futureofthebook.com

ramification

Walter Ong wrote a book about Peter Ramus (1515-1575) who is associated with branching diagrams. These instructional binary trees are termed Ramean trees but the older term to ramify, from Latin for branching tree, is not derived from Peter’s invention. Sometimes disassociations connect.

“The AIC Board of Directors announces the results of the member vote on AIC implementing a certification program for conservators.
The vote failed by:58.6% opposed 41.4% in favor 73% of eligible voters cast a vote.”

A mission to advance the work of conservation of historic and artistic works can now ramify into actions without a single reflection on the binary tree of yes and no. Everyone is needed; move on.

stop smoking

For a breath of air abandon some obsessive blog tracking. Simply walk away, delete the feed, turn-off the personal voice and stop the head game. Disallow yourself.

source item authentication next?

“Indiana’s renowned Folklore and Ethnomusicology Collection, assembled over decades and valuable for its completeness, is also the first “collection of distinction” recognized by Google as a collection that will retain its coherence in the digital transition. [Indiana University Bloomington Libraries 2007-08 Annual Report]
I had not come across the suggestion that Google would be looking at maintaining whole collection integrity in this way before. It would be interesting to see a list of the collections that will be treated in this way.”
Lorcan Dempsey

The emergence of authentication status for physical sources simulated on-line can eventually granulate to individual print copies. This not only enhances research trust in on-line simulation but also sustains re-authentication of images across time and cultures.

duh

The text to voice features associated with hand-held readers could have unintended consequences. Devices such as Kindle could end up facilitating, not new waves of book reading, but illiteracy from those uninterested in learning sight reading.

duh2

Humanists are wary of technological determinism. This is a perspective founded on the premise that tool making is the defining human activity. Such determinism correlates progressions of technology with progressions of human activity. Technological determinism would conclude that the Egyptians built pyramids because of their engineering skill or that the cell phone makes modern Cairo livable.

Technological determinism can position the interpreter. The changing and persistent roles of the book can be monitored from progressions in hand-held readers. This keeps the scroll moving just fine and there is a lively momentum of postings, but there is also a strange feeling of quarantine. In the example of book sustainability, the technological determinist can overlook or neglect older devices still in use that the interpreter can deem obsolescent.

But the divide, rather than the assimilation, between old and new is a small bias of technological determinist perspective. Other distortion happens with a mechanistic view of any human system; finance, science, politics, theology, or culture transmission via books. Too many cascades beyond technology of social behaviors, transient understandings, educational efficiencies, ecological dependencies and accidental events surround the destiny of the book. And, in the strange case of the book, there is the influence of the book itself on all these vectors.

cbaa notes

“One of the exciting things about CBAA was seeing the number of students in Masters and PhD programs who are working on theses and dissertations about artistsí books.”
Sign of the Owl

This was such a dense and rich conference with a wonderful peer equivalence between presenters and participants. It was necessary to remember that this was the first full meeting of a completely new organization. The UICB hosted the first biennial College Book Art Association Conference ì
Art, Fact, and Artifact: The Book in Time and Placeî
January, 8 ñ 10, 2009.

So evident in this conference is the enthusiasm for the physical book and the enthusiasm for its screen based renditions and accesses. Here is a thematic for the continued validity of humanist study and liberal arts during hard times and strategic college positioning.

e-babel

Teleread is now posting over a dozen news items each day so that the screen is scrolling much faster than readers can build threaded comments. It is a symptom of technology determinists, that such speed is itself news. Twittering isn’t necessarily causality. As for the premise of tracking every reading application, device feature and content distributor, the FotB view is that
Teleread only misses the irrelevance, inefficiency and uneconomic of print book simulation.

double your fun

S-books (screen books) separate the content from the device. That is one difference from the p-book. Another is that they separate the content from the device absolutely when they turn-off or switch titles or hand-off formats.

These are not easily assimilated features in a context of sustainable learning where single titles must be engaged across a library of works. It is also a cost factor since delivery and display must be purchased separately.

prompts

“While Iíll admit that Iím intrigued by the Kindle, it will never replace the rows and stacks of books that crowd my house. And when I first settle into my comfy chair ready to read with that new device, Iíll probably feel as if I had a phantom limb ó Iíll mourn the absence of my fingers slowly turning the pages.” Allison Arieff, NYT

The absence of the haptic prompts is one factor. The absence of the presence of the relation of the book read with other books is another. It is important that we select and read one book in the context of others and this context is most elaborately sustained and kaleidoscopically imposed by physical books. We read libraries too.

s-books

The two dominant screen-book providers, Google Print and Amazon Kindle, pursue models so different that neither may represent the emergent s-book. Google captures from paper in research libraries while Amazon supplies publishers’ files. Amazon delivers to a proprietary device while Google delivers to any terminal. Google books are free while Kindle books are sold. Google owns its own postings, but the capture scans and source paper copies are owned by libraries and the s-book access is assured. Amazon could turn off its servers, or selectively delete, at any time. Kindle books are in device format and Google is in print format.

Both of these models, and their delivery products, relate not at all. Users conflate them because of the general features of screen reading including automated search routines. These clues, everywhere, return attention to the eventual roles of the s-book and p-book. Perhaps we should look at the common definer; book.

news from the ischools, ucla

“Renowned author, printer, book artist, and cultural historian Professor Johanna Drucker joins the Department of Information Studies as the inaugural holder of the Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professorship in Bibliography. In her new role, Drucker will contribute to the Information Studies department in all areas relating to bibliography, including the study of the collection and description of books; the study of the production and use of textual works as physical objects; and the history of books, book art, and of print culture – and their dialogue with information studies.”
ischool

The presence of this mighty teacher will enrich the region including her visit soon to the
Grabhorn Institute

do we need print books?

