futureofthebook.com

forum at ala annual

The forum Strategic Future of Print Collections attracted over 300 librarians. The forum was sponsored by the Preservation and Reformatting sub group and the Rare Books and Manuscripts sub group of the American Library Association. The program featured three presentations offering three perspectives on print delivery in a context of digital technologies.

Walt Crawford, commentator on role of libraries in society, offered an overview of the current dynamic use of print and screen resources in research libraries. He suggested that libraries promote “inclusionary” or “multiplatform” reading that combines use of print and screen resources. He also projects such interplay into the future; “We don’t know how interdependence (of print and screen) will play out – but can guess that all-digital is an inherently unlikely future except as an ideological assertion.”

Shannon Zachary, preservation librarian at the University of Michigan, described the intensive interaction of print and screen resources caused by Google Print reformatting. This processing has features of selection and de-selection that indicate a continuing role for print in a context of digital delivery. While Google reformatting of print books exponentially improves access there is more conflicted appraisal of the preservation implications. As with microfilm conversion, digital conversion progresses in context with a continuing role for print.

Doug Nishimura, senior researcher at IPI, continued a theme of interplay between print and digital technologies. He discussed how print on demand books enabled by digital sources and electrostatic printing promises to project the role of print far into the future. Research at the Image Permanence Institute is assessing the digital printing technologies and evolving diagnostic tools for performance and permanence of print on demand books.

The program proved very cohesive and conveyed a consensus across the wide perspectives presented. This consensus was that there is a digital future for print in libraries collections as screen access, digital book manufacturing technologies and print reading all invigorate the future of books.

library conservation/preservation training

Resources for library conservation training are regrouping in the aftermath of the Kilgarlin Center training program. In one response the Delaware conservation program will team up with Simmons library school but there is a mood against embedding the program in a library school and that indicates that the degree or certificate may be from Delaware. The shift from a library school hosting not only reflects the death star experiences at Columbia and UT, but also reflects a shift from LIS focus in the current retooling of preservation.

What is disconcerting here is not a shift from LIS focus but a return to a museum training paradigm. Modern library and archive training began as a mimic of art conservation. Another syndrome preserved here is the simple binary of bench and administration training. A whole new sector of practice, driven by digital preservation and oversight services for digital reformatting, is now wedged in between bench and administration components.

predicting the past

College and University faculty enthusiasm for digital research and screen based learning continues to grow. This is well elaborated in surveys conducted by ITHAKA S+R. These results were presented again at an ALCTS Forum.

The analysis of the surveys certainly has predictive capacity but the researchers should glance not only at the future, but should also extend their trend lines to the past. Doing so they could see that their trend lines are zero based; it was not that long ago that there was no digital research or screen based learning. The data is looking at growth rate, such as the growth rate of e-books, but not looking necessarily at the destiny of print and screen resources in libraries.

I mentioned this in the discussion period and suggested that the trend lines could as well suggest an emergent interdependence between print and screen. The report author said that the data do not indicate any such interdependence. How true; they never asked that question.

strategic future of print

“Last Friday I attended the RLG Partnership Symposium. The topic – When the books leave the building – reflected the growing discussion around the management of legacy print collections across the academic library system. The balance between local print, offsite print (local or shared), and emerging digitised collections, presents interesting choices. These are tactical as competing interests are managed, and strategic as decisions are made about mission, sustainability and responsibility to the scholarly record. Interestingly, the outcome of one discussion was that maybe 25 libraries in the US might see it as part of their mission to remain committed to the management of the print scholarly record.” Lorcan Dempsey

A cascade of white papers and reports suggest that libraries are in a transition to mixed print and screen based services and that this transition is not yet completed. Accordingly, demand for direct access to books is projected to diminish as screen delivered copies prove popular. What implications can this transition have for the continuing role of print in the context of its digital delivery? Do attributes of the paper book suggest a new interdependence between print and screen access?

Three outstanding speakers will address issues of the strategic future of print. These are Walt Crawford, editor of the journal Cites & Insights who will consider “inclusive” reading and the interdependence of print and screen, Shannon Zachary, Preservation Librarian from the University of Michigan who will review the Googlization of libraries, and Doug Nishimura from the Image Permanence Institute who will consider known and unknown aspects of print on demand technology.

