print book diaspera
The ALA has a statement on the future. These perspectives from the library community on information technology and the 21st century libraries reposition the interplay of culture transmission. Now the opportunities and challenges must be posed in terms of screen display, community connectivity and engine access. As the space of a virtual library expands, the space of the print library must contract.
As with other space and time projections there is uncertainty and a suspension of causality but print books are displaced to their own diaspera. Here they must naturalize in strange countries. Happy refugees will regroup but without familiarity of numbers or social shelf rank. And other futures will foresee new homelands.
Now we will see who is mobile; the digital natives, digital nomads and their enclaves or the old mountain print books. As print disperses to its own natural enclaves, to strict communities and devotional choices for paper copy, we will realize again a resilience of the codex among sectarians. Libraries “will be responsible for managing both a static book collection and the dynamic content created by networked books” but refugee print has been there before in a mobile interdependence between print and screen.
Perhaps print will navigate this transition better than we think. Maybe print will explain the virtual library and its role. The libraries should at least be attentive to such an intrusion. That would be a hoot; when homeless print books return post-digital.
ibtds (interdependent book text delivery system)
• Attributes of format: Both screen connectivity and print insularity resolve conflicting agendas either to maintain bibliographic entities or to dissolve them. The functions of immobile print collection back-up and mastering provide a counterpart for screen collection mobility and mutability.
• Attributes of access: Print attributes of fixity, mechanical navigation, and persistent re-access across time all pair nicely with screen attributes of live content, automated search, cloud repository and electronic delivery.
• Attributes of resource: The print book carries with it layers of physical evidence, overt content and bibliographic codes that reveal the source and intent of its production. Screen books have layers of codes that enable display and indexing of elements of content and electronically speed delivery of keyword search and discovery across collections of books. The self-authenticating nature of the print book is a complement of the self-indexing nature of the screen book.
(th)ink conference
“Book industry will continue to grow slowly through 2020. Digital will grow 36% in 2014 and end up at 60% by 2020. Revenues from digital will eventually surpass revenues from print and see many more small players as barriers to entry are removed. Ereaders in use: 2010 15m unit installed base forecast, by 2020 861 million installed base. Unit prices of ereaders will fall to under $100 by 2015 and this is when the market will really take off.” TeleRead post from e-book conference.
The tipping point is history and TeleRead postings are surging. For the moment all the e-book titles are still related to their parent paper, but virgin e-books may also be lurking in publisher marketing plans. With the newly installed base of reading devices and opened display formats the book delivery services will also expand and diversify. GoodReads is an example gathering enclaves of readership and networks.
The tipping point is also apparent in the contrast between TeleRead and if:book. While Teleread posts dozens of leads each day, if:book has dwindled to one post a month. TeleRead is hitched to the retail market place for book reading while if:book is lurking in academia where the long view is at work. One forum is jumping and the other is waiting to pounce.