futureofthebook.com

post Katrina Gulf Coast

We rode the Greyhound from New Orleans to Biloxi. The inner and outer neighborhoods of New Orleans are other worldly. The older neighborhoods are collapsing into the mud but the outer suburbs are more disturbing. Modern housing, shopping malls and all the infrastructure of life is completely abandoned. Random fires are breaking out.

The Mississippi coast is very different. It was leveled by the storm surge and high wind. The mountains of debris are being cleared and rebuilding on the cleared city sites is underway. But the rebuilding is concentrated on casinos and their infrastructure. The gambling industry is buffered by wealthy corporations and ready contractors. The hurricane has actually facilitated technological reinstallation.

More disturbing changes are apparent in libraries and museums.
Evidently the city wants the site of the downtown Biloxi library and the system may emerge without a central location. At the surviving branches the services are going through uncertainties as the social function of libraries for a highly stressed, remnant population is reviewed. Library and museum services must be reinvented and this reinvention is now positioned in a context of litigation and casino development.

One bright spot; the Biloxi Maritime and Seafood Industry museum is experiencing terrific participation in its off-shore tours even though the building and all its collections are gone.

defining moment

PARS has been asked to define digital preservation for ALCTS. PARS must distinguish digital preservation actions from the surging digital services of the library. Further it must distinguish digital preservation services from the IT actions to establish and maintain institutional digital repositories.

The needed definition is simple. The preservation department is the only library service sector that is interested to assure persistence of digital content during periods of disinterest and disregard.

Utilization of digital content has not yet cycled through normal transitions of veneration and neglect. All other media have. Analog audio and video content is the most recent genre to be passing through this day-night cycle validating and defining the need for specialized preservation actions.

Digital content and screen-based reading are in a surge of popularity and enthusiasm. This is a difficult moment in which to define preservation service, but our time will come.

big heads on ebooks

An industrial spy from FotB accidentally ended up in an ALCTS big heads meeting between publishers, library book venders and acquisition heads on the future of academic monographs. The anxieties continue as they array and model the electronic and print formats. Transition to ebook advocates view print on demand as the contraction of the future of paper while librarians view this sector as an indicator of expansion of print.

All shared an uncertainty of what ocean of communication the ship of books was in. About their only bearing was “follow the reader”, but then they parsed the reader into infinite behaviors.
FotB tends to look deep and does see the shared embedded behaviors of bionic reading and the ergonimic of comprehension. Down deep is where the paper book works, not to mention persistence of academic conventions of the print monograph.

preservation 101

We have spent a generation confusing and merging preservation and access. Perhaps, it is now time to again distinguish preservation services from access services. This is especially relevant as preservation departments adventure into digital preservation.

A preservation curriculum for “21st century” librarians may only enhance the confusion of preservation and access service menues. Topics such as the open source movement actually have distinctive preservation or access implications while other topics such as copyright or web delivery have small relevance to preservation services as contrasted with access services.

The preservation field needs to map and distinguish its unique services and its unique expertise in assuring a continuing role for source originals in the context of digital delivery.

reformatting

Meaning accrues to the source and not to the surrogate. What Nicholson Baker was lamenting is the circumstance of the surrogate (microfilm) replacing the original (newspaper) as the surviving source. Yes, digitized versions of books and documents engender new meaning but this meaning resides in the original.
What we can lament is a culture that will divert accrued meaning away from sources as happens when legacy formats, once digitized, are disregarded or discarded.

042 and 583

Fields for 042 (institutional digital repositories) and 583 (preservation descripters) are converging to indicate commitment to preserve, but mapping the activites to be recorded at 583 will ultimately define the boundaries of preservation services as contrasted with digital access services.

The status for 583 objects is “committed to preserve”. The layers and shades of commitment are not that different from those of the legacy collections, but the layers and shades of digital preservation services are new and churning.

There are also the issues of the connectivity between presentational formats of this data .what will librarians see, what will researchers see and what will preservation project managers see. Here one of Walter Cybulski’s admonitions comes into play. As he stated it; “The need to explain everything everywhere is the doom of cataloging.” This is especially so when individual institutions follow their legacy patterns of doing what they wish to maintain their digital library resources in a context of google searching and browser presentation.

***“that’s nothing; there is a vending machine at an airport in orlando that sells ipods”

The
Zine Machine has survived its first month as a hatchway to the counter culture. Or just google “zine vending machine” for a surprising array. Because they are paper, Zines can act like Snaks.

cities of books

Populations of books were swept away by Katrina. As we go to ALA New Orleans, recall the
storm’s strong right side that hit lower Mississippi.

