futureofthebook.com

bags and books
The Library of Congress application for encapsulation of file transfers with embedded content check, called a bag, is an eerie simulation of the function of a physical book. This is another illustration that the activity of digital preservation requires a migration of qualities of materiality to electronic content.

“A recent report begins; “Preservation is a core function of the research library.” If so, such functionality deserves honest definition. What if the preservation functionality derives from a relative immutability of the collections? If so the research library must provide safety from unwarranted modification or deletion and an assured organization of items. In essence, this preservation functionality would then spring from a physicality of collections and media even to the extent that physicality is ascribed to electronic resources.” (more)

place based learning
“They describe it as an augmented reality application: objects viewed through the camera may be augmented by data about those objects.” Lorcan Demsey

The cell phone camera image is not just a pretty face. Underlying connectivity and prompts of information and transaction will be linked to every view. This point and click reality suggests the practicality of artificial intelligence augmenting hominid intelligence based on hand-held, but not like an old e-book, reading.

hand-off
The swirl of adaptation from the book template to the hand held device is a counterpart to the swirl of adaptation of the telephone template to the hand held device and the adaptation of the emerged book device with the emerged phone device is still in process.

The audio and video channels appear to converge and separate for handheld devices in commercially complicated diversity. But the communality of the hand held or haptic character of a communication device needs consideration. iPhones and NetBook devices are related by their single user possession, personal portability, bodily proximity and hand held, touch navigation.

But unambiguous possession of a personal communication device contrasts with mutability and transience of self identity on the networks they deliver. Unlike a physical book, these hand held devices no longer assure possession. And the demise of a cell phone user is surprisingly similar to the demise of a cell phone; interruption of connectivity.

finger cursor
The only deterrent to the advance of dedicated reading devices is simulation of physical book navigation. The quirks of page turning application are an example as are purely visual prompts of progression through content are more distractive than reassuring. Perhaps the most disturbing simulation is the suggestion that a single screen can present “a lifetime of reading”.

Haptic and kinetic prompts assist comprehension in the physical book. Classical speed comprehension is based on the use of finger cursor following and, if you watch yourself, you will discover your inadvertent fingering prior to page turning. There is also a response to the “spread” of two pages and the topography of the drape of the gutter and the sense of the reverse side of the visual opening. Do you sometimes scout ahead or reverse a few pages to sense the scope of the narrative?

All such navigational acts are hands prompting the mind via a deeply embedded learning pathway. The research of this ergonomic of comprehension as refined in the physical book is distributed in psychology, robotic engineering and evolutionary neurology.

academic pod
“The cornerstone of Ingram Digital’s offering to academic publishers is CoreSource®, the industry’s most robust digital warehouse. CoreSource ensures that digital content is properly archived, file integrity protected, and versions controlled. It functions as a hub from which the publisher controls the delivery of digital files, metadata, and associated promotional materials to all its partners.”

The aspect of a SHARP pod publication stream (see below) would merge well with a service provider such as CoreSource or Expresso Book Machine (EBM). SHARP could leverage fold-bound book structure (high speed copier imposition in single folios) and many other enhancements bringing improved binding mobility and durability to the larger POD production stream.

pod books

“I started writing as a journalist. In those days, our copy was produced on typewriters, unlike today where a journalist files a story on the computer, and the text is viewed by an editor and sent down to the printing press (soon to also be obsolete, too). In those days back in the 60s, the copy was seen by several people, facts were corroborated, and copy mistakes were corrected, and the story was trimmed to fit the allocated space, all by human hands. Today, after the copy is produced in the computer, it doesn’t feel a human hand on it until the pressman takes the soon-to-be-obsolete newspaper off the press. This new way is, of course, a progression where progress is equated with saving bucks, not necessarily improving a newspaper. It is the same with book publishing.” Jerry

A current thread at the SHARP listserv considers POD problems. These chains of read-right-read-wrong transactions were strung out for a reason. They permitted refinement. For example the Linotype is an excellent composition machine, but a poor writing machine. The story went from typewriter entry, to composition, to line casting, to page lock-up, to form counter casting, to plate foundry casting, to press mounting, to paper printing.

“Why don’t we start a new publishing house in our field under the aegis of SHARP, use all digital technology - that is free and easy to use and at our fingertips - to create books that are good, well-edited and corrected, cheap and well-made? We are all librarians, teachers and professors, book historians. So we can see to it that our books will find their public too. Issuu, Xerox and a little help from Google can open new vistas,
undreamed of by the scholar who hopes for his or her ca 500 copies to be sold.

