futureofthebook.com

setting one hundred thousand names

Here is a blurb on Larry Raid and the recent Linotype University session.

ithaka

“The large-scale digitization of print journal collections has led to most access needs being met via digital surrogates. Numerous libraries would therefore like to reassign the space occupied by print collections towards higher-value uses. What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization analyzes which types of journals can be withdrawn responsibly today and how that set of materials can be expanded to allow libraries the maximum possible flexibility and savings in the future.”

It is disconcerting that the rationales for community attention to print retention do not include the most obvious; authentication of screen surrogates. The print collections are self-authenticating, capable of continuing forensic and bibliographical investigation. As importantly their contents, physical and conceptual, are overt permitting verification of absence as well as presence of an evidence. This attribute is particularly relevant in support of screen based delivery from print sources since the surrogates cannot sustain such continuing, wide ranging and unforeseen examination.

If the role of self-authentication of print is acting in direct interdependence with its screen delivery there are other roles that follow including back-up, during any disruption to screen delivery, and mastering for rescanning for purposes not attended or to overcome capture inadequacies.

On another note, Nicholson Baker did not advocate saving everything or “thousands of copies”. Nicholson Baker advocated saving one copy much as is also advocated in this report. What Baker did bemoan was transmitting print culture via inadequate and transient simulations.

case construction

The new book by Robert Darnton appears to charge off in two directions; describing an apparent prosperity of a digital world of letters and describing an apparent prosperity for libraries and paper books. These are not incompatible futures since libraries and books are now digital productions. The needed following layer is definition of underlying interdependencies of screen and print reading and analog and digital transmission of culture.

college book art

The CBAA has sent out a first Newsletter; nice work! Three University of Iowa Center for the Book characters are pictured on the front page and another is the designer.

linotype university

One week long LU is running again with magnificent students from seven states. Larry Raid is holding forth on Linotype mechanicals and maintenance and Bud Lang is adding Linotype production methods. Talented students bring out the best in these two masters of line composition and casting. Well less than ten percent of line composition and casting machines survive but the remnants remain at repro and specialty jobbing work. Some of the happiest of these survivors are tumbling their cam sets down in Denmark, Iowa.

unsettlement

The Google Books settlement, whatever the judgment, will not be as strategic as the Google Book unsettlement. The litigation has begun to redefine both ambiguity and distinction between the print and screen book.

On the one-hand the print and screen book are being considered equivalents with access to one equal to access to another. Here a hesitation is over the compatibility of a private library and progressive public education. If print and screen are equivalent the Google Library will become the most massive and most proprietary ever. Education institutions, especially libraries, appear most exploited and at risk but also most enthusiastic with Google Books. This is another ambiguity.

On the other hand, the print and screen book are different since one is a derivative of another. Google Books may exploit these derivations in specific cases or at specific levels, although not in the wider sense that copyright has been set aside for physical libraries that have long enjoyed unmonitored and unlimited right to distribute print. There may also be intrinsic difference between qualities and functions of print and screen as the print collections are self-authenticating and the screen collections self-indexing. Many other distinctions pop-up under these distinctions.

So there is debate between merits of source and simulation and of original and derivation. This is cultural agenda and that will teeter forever. But in the U.S.A. clean copy is somewhat preferred to soiled original. The derivative is enhanced and up to date.

ineligible end user

“It appears that there is increasing limbo because the screen simulation may be considered too close to unauthorized use of any books, in or out of copyright. This is the underlying ambiguity. If libraries are unmindful here they could even experience redefinition of fair use. The circulation of an analog print copy is unlimited and unmonitored too. Is the line drawn between linear vs. simultaneous access?” (Re: Google Book settlement)

American Libraries, August/September has a pretty chilling item on “The Download Dilemma”. Here the music collections are impaired by new releases for down-load only. Libraries are not an eligible end-user. Evidently there is a publisher perspective which considers unlimited, linear circulation of a physical medium as beyond fair use. Even a small scale application of this restraint on print copies with an imposed e-only release would create concern for the library collection development.

What are the trends between options of physical media and device download delivery? Music is already tipping toward device download preference, but books are not as decisive and almost every title still has a physical format option. The availability of e-format among new print publications appears to be between 1% and 5%. So books appear to have some kind of inherent capacity for physical format delivery and music has some inherent capacity for device download delivery.

live link

Live links are an unnecessary disruption in screen text. Any parse can be searched and any query can be searched. Now if an author has a logical attribution to make, let that author simply place a symbol and if need be key three such symbols (someplace on the web, someplace in print, something I saw or heard).

