futureofthebook.com

library of congress googlizes itself

“A $2 million grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation inaugurated the LOC book digitization project. One of the grant’s objectives was “to address some of the issues that other book digitization projects had mainly avoided dealing with — for instance, the brittle book issue,” Handy said. “We established some procedures and preservation treatments to be able to scan books that otherwise couldn’t be scanned.” The library also worked with Internet Archive — which provided the scanning equipment — to develop a special station for scanning fold-out materials such as maps.

The scanned books are retired to an environmentally controlled storage facility at Fort Meade, Maryland, “where they will not be served again, they will be preserved,” he said.”

Here, ultimately, is realization of the public digital library for access to print collections. Note the careful interplay between print and screen and the continuing role of leaf masters as authenticators of their own simulations. Note the recognition of the multimedia nature of legacy print production with regard to fold outs, diagram and illustration and layers of paratext. Note the priority regard for books in poor condition as an indicator of their inaccessibility in print. Note the changed status of the originals. Now LOC needs to work with WolframAlpha as well as IA. Let’s return attentive organization to library collections as well!

The LOC project points to the needed better understanding of the strategic future role of print. There is an eerie interdependence of print and screen; almost an emergent system. Understanding the role of one will assist understanding of the role of the other.

The elegant cost combining of storage and display in print is one clue and so is the self-authenticating role of print relative to its own simulation. Then there are efficiencies of para-text features and the possibilities that context searching (WolframAlpha) is as productive as word parsing. In the longer run we do need further evolution of the artifact of bionic reading and that will take the whole culture of the skill.

future of library binding

Library binders have a base product of quality “hard cover binding”. Can library binders follow a strategy to multiple delivery channels and find new markets? Already library binders are diversifying into services for the self-publishing sector and specialty, short run publishers. What other markets can be germinated as delivery channels increase?

One possibility is to market print copies to e-readers. As hand-held reading devices are more widely assimilated they begin to extend screen reading well beyond book formats. Here library binders can encounter entirely new markets as the attributes of print are extended to personalized experiences, place-based and community commemorations and an expanding scope of documentary versions of events; reformatted transient reality. Print editions of websites and blogs, for example, are challenges but once resolved they become proprietary advantages.

An obstacle is perceived obsolescence of print versions of screen reading. Here library binders are well positioned to overturn market perceptions as well as their own conventions of thought. Print is a confirmation of rare value in an infinity of transient screen transaction. Print and screen are interdependent.

So what is the euphemism of hard cover binding? It is the elegant physical state of elegant conceptual work. That inherent paradox is a proprietary secret of library binding. Another proprietary secret of library binding is that an elegant reading device promotes reading. Outright promotion of reading has been neglected by publishers.

tired of the future?

Dan Visel at futureofthebook dot org mustered a year end posting. It was fairly un-perky. But times are very bright just now at dot com. FotB is now eleven years old, but just verging on a wave of enthusiasm. Three new seminars on the history of hand-held reading devices are already booked for 2010.

A few success ingredients here include immersion in legacy explanations of the fate of futurist projection. Most revolutionary projections have already occurred. Another continuing inspiration has been an inexplicable assurance of the continuing role of the print book in a context of its digital delivery. So, again, the paradox of transmission of conceptual work via physical objects is no better revealed, but further confirmed.

Perhaps another perky approach at dot com comes from adventure in post-digital emergence; steam punk, being analog, being there and being square. We have an enclave with futurist manifesto keyed on the model 5.

twas the nook before christmas

“We’re happy to report that all customers who pre-ordered nooks and were given a pre-holiday estimated shipping date will be sent their nooks in time to receive them by Christmas.”

I am looking outside for the package today. There is an anticipation of a new reading device in relation to problematic experience of the previous ones. This is similar to anticipation of a new book in a familiar genre. Indeed, the “content” of the device may elaborate in many directions like a song in a musical category or a title in literature genre. What does such a displacement indicate?

There is a frequent mention of hand-held reading devices as the book fulfillment of MP3 delivery format for music. But that MP3 distribution niche is already occupied by the print book; a single format that delivers all content. The hand-held reading devices proliferate and churn among applications, content encoding and navigation and display features attempting to achieve a sudden adoption that print books already provide.

