finger cursor
The only deterrent to the advance of dedicated reading devices is simulation of physical book navigation. The quirks of page turning application are an example as are purely visual prompts of progression through content are more distractive than reassuring. Perhaps the most disturbing simulation is the suggestion that a single screen can present “a lifetime of reading”.
Haptic and kinetic prompts assist comprehension in the physical book. Classical speed comprehension is based on the use of finger cursor following and, if you watch yourself, you will discover your inadvertent fingering prior to page turning. There is also a response to the “spread” of two pages and the topography of the drape of the gutter and the sense of the reverse side of the visual opening. Do you sometimes scout ahead or reverse a few pages to sense the scope of the narrative?
All such navigational acts are hands prompting the mind via a deeply embedded learning pathway. The research of this ergonomic of comprehension as refined in the physical book is distributed in psychology, robotic engineering and evolutionary neurology.
academic pod
“The cornerstone of Ingram Digital’s offering to academic publishers is CoreSource®, the industry’s most robust digital warehouse. CoreSource ensures that digital content is properly archived, file integrity protected, and versions controlled. It functions as a hub from which the publisher controls the delivery of digital files, metadata, and associated promotional materials to all its partners.”
The aspect of a SHARP pod publication stream (see below) would merge well with a service provider such as CoreSource or Expresso Book Machine (EBM). SHARP could leverage fold-bound book structure (high speed copier imposition in single folios) and many other enhancements bringing improved binding mobility and durability to the larger POD production stream.
pod books
“I started writing as a journalist. In those days, our copy was produced on typewriters, unlike today where a journalist files a story on the computer, and the text is viewed by an editor and sent down to the printing press (soon to also be obsolete, too). In those days back in the 60s, the copy was seen by several people, facts were corroborated, and copy mistakes were corrected, and the story was trimmed to fit the allocated space, all by human hands. Today, after the copy is produced in the computer, it doesn’t feel a human hand on it until the pressman takes the soon-to-be-obsolete newspaper off the press. This new way is, of course, a progression where progress is equated with saving bucks, not necessarily improving a newspaper. It is the same with book publishing.” Jerry
A current thread at the SHARP listserv considers POD problems. These chains of read-right-read-wrong transactions were strung out for a reason. They permitted refinement. For example the Linotype is an excellent composition machine, but a poor writing machine. The story went from typewriter entry, to composition, to line casting, to page lock-up, to form counter casting, to plate foundry casting, to press mounting, to paper printing.
“Why don’t we start a new publishing house in our field under the aegis of SHARP, use all digital technology – that is free and easy to use and at our fingertips – to create books that are good, well-edited and corrected, cheap and well-made? We are all librarians, teachers and professors, book historians. So we can see to it that our books will find their public too. Issuu, Xerox and a little help from Google can open new vistas,
undreamed of by the scholar who hopes for his or her ca 500 copies to be sold.
If we use peer-editing and reviewing this could be a succesful enterprise. We could pay our authors, offer the editors a yearly dinner in a great restaurant when the SHARP congress meets, choose a book of the year, offer aprize for the best looking one or the best made. And see to it that the texts stay the same throughout an edition.
A publishing house like this would certainly have a standing that is on a par with the great university presses. To be named after one of the founding mothers of SHARP – or Bookiejoint after a great (and funny) bookseller. Theproducts could be far better than most of what we see in the market nowadays for idiot prices.” Paul Dijstelberge
Just as AIC is free of member certification and free to engage the certifying moderation of Conservation On-line, so SHARP in its well founded activities is free to consider POD publication to augment their Book History journal.