futureofthebook.com

advanced communication technology (18th c)

Howard Dean is using Thomas Paine’s format to incite review of government. He is publishing a pamphlet modeled on “Common Sense” and circulating each copy from hand to hand. The results will be followed on the
Blog for America. Creative campaign, persuasive argument, smart communication!

“Over two hundred years ago, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet that would light the fire that forged our nation. He called it ìCommon Sense.î Passed from hand to hand, patriot to patriot, it was a call to action for those Americans who believed their government had to change. It spelled out the values of a new republic. And King George IIIówho had forgotten his own people in favor of special interestsówas replaced by a government of, by and for the people. America was born.”

teaching book arts history

“Until the invention of printing, all books were made by artists.”
Artists Books is a portal for on-line resources from Simmons College LIS. They have kindly linked to FotB.

Also vist the
Joan Flasch Artist’s Book Collection.

teaching book action

Futureofthebook and BookLab II have teamed up to produce a teaching set of historical bookbinding models. These will be produced for instruction in book studies programs.

dust from a distant sun

This very appealing
blog on the allure of book studies has kindly mentioned FotB.

***“Future of Books”

Umberto Eco’s lecture at the opening of the
Alexandrina suggests that cultural determinations of technological change, not technological determinations of cultural change, are at work defining the future of the book.

Print-on-demand seems to outpace read-on-demand. Screen based reading still lacks haptic efficiencies and other reasurances, so the electronic network of library access is looking like an accessory of print,,,,not the other way around. The book is er, unfungible.

See also the discussion at
SlashDot. (from Chela)

last JAB

The 20th and last issue of the Journal of Artists’ Books includes a number of excellent contributions that offer perspective on artists’ work in book format.

Johanna Drucker has written an excellent summation of the need to invent authentic book art with a wide artistic, conceptual and narrative content. She also hopes to invigorate the infrastructure to support such creativity.

“In my travels I find many students interested in an MFA that would be seriously and substantively cross-disciplinary, allowing book arts and poetics, visual arts, and bibliographical or textual studies to combine. Where is such a program? Yet to be invented.”

Scrapbook Design University

A newly
accredited program provides ten courses leading to a Certificate. This is a structured attempt to move beyond stencils, stamps and caption calligraphy. (Don’t smile) this is a tough discipline with a scope and number of participants beyond comparison with book studies. In fact book studies is a small, small subset of scrapbooking.

The Howard Dean campaign (don’t smile) is using
on-line scrapbooking to promote community organizations. Scrapbookers will save our democracy, restore our repect around the world and lead us to a well distributed economic revival. Caucus for
Dean!

3rd edition of Writing Space

By publishing a second edition which completely rewrites the first, Jay David Bolter has produced a third edition which is the readers’ understanding of the comparision of the 1st and 2nd editions. This is an authentic print hypertext event.

Remember that between 1991 and 2001 the Web just popped up out of nowhere disrupting the future of hypertext. It was not planned for and Writing Space was rewritten with the same title to reintroduce electronic writing and reading into the new context while print stood still.

The interesting part is that print did stand still and remains standing in a referencial relation with the swirling features of electonic text presentation and on-line reading behaviors. Print, as a reading mode, hasn’t changed since 1991 or since late Antiquity.

It will take some time to complete the concordance but FotB plans to review the 3rd edition. Will electronic writing refashion the genres or print or will the genres of print refashion electronic writing and reveal the authentic haptics and habitats of reading? Will Bolter succeed in altering the perceptions of the writing space of the mind?

search inside the book

Amazon’s
search engine for excerpt mediated use (FotB projected EMU over a year ago) is described in the December issue of
Wired. The premise is that such restricted, wide access to imaged pages will serve those that want real books. “The electronic text is simply an enhancement of the physical object.”
Publishers welcome Search Inside the Book where excerpt pages are restricted image files which induce book sales. Excerpt mediated access will also be great retrospectively where specialized reading skills can evaluate expressions used in the table of contents.

As a side effect Amazon has created an infrastructure for production imaging of paper books with capture costs down to $1 per volume. Would another, separate capacity of this be a whole text capture service for “brittle” library books?

future of the Tibetan book

Jim Canary is off again to Lhasa in May to assist to assist the preservation of the traditional book in Tibet. Once in the country he will be out of touch with us as he works with craftspeople in sanctioned and unsactioned workshops.

The University of Iowa is adding Tibetan bookbinding models to its
teaching collection. Anna Embree, Instructor at the University of Alabama
Book Arts Program has just completed a model in the pothi style with loose leaves while Jim, Conservator at the Indiana University
Preservation Lab will be doing a model of the sewn rainbow style.

eBook museum

teleread.ord provides a blog on various e-book developments. An e-book museum is discussed. Certainly a museum would confirm that hand held reading devices for access to book format works are finally “here to stay”.

“What a shame not to preserve them systematically.”

promoting book preservation

Jeanne Drewes’
wonderful web page offers resources for book preservation, book discussion and book fun, both simple and complex.

***an “ergonomics of interpretation”

Megan Benton reports in the 12/4 SHARP News that the FotB paper on Haptics and Habitats of Reading provided a new theoretical contribution to the session.