self-indexing
Walt Crawford’s Cites and Insights is Google indexed. It works well, but how can this corpus of historical review of the transitions of libraries and book transmission be used? The old FotB saw suggests that the counterpoint of self-indexing is self-authentication and this is a bridge that can be crossed two ways. A prime agenda is authentication of the influence of magnification, a distortion to which all media based discourse is vulnerable. Is “news” well managed or does its management engender managed news?
Walt provides our most comprehensive, skilled and insight enriched news of the transitions of libraries and book transmission. Perhaps Google Search can confirm the excellence of his news management.
rejected
“Thank you for your submission to the “Ebooks as Bibliographical
Objects” panel. I received over a dozen proposals and had to make
tough choices. Yours was not among the papers I am accepting.”
> A Logic of Their Interdependence: Complementary Attributes of the Print and Screen Book
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> “The lively connectivity of the screen is an attribute but the constraint of print is an attribute as well.”
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> This presentation will consider the logic of interdependence between the paper and e-book renditions of the same title. Precedent for interdependence between print and screen is provided by the era of newspaper microfilming. Today interdependence between paper and e-books emerges in a context of intensive screen delivery of print collections generally. Synergistic (1) device navigation, (2) marketing and retailing, (3) delivery format and classroom logistic indicate a persistent interaction. E-book market response now prompts print-on-demand sales and library certification of digital imaging of books prompts certification of print masters. The complementary nature of print and screen editions is confirmed as self indexing screen and self authenticating print both prove strategic to research. The presentation will illustrate each sub topic.
Its always fun to surmise if the topic of the strategic future of print will infringe or not infringe the strategic future of e-books. It is also fun to sense the strictures that each camp imposes on wider views.
scrolling forward
“Trained in computer sciences at Stanford, Levy was a researcher at Xerox/PARC and a practitioner of calligraphy and bookbinding before taking up the library sciences appointment at Washington. He is the author of Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age and his current work calls for an information environmentalism to parallel movements in climate control and environmental sustainability in the natural world.”
David Levy presented an excellent lecture on the advent of the computer based writing system. He was there and he was tempered by another training in crafts and calligraphy. Now he is taking his attentive approach to another agenda. Why have libraries always allured us with their aura of a place for contemplation and how can that mood shift readjust a sense of information overload, speed-up, fragmentation and distraction?
He has applied for an IMLS planning grant to introduce workshops of mindfulness and contemplation to busy libraries. Already librarians are drawn to his challenge to find a new Zen of on-line connectivity. Together this quiet permaculture, native to libraries, will turn an addiction into a surge of personal fulfillment.
prairie lights
President Obama made a visit to Iowa City yesterday. He stopped in at Prairie Lights bookstore and if you look at the NYT front page picture you will see him at a photo moment holding up Rove and Romney print books. Imagine him achieving this iconic moment with electrophoric devices.
There really is no particular linkage between e-book growth and indie book store prospects. Amazon is actually using e-book sales to predict print sales. And both print-on-demand and ultra high speed print copy scanning suggest new two-way transactions between paper to screen and screen to paper in a larger growth of book reading.