Some question the attribute legibility as distinctive to print text, but it is if legibility equates with immediacy of meaning.

hair line cartouche

Walt Crawford is back between his own hair line cartouche. And his Cites and Insights Books are an inspiration to all who have ever despaired of the endless blog scroll.

booke v. ebook

An obstacle to wide acceptance and successful marketing of dedicated reading devices is not what you would guess. It is the self-imposed, narrow mimicry of the print book. With endless native uses for a connected, hand-held delivery device why gravitate to the most installed, refined and cloistered base application first?

Here are examples of optional uses that immediately pop into mind: 1 industrial spying and espionage, 2 musical performance, 3 placed base learning and tourist guide, 4 congregational recitation and hymn, 5 dedicated literary magazine, 6 book art medium, 7 writers’ references, compositors’ dictionary, 8 podium prompt, teleprompter, 9 coursework text anthology, 10 fashion accessory, talisman, 11 device geek blog topic, 12 retail fulfillment device.

Print, in its long history, has intruded the imaginary, potential and fantastic uses for electronic reading devices, but in many cases not as effectively or conclusively. But the bar is set high for linear text and overt book content.

arl webinar

During “The Preservation Function in Research Libraries” Webcast, Jim Neal mentioned a rapidly expanding range of preservation functions as contributing to current lack of focus. However, the needed focus, across all the varieties of research library resources, can still be projected if all preservation function derives from relative immutability of collections. For such materials the research library can provide provenance, safety from unwarranted modification or deletion and an assured organization utility. In essence, the preservation functionality springs from such a physicality of collections even as such physicality is ascribed to screen delivered resources.

While print exemplifies relatively immutability, the legacy preservation practice including repair, binding and alkalization is contracting. However this contraction may prove a minor factor among others such as protective storage, inherent permanence or inherent impermanence and given extant condition. Changing status of print in the context of its same title screen simulation is a wild card; it is not clear if the relative immutability should be assigned to print or screen or both. The back-up, mastering and authentication role should be ascribed to the print source, but certification of the screen simulation of print is more popular.

With Special Collections materials relative immutability is ascribed to both source and simulation and this is clearly mandated. Preservation oversight of image capture processing is also clearly assigned.

Both type collections, including accessory archival collections, include analog visual, video and audio media. High cost capitalization of skills, hardware, capacity for media diversity of format and condition inhibit institutional preservation services of stabilization and reformatting. Lack of research and established standards for digital conversion of analog signals also forestall in-house preservation. Curatorial oversight for project transcription and security copying have preservation benefit.

Digital resources are more diverse. Keeping a focus on the distinction of relative immutability an array is possible. Most immutable would be computer media accessioned into a repository and next would be archival web exemplified by university archival or Wayback archiving. Subscribed and licensed on-line resources are vulnerable from many factors, but are increasingly assured relative immutability and continuity. Unmonitored internet is much more mutable and transient message transmission is most ephemeral. Some level of ascribed or real immutability is pre-requisite to preservation activity.

So the index suggested is an assigned level of immutability. While persistence in the bionic world tolerates change and evolution, such tolerance is adverse to reliable transmission of library resources. The exemplar of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic codices survival illustrates this precept.

censorship

“When a person requests a Web page from a site that is participating in the exchange, the publisher notifies the exchange that space on that page is available. It might also let the exchange know something about that person, based on his or her past online activity or shopping habits. Advertisers bid on the ad space, offering different amounts depending on the person’s attributes, the time of day and other factors. The winner’s ad is then slotted into the page. All of this happens nearly instantly.” New York Times, 09/18/09

Display ads can be considered censorship if you factor the massive deliberate deletions. Especially if they ever appear at Google Books.

a qualification

There is a qualification to the FotB contention of the strategic continuing role of print in the context of digital delivery. This is that there is also a continuing role for audio and visual media and physical computer media of all kinds. The analog magnetic media are a particular archival sector in crisis.

The non-paper preservation agenda may be part of the recent churn over the future of the conservation program at UT Austin, Information School. And it is so that the problems of non-paper media and the struggle for standards for digital conversion of analog signals make preservation of paper look like a side track.