So the anticipation of the new reading device is an allure of a delivery rapture that is deceptively projected by a few new features. (I just now heard a knock)…yes, it is the nook, 3:00 pm Central, Christmas eve!

parareading

The role of dedicated reading devices as delivery screens without other physical baggage may fit readerships that don’t need the individual books they read. This kind of avid reader is dedicated to an author, a genre and a reading experience rather than to a work with a given title. The economy of publishing for such fan readership will certainly prosper with screen delivery.

Such a book format shift from paper to screen is well established. Compiled airline schedules were once printed and even dictionaries and encyclopedia are now preferred in screen edition. Such displacement can be considered a delivery shift for a behavior of reading and such transformation may help to define e-books.

And any one redefinition assists redefinition elsewhere including the continuing role of print books in a context of their screen delivery. Perhaps print books are works read, comprehended and referrenced as a given title or bibliographic entity. That kind of parareading has its own avid fan base interested in cohesive works of scholarship or the tactile engagement in child’s book. Such affordances and even overlaps between print and screen book delivery could then build interdependence in wider terms of book readers.

year of the tablet

“No Outlet” is the current road sign for “Dead End”. It blends metaphor of electrical circuitry with roadway circuitry. This sign can apply to dedicated book reading devices in a context of tablet devices. The tablet devices have momentum of developers and news publishers without the dissipation of mimicry of books. Touch screen navigation, for example, is a component neurological and haptical of print book navigation, but it is a functionality shared with every physically prompted interaction including shopping for vegetables.

There is also cunning aprompt in the term tablet in contrast to book.

cascade of hand-held readers still taking off

“Pixel Qi display technology shows up in a new ten-inch tablet from Notion Ink. This is the first mention of a definite use by a specific vendor. Bottom line: both E Ink- and classical LCD-style capabilities, including color in the latter mode. –Price might be around $300.”

Meanwhile Nook delivery is within minutes. (I just looked outside…nope, not yet.) The Sony Reader is eclipsed by its own wifi replacement at the instant of its public library circulation role. Navigation and screen drawing are ever more anguished. Kindle 1 is the classic. What is the future of reading books on things that are not books? opps,,,,(“We have an important nook shipping update. Demand for nook has exceeded all expectations, and unfortunately, delivery of your nook has been further delayed. We expect to ship your nook in time for you to receive it by December 24th. Please let us know that you still want your order filled by following the steps listed below. We apologize for the inconvenience and will be sending your nook soon with an upgrade to overnight shipping.“) The istillwantthis button is actually in a string with the cancelorder button and you must be able to retrieve your order number from the first email confirmation. Meanwhile I am flooded with promotions of Barnes & Noble print books.

The latest hand-held reading device is awaited with the kind of anticipation once accorded new print book content. Perhaps the device itself is now the content of electronic book and the stand in for the material product of publishers. If so we can expect to see many more until each reader has a library of devices. That is exactly what we are doing at the Iowa Center for the Book with our museum for hand-held readers.

documents for a digital democracy

A linkage between digital access and digital preservation is almost as gratuitous as a linkage between digital access and disposal of print collections. Both iffy logics are used in a “Model for the Federal Depository Library Program in the 21st Century”, just published.

Closer regard for practicality, orderly transition and expense is needed. But the noise of user demands controls the agenda and incites quick rationales. At issue is the production of a high quality, comprehensive screen version of government publication and this report does concede that the collective set of current digitization initiatives is not getting there.

The relation between screen delivery and persistent and authenticated government documentation needs work. A timely transitional premise of interdependence between print and screen is not ventured. The declining status of print as an access medium only accentuates its self-authenticating role while the enthusiasm for screen delivery is obscuring costs and practicality of screen authentication and the un-print like disconnection between display and storage functions of digital versions. It is also possible that inevitable error detection in screen versions and re-digitization is better referenced to print sources rather than root scans. Is an interdependence suggested here?

The Model wants to concede a “theoretical” value of print (p.30), but it fails to assign a specific role such as that of authenticator and certifier of digital versions. It is also apparent that the proven storage functionality of print can augment the wobbly long-term persistence of electronic versions.