“Gates Foundation has announced a $12.2-million grant to the Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET) to assist libraries on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. The money will establish temporary facilities, support planning to rebuild destroyed or damaged libraries, and eventually pay for new computers in rebuilt public libraries. SOLINET will administer the grant and help state library agencies collaborate with state legislatures and governorsí offices. The Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund will give an additional $5 million for library recovery and new construction.”

all of your bases are belong to us

“the authors question the exclusionary paradigms which bar (peeps) from participation in the conservation of our cultural heritage. On April 1, 2006, student conservators from the Kilgarlin Center for Preservation of the Cultural Record investigated integrating Peeps into the conservation laboratory environment. The results of the study are detailed and suggestions are given for promoting a Peep-positive workplace.”

from $17.95 to $4

I noticed a table in front of the Library of Congress bookstore. It was stacked with remaindered copies of
Writing Machines the collaborative creation of N. Katherine Hayles and Anne Burdick. A small haptic euphoria occured when the foredge printing splayed MACHINES one way and WRITING the other. The adventure of the materiality of print is inside.

When I got home I put it on the shelf and didn’t give it a another thought. That was a mistake. It fell opened this morning and it appears to be the train ticket for an express train. It turns out that the print book “is an artifact fashioned to consume the reader even as the reader consumes it. We cannot say that we have not been warned.”

At night two Chinese steam engines are being run out onto the Iowa landscape. This is everyreader’s own fictional autobiography.

vacuum machine language

” Many of the blankness cleaning product attachments you will need will not come as everyday with your char vacuum attachments, but never fear – it is possible to buying complete vacuum domestic attachements that will work with most antibacterial cleaner cleaning chemicals. Remember to gap the main geography on hand in soap these days vacuum cleaner parts, and once you have certain the most essential nothingness dignitary for you, you will be able to make space help comparisons more accurately vacuum cleaners. Depending on your domestic needs canister vacuum cleaners, you can get a profound emptiness stain remover with the top-of-the-line manufacturing that won`t cost you a fortune filter queen. To certify you find the best vacuum hose spring-cleaning coordination for your home, you have to both divergence and compare vacuity stain remover before building your decisive select vacs.”
( June 18th)

What happened here is a duplex translation from western to eastern to western. An autopoesis. This isn’t Aramaic to Greek to Latin. This is autotranslation to autotranslation, a mono-culture accentuated. (It gets better)

“When element are desired, the last fascination you want is for your cleanser to be out of commission upright vacuum cleaners for yonks on end while you hunt down replacement parts or bags. With emptiness technology, you can not only dirt-free your rugs, but you can also seal products kirby vacuum cleaners in separate nothingness-hermetically sealed bags, make espresso in blankness-unsullied oreck vacuum cleaners decaf , and haze untainted your home rug. Look at the bigger delineation before you look at the more detailed one drawn in in construction void washing-up liquid comparisons vacuum cleaners ratings, to safeguard that you compare vacuum disinfectant of a similar type vaccuum cleaners. So don`t just shop for a space antiseptic – recollect to shop for vacuity bleach attachments too hoover parts!”

evolution of Wikipedia

“It blows open what’s possible,” said Ms. Teachout. “What I hope is that these kinds of things lead to thousands of other experiments like this encyclopedia, which we never imagined could be produced in this way.” Zephr Teachout

Watch for a paper edition to validate the communal composition in wide scope, composite reference works. The more frequently this threshold is encountered and crossed, from screen to paper, the more prevalent a pattern of on-line research and publication will become.

Meta has a good synopsis of the options for paper Wikipedia editions.

really remote storage

I am not concerned with browsability. My concern is the trust placed in the inventory software. Traditional shelf classification provides two different types of findability (the on-line catalog and the physical location). That is, without the aid of the catalog, I could reasonably find an item in its relational shelf order. Inventory software provides only one type of findability and that one is vulnerable to energy and systems interruption.

The size based inventory control of stored books is another jab at the status of print by mindless adminsitrators. But beyond the comodification of books, there is the disregard of the work of librarianship in the service of scholarship and its quest for a plain sense of the scope of the universe.

Just because on-line resources must disappear in a twinkling of systems interruption is no reason that the physical libraries must be infected with this contagion.

paper poetry

Poets need paper. The underlying reason is haptics, the deep embedded prompts that the codex provides. The paradox of conveying conceptual works via a physical object is not wasted on poets. (see
poetbloggs)

John Szirmai, avatar of the future of the book

“On the occasion of his 80th birthday on March 18, 2005 I wish to recognize him as the tireless champion he has become of bookbindings–past and present. I am certain that many
colleagues will join me in gratitude by congratulating him and
wishing him only the best.” Gerd Brinkhus

I recall standing and cheering at the end of one of his lectures. What a clear understanding and artful appreciation of the
meanings of surviving early books! What a great planet we would have if we would act on the enlightenment of such scholarly book advocates.

definition of a book

Books transmit conceptual works across time and cultures.