A publishing house like this would certainly have a standing that is on a par with the great university presses. To be named after one of the founding mothers of SHARP - or Bookiejoint after a great (and funny) bookseller. Theproducts could be far better than most of what we see in the market nowadays for idiot prices.” Paul Dijstelberge

Just as AIC is free of member certification and free to engage the certifying moderation of Conservation On-line, so SHARP in its well founded activities is free to consider POD publication to augment their Book History journal.

leaf master

“With optical scans, voters fill out a paper ballot that is then read by computer — much like a standardized test. The votes are counted quickly and efficiently by computer, but the paper ballot remains the official vote, which can then be recounted by hand.”

New legislation pending will require paper ballots in federal elections. The role of the authenticating paper sounds just like the continuing library role of print in the context of digital delivery.

hybrid book
I scouted around for info on the recent Hybrid Book conference. Like the CBAA annual, these conferences play out the interaction as if the encounters were electronic blogs. This is strange territory. For book artists who have license of the rich legacy of books and some appreciation of qualities of its physical materiality it is dangerous territory.

The hybrid book tangles the wrestling of paper and screen. Someone should mention how bias book artists are to physical products and how dependent they are on virtual screen representation of their products. The best approach may be, taking one example, to define the relevance of letterpress printing to screen drawing and visa versa. Then compound issues of self-authentication of real books could be better hybridized with their electronic delivery.

electronic textbooks
The surge toward or away from electronic textbooks has the same old vectors. These are navigation, legibility and persistence. Persistence is not an issue of centuries, but of a single hour of classroom battery life. As for navigation, the Bible previously was our only un-paginated book, but now e-textbooks pop -up classroom and assignment chaos from lack of consistent pagination and dexterity moves. Then there is legibility, which is not resolution, but immediacy of meaning. Here loading times, cross-volume reference, illustration simulation are sidebars to cooperative role of the text for learning. The immediacy of meaning is migrating to reading, listening and watching activities not delivered by dedicated hand-held devices. (more)

A new book on social experience of technological transition, Kirkpatrick, Technology and Social Power is an amazing study of the social dimension and social theory that actually manages the course of technology. It is relevant not just to textbooks, but to all books. Screen or paper is unimportant compared with transition in the social role of textbooks.

no competition
“Finally, the biggest competitor for E Ink Vizplex is a 500 year old technology called printed paper. Y’know, the kind that you make by chopping down precious forests, trucking the trees to the mill, crushing and treating the trees, generating huge amounts of waste water, creating rolls of paper, trucking them again to a printing press, printing and cutting the paper, crating them onto another truck for delivery. That kind of paper.”

Screen reading advocates are quick to disparage paper as unsustainable. Little do they suspect that the plastic derivative, energy consumptive, toxic manufacturing of electronic display may prove unsustainable in less than 500 years.

unchanging preservation
A recent report (”Safeguarding Collections at the Dawn of the 21st Century”, ARL, 2009) begins; “Preservation is a core function of the research library.” If so, such functionality deserves honest definition. What if the preservation functionality derives from a relative immutability of the collections? If so the research library must provide safety from unwarranted modification or deletion and an assured organization of items. In essence, this preservation functionality would then spring from a physicality of collections and media even to the extent that physicality is ascribed to electronic resources. (more)

off-line
Those who question the premise that a quality of physicality is prerequisite to preservation should note the sudden disappearance of CoOL (conservation on-line). The physicality was vested in Stanford University and ascribed to an awesome web presence, but some mischief occurred. The AIC may manage an emergency cut-over, but that will not bring back Henry’s voice and may not even tether the CoOL mission.

AIC, now released from the certification dispute, is in a good position to manage CoOL. The outreach and public education power of CoOL converges with AIC goals and communication with members and non-members will benefit. There may also be a AIC/CoOL publication channel. Long term AIC/CoOL operation could even clarify the nature of certification in the conservation specialties by lending a wiki authority to the field.

cut-over
FotB has migrated to WordPress after ten years with Manila. We will be looking through a different window.

permaculture
There may be a rendezvous between two enclaves, the technologists developing alternative, sustainable agriculture and those promoting the continuing role of print in the context of digital delivery. Both enclaves regard authentication with persistent exemplars as an engineering pathway.

homestead rocket
The summer season at the Print Shop in Homestead Iowa has begun. Copy and composition is gathering for the 2009 issue of the Homestead Rocket produced with technologies of the 1950’s. Its all very modern with keyboard prompted automation and the latest devotional society news. Volunteers welcome.

on the road

“During the next six months, with support from the Mellon Foundation and outside experts, the iSchool faculty will embark on a planning process and budgetary review of our certificate program. Current students will continue their programs as we move to our new facilities this summer. Please watch for progress in this planning process on our web site and check back for further details on future admissions.”

The Preservation/Conservation program has already outgrown one library school and it can outlgrow another. There is no reason not to consider relocation if only to unlock options for program development in Texas. The GSLIS at Illinois provides just such a foil where there is “Groundbreaking research to advance preservation of and access to information in both traditional and digital libraries and in the many settings outside of libraries where large amounts of critical information are collected”

sustainability

The measures of sustainability include not just closed cycle production and operation efficiency but also sustainable discard. My three year old computer went “blue screen” and I was given another. I was overdue for up-grade anyway.

