futureofthebook.com

treebook

Gaylord Schanilec has a
wonderful book on trees growing.

innovations for book studies

Iowa Book Works will host a small
exhibit in association with a workshop at the
Center for Book Arts.

precursive transmitted cookies

ìThe immediate precursor of cuneiform writing was a system of tokens. These small clay objects of many shapes ñ cones, spheres, disks, cylinders, etc. ñ served as counters in the prehistoric near East and can be traced to the Neolithic period, starting about 8,000 B.C.î

ìÖcorresponding to the increase in bureaucracy, methods of storing tokens in archives were devised. One of these storage methods employed clay envelopes, simple hollow clay balls in which the tokens were placed and sealed. A drawback of the envelopes was that they hid the enclosed tokens. Accountants eventually resolved the problem by imprinting the shapes of the tokens on the surface of the envelopes prior to encasing them.î

ìThe substitution of signs for tokens was the first step toward writing.î How Writing Came About, Denise Schmandt-Besserat, University of Texas press, 1992.

***where’s waldo?

The lively
blog discussion over the role of
Google Book Search shows us were some of the Instituteís attention should be focused. It should be focused on research libraries where the future of the book is being played out. It should also focus on research libraries because that is where the books are. In this forum it is sometimes forgotten just what books are and what it means to systematically assemble them into collections.
It would be strange if considerations of the future of the book neglected them.

There is a difference between presenting a digital copy of print on the screen and presenting the original book. You can always make more and different copies if you have the book. We have gone through this fantasy of the one-time copy to superceed the original before. We have gone through this fantasy over and over.

duplex translation

The
epic vacuum machine translations augmented by site hacking continues. Also go to our
dumpster right here at FotB.

Post-it Renaissance

New Post-it innovations
tag the real world and enhance student fashion. These things cannot be used on emails .they only work on realia. Is there a shadow enclave returning to embodied conciousness? What if negotiations of the materiality of the paper book are displaced negotiations of the embodiment of the person?

For a majestic study of the topic, with Post-it Flags on hand, read, van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel, Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology, University of Edinburgh, 2006.

quarter bet

Donít believe Google when they say they will scan, process and post out of copyright books in less than 10 years. They have done 100,000 so far and will probably give up before they reach a half million. The reason is that Google is not that interested in accessing books. Goggle is interested in assuming the role of research libraries.

Donít believe Google when they say they will scan, process and post out of copyright books for free. Libraries will have to preserve the screen based books and they will need to do this by dividing resources. And donít even ask about free access to print masters.

Do make Google work to promote librarians and acknowledge their growing print collections with their useful classification systems.

moving books

Two animations depicting books by Barb Tetenbaum prove that beauty can survive format translation.
(book one) and
(book two)

evolutionary bibliology

This emergence of symbolic thought was not indicated by the course of human evolution. Although hominid brain was successfully dedicated to complex skills and behaviors these were not predictive of the advent of symbolic thought. This unexpected emergence added a layer of consciousness and a medium of communication unique in the biological world.

The earliest symbolic expression is cave art. A much later expression is the book. These expressions provide proof of the course of symbolic thought and conceptual works. Another symbolic expression is the network of electronic communication, screen reading and digital research. Advocates contend that these developments, again out of context with biological evolution, will propel our species to new utilizations of the human mind. They contend that these augmentations of intelligence will only sharpen and extend a progressive cultural evolution.

Are we sure? Perhaps cultural evolution can mimic the mechanistic role of biological evolution and atrophy toward more instinctual behavior. The added layer of consciousness dedicated to symbolic interpretation may not be inherently stable; it was bizarre to begin with. Computer assistance of symbolic thought may track off in various directions.

digital humanities

“We are increasingly able to interact with texts in novel ways, as linguistic, visual, and statistical processing provide us with new modes of reading, representation, and understanding. This shift makes evident the necessity for humanities scholars to enter into a dialogue with librarians and computer scientists to understand the new language of open standards, search queries, visualization and social networks.”

The University of Chicago
conference theme is narrated by Gregory Crane with the title,
What Do You Do with a Million Books? Surprisingly the University has already
answered the humanist’s question.

It is remarked that younger students have difficulty distinguishing between authorship and plagiarism. They copy content from on-line sources as their own. But what if half their brain is literally out on the web? If so, why should they distinguish internal from external conceptualization? The quicker the search, the smarter the student. It makes no difference if the neural system is bionic or electronic.

This is not an issue of artificial intelligence, but the artificiation of bionic intelligence. At the University of Chicago they know the difference as their plan to build the largest new book library of the 21st century indicates.

(e)mail art

Join
Umbrella On-line for the latest news and review of distributed paper art. Experience the tension of one art genre conveyed by another.

loony tunes

îBut more importantly, books themselves will transition from a product to an experience. As books change in form from simple ìwords on a pageî to various digital manifestations of the information, future books will be reviewed and evaluated by the experience they create.”

Futurists are disregarded for good reasons. In the
above instance the future of the book is predicted to be nothing different than what it has always been. Futurists predict change as a continuous process and disregard both the inherent stabilities of the sector examined as well as stabilities renewed in the context of change. The idea that sectors such as libraries or works such as encyclopedias are constantly in flux is loony. It is especially loony when a timeless dynamic is construed as sudden change.

oh, but one can never have too many links!