In relative terms paper media are self preserving, non-paper media are self destructive.

equivalent issue

“More fundamentally, Congress, the states and cities should look for ways to have governments own and manage their voting machines, as the reform group FairVote has advocated. It makes no sense to allow private companies to count votes using secret, proprietary software. The federal government and the states should also require that all electronic voting machines produce a paper record of every vote and mandate random hand counts to ensure the reliability of the results.” New York Times

Counterparts of this statement relate to Google delivery of the national research library collections. Note as well the mention of “a paper record” and random authentications. The equivalent back-up, mastering and authentication print collections comes to mind.

google books disbound

“Most damaging, however, was Peters’s insistence that only Congress—not the courts—could enact such licenses, and her repeated assessments that the settlement deprived Congress of its role. “By permitting Google to engage in a wide array of new uses of most books in existence the settlement would alter the landscape of copyright law,” Peters said. “That is the role of Congress, not the courts.” She said that by allowing out-of-print works to be swept into the settlement, the deal “makes a mockery of Article I of the Constitution.” Only Congress, she stressed, after a full public debate, can set such new rules.” Publishers’ Weekly

Minutes after the Big Ten libraries signed a joint letter of approval, the unlimited Google capture of books may not work. And there is increasing limbo because the screen simulation may be considered too close to unauthorized use of any books, in or out of copyright. This is the underlying ambiguity. If libraries are unmindful here they could even experience redefinition of fair use. The circulation of an analog print copy is unlimited and unmonitored too. Is the line drawn between linear vs. simultaneous access?

“Amazon and others have argued that Congressional legislation – not a civil lawsuit specific to a single company – is the best way to solve the issues swirling around ebook copyrights, and this morning, the US House Judiciary committee met to examine the matter.” The Register

Just as the advent of public library systems opened access beyond subscription and private libraries, research libraries now need to look beyond Google and toward their new patron base of on-line access. Above all they need to hang on to the print collections.

lending materiality

“Written words are residue.” Walter Ong

“It seems that our attempts to understand how computers represent texts remain highly dependent on an understanding of how books and other dominant print forms, like newspapers, do so.” Marilyn Deegan and Kathryn Sutherland

At the start of history there was the challenge of lending materiality to speech. This was the era of the advent of writing. Now we lend materiality to electronic transmission again attempting to give persistent shape to transient expression. In both cases the borrowed materialities come from surrounding physical culture; the clay counting tokens, talismans and tablets lent to the glyphs and in our case the mechanisms of the codex lent to digital text.

future of book skills

It is best to have tiers of instruction. The first tier would be collegiate classes, both genres of book arts and book studies. There are many instructors now in place for this processing as is indicated by the CBAA and the SHARP. Then there is the second tier. My own preference here is a theme of insight into media history. My guess is that a really alluring fine letterpress instruction could be founded on an evaluation of the Kindle dedicated device or that understanding the advent of keyboard prompted composition could be an appealing theme for a Linotype tutorial. (It’s a great composition machine by an infuriating writing machine!) What we realize is that the sudden teasing out of such attributes is not really propagated by the long established and long refined print book. Instead there is a current dire need to LEND to electronic media the “materialities” we have taken for granted before. Here again insight into media history is a charmed theme.

blog in print

Walt Crawford has a mini-publishing outlet at Lulu. Here he is sending into print his one-person e-journals/blogs, now six massive volumes. This production cycle has an eerie feel to it.

The first print format genres to go on-line were airline schedules, dictionaries and encyclopedia where speedy searching is key. Old newspapers, magazines and journals were also positioned as disappearing species.

Walt’s “post-prints” have the same feel as bound newspapers and may present one of those eerie formats. To this day the high use bound copies of print periodicals have not yet been fully driven to extinction, and just possibly the well regarded and well used e-journal content will also germinate print editions. Such compiled, chronological print books exist in a netherworld of hybrids where we can consider the composite future of paper and screen

promotion

“Part of the problem is the tunneled vision that the latest, newest, most fashionable technology induces in us all: in seeing what is new, we see nothing else. Hence the bizarre situation of libraries filled with books and readers who sit at computer terminals never lifting a copy from the shelves that surround them….” from the Preface, Transformed Illusions – Digital Technology and the Forms of Print.

Outright promotion of print transmission and real book reading may be needed in the academic library. Who would have thought? Who would have suspected that librarian passivity, daunted by wisdom of undergraduates, would lead the march into the next dark age.

We are not adverse to digital technology, only to its misuse and to its excessive domination of the entire spectrum of culture transmission. No need to add promotion for digital research, digital disciplines, digital format for scholarly communications or the futurist aural of screen reading. That sector is taken care of.

We need a moment to consider our dependence on physical books in a context of the flickering screens. The prospects are rich and reassuring and rational. And we need to promote the continuing, strategic role of print. We need as many Print Alcoves as Information Arcades.

And who are the “we” who wish to assure the strategic future of physical books and define the continuing interdependence of paper and screen? The we includes anyone who has reflected more than once on something read.