend lines are zero based; it was not that long ago that there was no digital research or screen based learning. The data is looking at growth rate, such as the growth rate of e-books, but not looking necessarily at the destiny of print and screen resources in libraries.

I mentioned this in the discussion period and suggested that the trend lines could as well suggest an emergent interdependence between print and screen. The report author said that the data do not indicate any such interdependence. How true; they never asked that question.

strategic future of print

“Last Friday I attended the RLG Partnership Symposium. The topic – When the books leave the building – reflected the growing discussion around the management of legacy print collections across the academic library system. The balance between local print, offsite print (local or shared), and emerging digitised collections, presents interesting choices. These are tactical as competing interests are managed, and strategic as decisions are made about mission, sustainability and responsibility to the scholarly record. Interestingly, the outcome of one discussion was that maybe 25 libraries in the US might see it as part of their mission to remain committed to the management of the print scholarly record.” Lorcan Dempsey

A cascade of white papers and reports suggest that libraries are in a transition to mixed print and screen based services and that this transition is not yet completed. Accordingly, demand for direct access to books is projected to diminish as screen delivered copies prove popular. What implications can this transition have for the continuing role of print in the context of its digital delivery? Do attributes of the paper book suggest a new interdependence between print and screen access?

Three outstanding speakers will address issues of the strategic future of print. These are Walt Crawford, editor of the journal Cites & Insights who will consider “inclusive” reading and the interdependence of print and screen, Shannon Zachary, Preservation Librarian from the University of Michigan who will review the Googlization of libraries, and Doug Nishimura from the Image Permanence Institute who will consider known and unknown aspects of print on demand technology.

This program, co-sponsored by PARS and RBMS, Sunday 27 at 10:30, (at ALA annual) will be of interest to those concerned with long term access to and status of print collections. A summary bibliography will be provided.

So what was the future of the book after all? Not too surprisingly we are drifting toward an inclusive reading scenario and an inherent logic of the interdependence of distinctive print and screen formats. This is the messy agenda of projecting both formats forward. It is also the messy agenda of realizing that each of the print and screen formats of books have shifted their separate roles as enclaves of culture transmission.

touch haptic

“Touch in different parts of the world is different. In US point with a finger, in other parts of the world people won’t point with one finger, but will use two fingers or a thumb. In large parts of the world people don’t know what “pinching” is. There are different touch dialects all over the world. Korea has a different touch language from the rest of the world and HP is compiling a “directory” of touch from around the world.” Phil McKinney

The clue here is that haptic response in book formats is not only concerned with reading navigation but also with kinetic engagement with the device.

self-referential

There are enough of these studies on the transition to digital libraries that they are beginning to validate each other. The new CLIR study titled “The Idea of Order” includes a 60 page study on the prospect of an all-digital research library. In this new study the transition is mostly confirmed by reference to other ITHAKA S+R studies that themselves project a similar transition.

But some of this inevitability can be questioned. Why is the transition to be so linear? How can the transition to digital libraries be so well advised and responsible in the long term if the correlate of long term sustainability is viable digital preservation not yet assured? It appears that deliberation is fine if it confirms a rush into the unknown.

The unkind aspect is that librarians and faculty suggesting a continuing role of print in the context of digital delivery are considered obstructionist rather than conflicted. An underlying interdependence of print and screen would be too complex a concept as would a sustainable library service mediating roles of print and screen.

But the nicest absurdity is present here as well. This is that preserving print requires its disposal. This elegant weird linkage extends to a mathematics of last copy and a great worry that cyberspace needs all the physical space that the books take up. But the linkage is pure invention and a red herring.

read on demand

There was consensus at the RIT Future of Reading conference that the future is neither print or screen. We are headed into composite relations that will shift roles and compile new products and reading behaviors and renegotiate access. Nuance, refinement and esthetic result will remain crucial to reading which was another consensus. And everyone agreed that the Web is so over as an attentive reading medium.

Johanna Drucker talked about frame jumps. This was an exposition of the shifts of cognitive states prompted by reading. What are the “hinges” of these shifts and how can we attentively manage frame jumps. First she provided taxonomy describing a wide ecology of reading spaces. This was familiar enough. She moved on to hinge, tangent and overlap vectors and on to states of knowing.

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, described his methodic and risky decision to deliver Wired for the iPad. He made three bets; that the iPad will be a mass platform, that people will continue to read whole magazines and that the tablet experience will reset the economics. The tricky aspect was direct migration of the print experience and esthetic to the screen.

He knew the qualities of the print magazine that must go forward; its curated wholeness, its event-like experience and its periodicity and he knew that the Web was never going to advance attentive magazine reading. But he was amazed to see that most print editorial tools of spread, adjacency, well, jump, pull-quotes and back cover were not going to migrate to the reading device. For example, the pages must be deployed as singles, not spreads. “There are very few moments when nobody knows anything.”

Chris has committed Wired to a print and screen hybrid, but he admits that the print magazine has had its best year ever and it alone will finance the adventure to iPad publication.

Richard Lanham, UCLA, contended that writing is revision and revision enables attentive reading. He presented his tutorial in prose revision, an animated video now 30 years old. It struck the audience as revolutionary in the current context of Web display and social media. “Words actually dance around” and alphabetic information can be dimensionally displayed. It took Donald Brinkman, educational engineer at Microsoft, three days to get over the Lanham video.

Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager described the “settlement” as better than wining, advancing Google’s position as an enabler of non-consumptive research. For example he illustrated the transition from the phrase “The Great War” to the “First World War”. This occurred in books in 1932 and he easily identified these perceptive works. Orwant considers electronic forms as supplement of print but also sees that supplement as just emerging; “I have 1.5 million books on my phone right now.”

Kate Hayles discussed the destiny of literary studies and proposed a restructure beyond a current commitment to close reading alone. Hyper or well linked reading as well as computer assisted reading should be drawn into literary studies.

The conference usually paired speakers from commercial and academic environments. This was very revealing because of a depth of consensus between the sectors. This was a consensus that print and screen will so influence each other that the hybrids will take on functions different from their parents. But there was also a confidence in both commercial and academic sectors that advancement of reading skills is within their capacities. And, as I mentioned, the Web is over.