haptics and reading
Its like living in a Max Ernst collage, but if you combine
haptic simulation with the
EBook Systems book action simulation you may be able to induce a crippled version of the clock of content phenomenon that occurs as we read a paper book. But its the long way around the (text)block. At least the word, haptic, is getting some exposure!
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book sectarians to finance their own program
In a modest beginning the book format sector of the University of Iowa Center for the Book is developing its own funding base. Using vending machines and on-line sales the Kolerick Bindery crew is marketing its own bookbinding kits.
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patent binds up ebook development
“EBook Systems has a patent (6,340,980 and the earlier 6,064,384), filed for in August of 1996, which covers the way a book looks on the screen of a computer. Basically, it appears to be a violation of these patents to simulate a book with two pages where pages ‘flip’ and where thethickness of the book is indicated by visual queues to the left and right of the pages, among other minor details. The patent probably shouldn’t have been issued since it is just a simulation of a physical object on the screen of a computer. Regardless of how stupid these patents are, they are legally very real.” from Paul Schmidt
The virtual print book format may not be as liberating as its physical equivalent. I donít suppose it has occurred to the ebook players that simulating print is the worst approach. Better to create a completely different haptic interface more in accord with the keyboard and the visual expectations of a layered screen presentation. Tiling and fanned decks are suggested rather than two page spreads, bring to front clicking rather than swing over leaves, live links and zooms rather than linear collation. Most of all, better to present a composite mode of oral/verbal, writing and print together rather than the partitioned parent reading mode of print alone.
thought for the day
The print original, its microfilm copy or its digital posting all provide access, but FotB suspects that CLIR (Chronicle of Higher Education, March 8, 2002 “The Preservation of Our Brittle Books Must Also Preserve Access” by Deanna B. Marcum and Anne R. Kenney) feels that the surrogate modes provide the “real” access, either over time as with film or with automated search and finding aids as with digital library building. The conventional print access from originals is discounted by disqualification of the source as “brittle” or vulnerable to deterioration. This consideration should really not disqualify print access in view of the relative impermanence of the surrogate media!
FotB suggests that the inherent attributes of print access, working directly from the source, need more advocacy, particularly in the changing circumstances of storage and retrieval technologies, akalization (both retrospective treating printed books and prospective printing books on alkaline paper) and advancing technologies, exemplified by digitized ILL services, of on-demand digitization and incremental and recursive options for digital conversion. (long sentence!) And we can act along this path of progressive use of print access while we strive for needed surrogate access. Initiatives for progressive use of print access would include purpose built storage assuring security and preservation of lesser used and endangered collections, retrospective alkalization of endangered paper materials, investigation and innovation in digital loaning to ourselves using the ILL model, innovation in augmentation of bibliographic utility with imaged excerpt of titlepage and table of contents, innovation in leaf master collection management, and so on.
In the end, the different types of access (print, film, digital) constitute different types of reading modes and different kinds of meaning retrieved from the same work. The different meanings only complement each other and the sum discredits any choosing between them.