There must be 500 computers in the library building and I wonder where they go. 500 books could go into the river with no lasting effect. Or, if the books are kept, they will not need replacement, every three years, to remain readable.

pbi soliloquy

FotB offered presentations on comparative 1 and 2 Kindle fulfillment and on a retrospective of the future of the book. We also provided a cartonnage and free leaf investigation of the design traits of papyrus book making, a tutorial on post digital sewn boards binding and a take-home exemplar of the mobility of the book at the close of the wooden board era. That was during the Paper and Book Intensive, 2009, at OxBow.

historical printing anchor

This press is being re-assembled at the University of Iowa Center for the Book. It will be a resource for a new historical printing course. It looks ugly. It came apart with a little tap, tap, tap Amtrak hammer.

lively zombie

“A full-colour UV printer, the EagleJet C4200 has been developed for on-demand commercial print markets in China. Production flexibility enables duplex mono and two-colour printing simultaneously, and duplex four-colour printing with a tandem configuration. The precision imaging capability of the industrial-strength Xaar 1001 printhead produces amazing print results (1080dpi apparent resolution) across the 420mm paper web width at speeds of 25 metres per minute.”
Digital Print

Printing technology is advancing as quickly as in the 19th century. All the implications of web feed, simultaneous duplex and color are in continuous advance.

presence

Screen reading advocates find print books inconvenient when they should understand them as essential. Screen reading is counterpart to print reading; they derive from each other and feature surprisingly counterpart and interlocking attributes. Why is this obvious interlock invisible? It is not improbable that automotive travel engendered road maps or gps devices, but that print books engendered screen books as a counterpart development is frequently overlooked.

At if:book the print book is conceded to have “presence” and so its continued role in context of digital delivery is explained and dismissed. But beyond presence, specific print attributes of fixity, navigational and haptic refinement, materiality, and reliable re-access across time, all pair nicely with screen attributes of immediacy, automated search, electronic delivery, and live content. Another crucial pair of inter-functioning print and screen attributes is revealed by the self-authenticating nature of the print book contrasted with the self-indexing nature of the screen book.
Just such factors are relevant to the future of books. Forget about legacy and what has gone before; now the issue is assimilation of screen books and print books into a single transmission mechanism. Let’s go directly to the
work ahead.

new kind of science

Steven Wolfram, author of the self published, self designed and awesome compendium of science
yet to come that visualizes time and space as dimensions of information, will now engineer the
next generation Google engine.

“The thing that truly sets Wolfram¦Alpha apart is that it is able to do sophisticated computations for you, both pure computations involving numbers or formulas you enter, and computations applied automatically to data called up from its repositories.
Why does computation matter? Because computation is what turns generic information into specific answers.
To give an amusing example, every school child has at one time or another written a report on the moon, and they probably included the wrong figure for how far the moon is from the earth. Why wrong? Because the distance from the earth to the moon is not constant: it changes by as much as a mile a minute.”

fotb to pbi

We will participate in the 26th session of the
Paper and Book Intensive sabbatical. We will investigate the four P-modes of the book: papyrus, parchment, paper and phone.

canticle for kindle

“Congratulations on your purchase and welcome to Amazon Kindle 2.
We built Kindle 2 with the goal of creating an exceptional and hassle-free reading experience. Kindle Team

It is interesting that the Kindle 2
prospectus includes a critical, one star, review. Evidently the auto-review postings are unmoderated. (see Gadget Queen at the bottom of the scroll). Anyone prompted to a one-click purchase is quickly dissuaded.

This must be a post-apocalypse advertising world as in “Canticle for Leibowitz”. The 1959 futurist novel visualizes rudimentary cultures mystified by the accidental survivals of paper documents. Since post electrical life would certainly have no evidence or suspicion of digital culture, the antique visualization is still authentic.

worlds made words

Anthony Grafton, co-author of Christianity and the Transformation of the Book, concludes his latest book with a dangling chapter about the Codex in Crisis. He presents many nuanced expressions of the attributes of paper and screen books and many nuanced expressions of the worth of libraries. But each is studied as a separate topic without a single suspicion that paper and screen books maybe fulfilling counterpart and interdependent roles. And there is no indication that libraries are the implementers of this cohesive transmission ecology. The interlock between self-authentication of paper books and self-indexing of screen books is not even suggested.

uncanny valley

“I
discussed
TTP (turn the page) book models in the context of the so-called “uncanny valley” -
this is the theory that as robots become more and more human-like,
they reach a point where we become disgusted by them - they are too
much like us and yet we understand they are not us. I’m not sure how
the comparison holds up but I think it’s an interesting and perhaps an
important point. TTP models are designed to be “true facsimiles” of
books, but they’re really just generic computer models with images
attached to them.” Dot Porter

A more and more comprehensive simulation of a manuscript book, either a digital or a physical facsimile, exists in an uneasy relation with the original. While the simulation can be authentically delivered, it lacks the defining capacity of self-authentication inherent in the source.