Create change, find meaning, assure transmission; the print book does it all. The print book is also an opportunist quickly assimilating digital technology and connectivity to transact its own future.

But do we need print books? There are many other media including the internet and e-books. It really depends on your preference in friends. There are personality differences between a physical artifact and a screen drawn transmission and between a simulation and a graceful companion.

Physical books have a life of their own among us. Many hangout in libraries where they are safe, but they survive on the street as well. They are authentic steam punks and they generally outlive their makers. They are us.

kindle2 too thin

Has it occurred to anyone just why e-book devices could have disputed size, weight, thickness, or debated navigation features or preferences of shape? It is because e-book transmissions convey no physical features, none at all. The reader is left to synthesize or prefer something to hang on to. (from
TeleRead)

Paper books convey all their physical features across a magnitude of about 1 to 100 in weight, size, thickness, etc. In fact each paper book transmission is physically different. Although the reader does not need to specify these features, there is ample variety and scope for preference. E-book advocates mention the font size option because it is a rare exception to the insipid conformity of each transmission to the same screen.

good housekeeping seal of approval

The current
transaction to use the MARC 21, Field 583 (action note) to register a preserved print monograph comes close to identifying a leaf master status for that object. This implication, that a complete, authenticated copy is assured of retention can then also confirm a continuing role for the copy to act in any instances where future authentications or image recaptures are required. Specifically the identified book can then be employed as an exemplar for authentication of its screen simulation.

Whenever any such authentication or re-authentication of a screen simulation is accomplished, the screen simulation can then carry a logo or symbol, not unlike the infinity sign connoting use of alkaline paper, indicating the match or mismatch (i.e. missing map, color, scale, etc.) with the identified preservation copy.

no cover

Have you noticed the thumbnail covers at Amazon Kindle catalogs? These color images are used to list the black and white e-book titles. They look like little paperbacks. It is an attempt to provide packaging for a medium-less transmission. DVDs, CDs and their precursors were all physical media, but not e-books so for the purpose of retailing there is the interesting need to represent something that is not a thing and sell it.

Packaging also plays a role in accumulations like libraries or DVD racks. How will e-book accumulations be managed? The Kindle is even without folders. Name a medium that has no cover and you will discover a transmission that has no medium.

decoy

I agree that Amazon has deliberately disguised Kindle as a book reader. The actual agenda is elsewhere as a connected fulfillment device. Here are three reasons: With Kindle as a book reader it projects Amazon as a Library without any of the educational mission or cultural commitment. It positions technical evolution of the hand-held reader in the challenging domain of book simulation just as the photocopier industry discovered. It disguises outright marketing to educated customers and keeps within the politically correct confines of literacy advocation. (Teleread,
long play)

authentication stamp

Screen simulations of print books need an authentication stamp. This would be a mark or logo much like the infinity sign that verifies alkaline paper in print editions. The authentication stamp would indicate that the screen simulation has been collated along side a known print copy. More importantly it would also signify that the screen simulation can be collated again along side the same print copy which has been preserved as a leaf master in a research library.
Preservation Masters

brts/sdpa

“Sustaining the Digital Investment: Issues and Challenges of Economically Sustainable Digital Preservation”, Interim Report, Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital preservation and Access, December, 2008.
http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Interim_Report.pdf

Perhaps it is significant that the library preservation field is considered “young”. The field emerged with the advent of deteriorating paper and the practice has become diversified and credible, as media have proven evermore transient.

Another indication that library preservation is correlated with the advent of transient media, is the lack of its correlation with permanent media. There really is no intervention needed to physically preserve a Gutenberg Bible; it preserves itself.

Such a continuum suggests another. Is it consequential that digital preservation practice must be invented AFTER the advent digital media and after our widespread academic and social dependence on it as a transmission mode? The inherent self-preservation attributes of the earliest printing and media materials were inherent BEFORE our wider dependence on them.

Hidden within this situation is the suggestion that preservation actions are increasingly relevant as our transmission media are more transient. But the challenges only increase and we may yet need to rediscover the efficacy of persistence and sustainability as a precursor of library access.
(more)

steam punkers stay tuned

1840 Columbian coming to an Iowa server farm.

new ong

One insight of Walter Ong is that old media are not displaced by new but are transformed. Old and new trade places. In today’s context the print book has been transformed by digital technologies for its access, production and distribution including transmission directly to end user production. Meanwhile attributes of the physical book, such as self-authentication, digital mastering and default preservation, have become appreciated anew in the virtual environment of screen reading.

Another Ong insight is that these hand-off transformations accumulate. Orality has been revamped by interplay with writing, with printing, with broadcasting, with internet and with all these together. Yet, people are still talking.

See the newly added typescripts of lectures including, “Media Transformed: Electronics and Printed Books” at the
Ong site

pioneer again

ìAlthough demand for online access to digital books has been growing, books as artifacts continue to have a real value,î said Oya Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies. ìThis initiative supports the reading and research patterns of users who prefer the affordances provided by physical books ñ they support deep reading, underlining and writing comments in the margins. The Web is great for easy access and browsing, but because digital content can sometimes be ephemeral, physical books continue to serve as valuable reference sources on your shelf.î Ö (from TeleRead)

Cornell was the pioneer in digital reformat of rare books when the Xerox Docutech was new. The precept was scanning for output to paper. Now as “affordances” begin to factor, rare books can be renewed as such again.