“In many cases, the introductory essays which I was sent to critique were so heavily weighted, even in mid-sentence, with in-text citation that the entire experience of processing text and enjoying text was completely compromised. By the time, e.g., a reader reached the end of most sentences, the sentence flow had
been so interrupted by internal citation that the end result was text fatigue and annoyance, not comprehension — certainly not satisfaction. We all appreciate the need for close documentation, but when a reader’s attention and patience are tested by this sort of editorial practice, the entire reading process takes a rather big hit; so does the achievement of the author’s writing, especially if it’s quite good writing; so does the aesthetic value (the ‘look’) of the printed page.” Maureen E. Mulvihill
Princeton Research Forum (posted here from the
SHARP listserv without permission)

world peace made simple

The easiest way to achieve planetary peace and cross-cultural understanding is for libraries all over the world to issue a Planetary Library Card. This should be a paper card with the two global hemispheres imposed over the spread of an opened book. The card will be signed by the reader and issuing library and be considered a welcomed credential at libraries everywhere.

reading by hand

“To begin reading, place your hand at the start of a line. Move your hand towards the right hand margin. Make sure to focus your eyes upon the text that your hand is pointing towards.

Go ahead and practice this movement. You don’t need to worry about reading any of the text, just practice the hand motion and paging techniques for now. Make sure that you are able to rapidly move through the pages of your book.”

The haptic interface of speed reading method is a bit of a secret. But not to hominid neurologists or evolutionary epistemologists.

boogle

Will the Google ìdigital copyî really access out of copyright books? Certainly Google Print will provide a different bibliographical utility or indexing for these books, but why presume that a precisely formatted conceptual work will suddenly be more easily referenced, assimilated and comprehended on the screen? Thatís something like saying these books will be easier to use if they are on television.

Now Google is very protective of its ìdigital copyî assuming that the screen parsing and presentation is the proprietary product. But what if readers turn Google Print into a different kind of engine? What if an Amazon-like blog, front end simply processes Google finds across different reading communities, identifies titles of interest and goes to the stacks to scan for print-on-demand?

bookways precursive search

“We are aware that ëreadingí can mean many things, from reading a book aloud or silently, to the critical ëreadingí of a text (including dramatic and cinematic texts) in an academic sense, or (metaphorically) ëreadingí a face, a social situation, or the symbolic value of a text. But in the interests of clarity and manageability we have had to exclude certain of these ëreading experiencesí as outside our remit. For our purposes, a ëreading experienceí means a recorded engagement with a written or printed text – beyond the mere fact of possession.”
Reading Experience database

five hundred years of backlog

The latest
Kirtas scanner is a beauty evoking the speed, action, flexibility and precision of the Heidelberg windmill jobber. In a curious way it is a printing press, reprinting books.

If Google Print does even partially succeed in conversion of research library books it would be wise to invest in the paper making and edition binding industry. Google Print and many other applications of the Kirtas book scanner will result in massive enterprise in print-on-demand services.

The surge in books-on-demand would come from the larger market for “books in print” provided by the Google imaging. Companies large and small like
Lightning Source or
Acme Books will realize a whole new production stream. They will quickly build Amazon like fronts to meet the demand and build on it.

Such an emergence will also factor into the future of the book regarding paper vs. screen reading. It would be ironic if the most massive effort to bring books to the screen actually resulted in their reprinting.

Bet you a quarter .

short story

Ever wish for the short version of the incessant ramblings at FotB? Here is the quick,
convenience package.

flavors of meaning

Advocates for the paper book often contend that the ìmaterialityî of the book is an attribute lacking in screen presentations. Whatever this materiality, the purely physical qualities are not crucial, but the materiality of the meaning is. The formats color or flavor meanings, in paper but no less in the immateriality of screen presentation. The large quilt of the paper newspaper or the chosen aperture of screen news each change the meaning of the dayís events.

Zoom vending

“Part of the appeal of
Zoom Shops, particularly those carrying electronics, has been the no-pressure environment. Akin to shopping online, customers can read information about the products and make decisions without the presence of salespeople.”

For zoom zine vending go to
Zine Machine or go to a zoom zine vending
conference.

Wikipedia bundled

The idea that everything is in flux forever is a bit loony. There is a phase space surrounding any encyclopedic entry term and as the term is subjected to multiple expressions, either over time or across contributors or both, it will come to rest near a useful, adept expression. The classical EB 1911 edition is like that. A paper Wiki or one bundled on a computer drive, will be like that. The only requirement for this elegant, emergent process is a wide and attentive readership.
Wikimania

14 participants in the fall SLIS class

The ever popular Structures for Book Conservation class is building its own FotB
page.

Frederick G Kilgour, 1914-2006

Frederick G. Kilgour, a librarian and educator who created an international computer library network and database that changed the way people use libraries, died on July 31, 2006. He was 92 years old and had lived since 1990 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Kilgour is widely recognized as one of the leading figures in 20th century librarianship for using computer networks to increase access to information in libraries around the world. He was among the earliest proponents of adapting computer technology to library processes. At the dawn of library automation in the early 1970ís, he founded OCLC Online Computer Library Center and led the creation of a library network that today links 55,000 institutions in 110 countries. The OCLC system now contains over 70 million book records.

What will provide the underlying index for Google Book? How many books are behind the Google curtain today?