Curiously, a capacity of self-authentication begins to emerge only as a simulation distances itself from a unique original and begins to present a model or prototype of a more abstracted simulation. Then it begins to present unique characteristics all its own.

like life

“Fly into
Rome as it looked in 320 AD.” If not diverted to Indianapolis for refueling, we expect to land at our destination on time. Google Earth is providing options to this expectation. Their flight to late Antiquity Rome swoops down into town for a look around. Soon we can wander about as avatars not quite like life.

But we will spend real vacation time. Are we tourists or are we being toured? Some simulations suspend disbelief and visitors become natives. Perhaps there is time to write a book on papyrus.

new historic and artistic works

“The book is an ingenious invention. Compact and portable, it has been the primary means of transmitting and preserving mankindís accumulated knowledge for hundreds of years.Throughout that time, printers and bookbinders have used a wide variety of materials and structures. Some have proven to be remarkably durable; others have been vulnerable to chemical deterioration and mechanical stress.”
AIC

lightning expresso

“We see the Espresso Book Machine as an innovative and exciting way
for publishers to get their books out into the market,î said David Taylor, President of
Lightning Source. ìThere is clearly a place for the
in-store print on demand model in the
emerging landscape of globally distributed print.î

It is remarked that desk-top printers increased, rather than diminished, production of paper in the “paperless office”. The Expresso machine will do the same, sidebar to print, for digital books.

“The EBM marks a new era for publishing and book retailing. It will enable publishers to cut out supply chain costs, match consumer demands and therefore eliminate unwanted returns. The EBM also removes the need for transportation, adding green credentials to the already impressive list of benefits saving on CO2 emissions and the pulping of unwanted books.

Blackwell predicts the EBM will increase shop sales due to being able to provide a far greater variety of books and popular titles to customers. Books neednít be out of stock again and the need to wait for books to arrive from a publisher should be a thing of the past. In addition, the EBM is able to bring rare texts back into production. As a committed supporter of small & independent publishers, the EBM allows Blackwell to provide a distribution channel for smaller publishers and hopes to attract a new audience of eager, budding authors and self publishers keen to see their work in print.”

Notice that there is no reluctance to imagine print as a future delivery format. Regardless of any increase in retail of screen delivered books or Google simulation of books, print format will continue to hover at 98 to 99 percent of all titles delivered.

end of the university

“I continue to believe that young people who have a hands-on understanding of the traditional book crafts, but are also skilled at book making using new digital tools, are a necessary element for keeping the codex book format alive and healthy.” Lance Hidy

When I read the Marc Taylor NYT editorial on the end of graduate education I was struck by the decompression of the concept from an assumed future to a complete disconcertion .sort of like the disappearance of GM. The realign to float departments of Mind, Body, Law, Information, Networks, Language, Space, Time, Media, Money, Life and Water is certainly appealing, especially since book studies subsumes eight of the twelve domains.
Lance Hidy and
Lorcan Demsey also were taken with the editorial which certainly crosses two horizons of expert opinion.

The sudden collapse of the finance sector is probably a blip in contrast to the collapse of other sectors such as education, politics, social norms, ecologic consciousness, tourism, humanist research, on-line shopping and religion.

Peru

We can admire any of the imperial invaders of Peru for the energy needed to travel and communicate across the most awesome landscapes and seascapes. It is similar to an uninhabited, earthlike planet somewhere else. The only familar feature is the old library.

As we complete two weeks of projects here in Arequipa there is a sense that more will follow. The Convent of the Recoleta is hospitable to an ongoing base for book studies and book work. The San Pablo University has hosted a well attended workshop. And the
INLIBI connections are facilitating donations and logistics.

certification

The CLR work of certification and assessment of Portico and Haithitrust as digital repositories is to assure the same persistence and delivery dependability of digital resources that is familiar with print.

An interesting aspect here is that the print collections were self-certifying for persistence and dependable delivery through the simple act of acquistion into a research library. Digital simulations of print do not provide this assurance and to some degree may not be capable to do so.

The CLR agenda includes co-ordinate acquisition of digital with disposal of print providing “last copy” repository for physical print to provide the needed back-up, mastering and source authentication for the digital simulation. Certainly such an agenda should include certification of the last print copy as well as the digital copy. The digital copy should be certified for persistence and delivery dependabilty. The print copy should be certified as back-up, master and source authenticator.

So it comes to this; we are now certifying the reality of the physical collections. Only overt dependence on digital resources could result in such oddness.