Surprisingly, there is not that much hand ringing over the persistence of electronic resources. It is frequently mentioned that the computer can ìstoreî vastly greater quantities of documentary materials. But for how long? And for how long without modification?

The fourth century codices found in a jar at Nag Hammadi were immediately readable after 16 centuries. In a few decades they have enriched the understanding of pre-cursive sources of New Testament scripture and have enriched the understanding of sectarian philosophy of the period. Just as miraculous, we know that they were unmodified during that long time.

book wave of the future

Electronic reading device advocates frequently mention that younger readers are more likely to adopt e-books. But younger people are more likely to adopt audio devices, such as the Walkman or iPod, rather than reading devices. For the future of books the enthusiasms of older readers should be observed.

politically correct

Michael Gorman has an excellent statement on the political position of the American Library Association in the June/July American Libraries.

“The current discourse delights in calling people who express disagreement “leftists”, “traitors”, and “radicals”, but the truth is that principled people of all political persuasions are rightly worried about the safety of the Consitution and its guarantees in the hands of those who pursue the illusion of security by repressing liberty.”

About two years ago Richard Minsky posted his
comments on the dictum illustrated above. Ever since this image made by Richard has leaked to the web and generated immense traffic as discussions of the Patriot Act churn. Although corrupted beyond recognition, the basic admonition remains a guidepost from the 18th century Enlightenment. Check the Wikipedia
entry.

antiphonal epiphany

The fate of the art of the codex will converge with the future of the book at a
conference. The future of the codex is not quite the same as the future of the book which, together, are not quite the same as the future of libraries.
(an ancient FotB projection)

reading mode and governance mode

On the bright side, computers augment our native abilities to sort, search and discover. On the dark side, the search results, unbeknown to the reader, can be preselected, manipulated or censured. So contrasts between print and screen reading include issues of democratic governance. These issues are not much different than those posed by paper ballots vs. electronic voting.

“Under a secret ballot system, there is no known input, nor is there any expected output with which to compare electoral results. Hence, electronic electoral result cannot be verified by humans and the people need to have an absolute faith in the accuracy, honesty and security of the whole electoral apparatus (people, software and hardware). Requiring reliance on such faith may not be considered compatible with democracy.”
Wikipedia

***don’t confuse computers with books

“There’s a huge fallacy afoot that digital will take the place of books, The number of books being published every year is going up. Print is always going to be here.” Winston Tabb

The larger fallacy is that screen based reading is equivalent to print reading and that screen drawing “stores” books. The real distictions are embedded in the functionalities of the network contrasted with the functionalities of the paper books. The surge in books-on-demand is not an interest in analog production of print, but a demand for the functionality of the paper format digitaly produced.

Every conceptual work is born digital now, whats important is how they grow up. Digitally born books, including the editorial processes and the author/reader interactions, may grow up to be paper.

Walter Cybulski, the Avatar of the Future Cultural Role of Libraries, also points us to a recent Johns Hopkins magazine item illustrating the risk of
another fallacy at work as we divert attention from preservation of print.

networked paper book

What kind of sense does it make to evolve the
network book simply by amputating the functionality of the paper book? Has it ever occurred to authoring software developers that there may have been times in the past when authors and readers interacted? Everything is born digital now, its just that some books grow up to be paper.

***“just follow the dollars”

Those interested in the future of the paper book should consider the growth rate of Amazon (double digits last four years and 18% 04-05) and the
performance of Lightning Source print.

***“the future of the book is the blurb.” Marshall McLuhan

“What makes each new medium different, then, is the specific way it commends to our attention the prior media that it may encompass.”
Paul Levinson,

Today paper books are no less e-books, than screen drawn books. They are born digital, edited, distributed, manufactured, selected and delivered digitally. The fact they are called ìbooks on demandî appears an irrelevant classification until you realize that they are e-books demanded in paper format. There are also intermediate, electronically stored states of books, euphemistically termed e-books that will actually be progressively resolved into paper print.
Still other genres, like the airline directory or commonplace book, have transended their paper formats.

Marshall McLuhan said that any new medium is built around old media and these layers of encapsulation go all the way back to thought itself. That McLuhen’s laws of media were pronounced prior to the emergence of the Internet makes them even more convincing today. Paul Levinson has provided a fascinating exposition of this continuing relevance in his book; digital mcluhan.