a single transmission ecology
“In our new universe, the content encased in a well-formed XML file is the sun. The book, an output of a well-formed XML file, is only one of an increasing number of revenue opportunities and marketing opportunities revolving around it. It requires more discipline and attention to the rules to create a well-formed XML file than it did to create a book.”
Publishers’ Weekly
The XML format is a common parent of both print and screen book. They are simply two of a variety of output “transforms” from a digital stock.
word a day journal
Enjoy and learn from a sharp teacher and Super Advocate for the Book. Notice the careful presentational resolutions and vivid haptic approach.
preservation and scanning
The Google book model is influencing
special collections scanning. The emphasis is on production and coverage that will enable the much larger audience an opportunity to discover and signal the hidden values in the collections.
Such an approach more clearly assigns the mastering function to the source originals, especially as on-demand scanning plays a role. But there is even a further implication as the leaf master capture is extended to unused and undiscovered materials.
What at first appears to be a move away from the preservation agenda of higher quality, one-time capture, is more likely a move toward authentic mastering from sources better preserved as their values and new meanings are discovered.
caption
“I sat down in one of the iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the
time for a while reading the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack
nostrums for dyeing and colouring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the
private bay rum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the private
shaving cups in the pigeon-holes; studied the stained and damaged cheap prints
on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous recumbent sultanas,
and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting her grandfather’s spectacles
on; execrated in my heart the cheerful canary and the distracting parrot that
few barber’s shops are without. Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of
last year’s illustrated papers that littered the foul centre-table, and conned
their unjustifiable misrepresentations of old forgotten events.” Sam Clemens