Finally, librarians should not be faulted for “favoring collections and collection roles rather than service and outreach” to users.(p.32) Libraries of Antiquity were established for collection building and preservation without regard for users. Now the inverse is in vogue as librarians are supposed to be tyrannized by whims of users and screen convenience while collections; their organization and their inherent relevance to screen delivery, are considered distractions.

wide opened spaces

An attribute of e-readers is space saving. Space saving also gets attention in library collection building. An up-turn in downtown rentals or down-turn in operations budgets usually get a space-saving slant.

Is space is an excessive cost of print books? Do books just consume a valuable commodity or is space, like electricity for e-readers, an activation energy or performative prerequisite? It may be that space is a feature of reality inherent to the display of print books. And, as such, the cost of space could then be compared with the cost of electricity. Is the electrical infrastructure and the network wasted on screen display?

space shifting

“Space shifting for personal use is OK.” This statement positions the home-made book scanner enclave. The relevant factor is the increasing dispersion of reformatting as a component of the self-publishing momentum. The interesting concept here is “space shifting”. Is this a euphemism for alternative device display or displaced output to paper? Certainly both.

mfa

The University of Iowa Center for the Book now offers an MFA graduate degree. This program degree has long been proposed and now it is suddenly approved. There is also a latent opportunity since the UICB operates without imagining that there is any money and as other academic programs are contracting, we may be in line for facility left-overs.

multitask

Have you noticed that particularly focused manual activity will silence your conversation with others and even cause involuntary clenching of the tongue? This suggests multitasking between simultaneous activities has a deeply embedded supervision.

Such evolutionary supervision could extend to all kinds of multitasking. While driving and phoning with the radio on, we may actually be toggling between these sources, momentarily attentive to only one. The toggling itself is the real multitasking. Many on-line activities individually also exercise this toggling. A keyword search or an email list or blog thread involves as much deletion and decisive disregard as selective attention. This management of attention may be advancing as a skill of multitasking while efficiencies of comprehension diminish.

Another factor arises if deliberate simplification of content becomes a goal of traffic engineering, broadcasting and conversation.

parsed

Robert Darnton appears hedged in on all sides over Goggle influence on print book collections. His recent commentaries in the New York Review (Google and the Future of Books and Google and the Digital Future) offer a docket of transactions but not a peep about Google influence of digital parsing and a general dissolve of the bibliographic entity of the book.

There is a sense that he wishes to champion the print book in a context of its digital delivery, but is restrained. Perhaps it is enough to know that he is worried.

iconic hero

Both John Wayne and George Stout were born in Winterset Iowa, but only one of them went on to become an iconic hero. George Stout went on to invent with John Gettens the science and practice of art conservation. Then, at the onset of the most destructive war, Stout lead a company of soldiers during the invasion of Europe. His mission was to save artworks and monuments and to recover the plunder of the Nazi. The adventures, risks and pathos of this real John Wayne is well described in the new book, The Monuments Men by Robert Edsel.

I met George Stout in the early 70’s as he presented his illustrated taxonomy of material culture. These were the IIC/AG gatherings that gave birth to the American Insitute of Conservation and Stout was there. He died in 1978 and one of the eulogies put it bluntly; “He was the greatest war hero of all time – he actually saved all the art that everyone else talked about.”

mfa book arts

The Center for the Book at the University of Iowa will request an MFA degree designation for its existing program. The question is not about the program content or its proven performance. The question is what the degree should be named. Perhaps mfb; master of fine books or mindful future books.

future of reading

What is the future of reading books on things that are not books? We already know the future of reading newspapers on things that are not newspapers. But news is a daily commodity unlike the content of monographs and that may influence the display devices. Perhaps screen reading of books would be better accommodated if the screen could be tiled or if there were multiple device displays since that would permit selective correlation and sustained inter-reference.

But a more apparent interdependence of the screen and print renderings could emerge. The immediate legibility, haptic navigation, persistence and self-authenticating nature of print can complement qualities of automated search, electronic delivery, live content and self-indexing nature of screen books. Such complementary affordances could be extended to the same given title with the prospect of generating new meaning.