This program, co-sponsored by PARS and RBMS, Sunday 27 at 10:30, (at ALA annual) will be of interest to those concerned with long term access to and status of print collections. A summary bibliography will be provided.

So what was the future of the book after all? Not too surprisingly we are drifting toward an inclusive reading scenario and an inherent logic of the interdependence of distinctive print and screen formats. This is the messy agenda of projecting both formats forward. It is also the messy agenda of realizing that each of the print and screen formats of books have shifted their separate roles as enclaves of culture transmission.

touch haptic

“Touch in different parts of the world is different. In US point with a finger, in other parts of the world people won’t point with one finger, but will use two fingers or a thumb. In large parts of the world people don’t know what “pinching” is. There are different touch dialects all over the world. Korea has a different touch language from the rest of the world and HP is compiling a “directory” of touch from around the world.” Phil McKinney

The clue here is that haptic response in book formats is not only concerned with reading navigation but also with kinetic engagement with the device.

self-referential

There are enough of these studies on the transition to digital libraries that they are beginning to validate each other. The new CLIR study titled “The Idea of Order” includes a 60 page study on the prospect of an all-digital research library. In this new study the transition is mostly confirmed by reference to other ITHAKA S+R studies that themselves project a similar transition.

But some of this inevitability can be questioned. Why is the transition to be so linear? How can the transition to digital libraries be so well advised and responsible in the long term if the correlate of long term sustainability is viable digital preservation not yet assured? It appears that deliberation is fine if it confirms a rush into the unknown.

The unkind aspect is that librarians and faculty suggesting a continuing role of print in the context of digital delivery are considered obstructionist rather than conflicted. An underlying interdependence of print and screen would be too complex a concept as would a sustainable library service mediating roles of print and screen.

But the nicest absurdity is present here as well. This is that preserving print requires its disposal. This elegant weird linkage extends to a mathematics of last copy and a great worry that cyberspace needs all the physical space that the books take up. But the linkage is pure invention and a red herring.

read on demand

There was consensus at the RIT Future of Reading conference that the future is neither print or screen. We are headed into composite relations that will shift roles and compile new products and reading behaviors and renegotiate access. Nuance, refinement and esthetic result will remain crucial to reading which was another consensus. And everyone agreed that the Web is so over as an attentive reading medium.

Johanna Drucker talked about frame jumps. This was an exposition of the shifts of cognitive states prompted by reading. What are the “hinges” of these shifts and how can we attentively manage frame jumps. First she provided taxonomy describing a wide ecology of reading spaces. This was familiar enough. She moved on to hinge, tangent and overlap vectors and on to states of knowing.

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, described his methodic and risky decision to deliver Wired for the iPad. He made three bets; that the iPad will be a mass platform, that people will continue to read whole magazines and that the tablet experience will reset the economics. The tricky aspect was direct migration of the print experience and esthetic to the screen.

He knew the qualities of the print magazine that must go forward; its curated wholeness, its event-like experience and its periodicity and he knew that the Web was never going to advance attentive magazine reading. But he was amazed to see that most print editorial tools of spread, adjacency, well, jump, pull-quotes and back cover were not going to migrate to the reading device. For example, the pages must be deployed as singles, not spreads. “There are very few moments when nobody knows anything.”

Chris has committed Wired to a print and screen hybrid, but he admits that the print magazine has had its best year ever and it alone will finance the adventure to iPad publication.

Richard Lanham, UCLA, contended that writing is revision and revision enables attentive reading. He presented his tutorial in prose revision, an animated video now 30 years old. It struck the audience as revolutionary in the current context of Web display and social media. “Words actually dance around” and alphabetic information can be dimensionally displayed. It took Donald Brinkman, educational engineer at Microsoft, three days to get over the Lanham video.

Jon Orwant, Engineering Manager described the “settlement” as better than wining, advancing Google’s position as an enabler of non-consumptive research. For example he illustrated the transition from the phrase “The Great War” to the “First World War”. This occurred in books in 1932 and he easily identified these perceptive works. Orwant considers electronic forms as supplement of print but also sees that supplement as just emerging; “I have 1.5 million books on my phone right now.”

Kate Hayles discussed the destiny of literary studies and proposed a restructure beyond a current commitment to close reading alone. Hyper or well linked reading as well as computer assisted reading should be drawn into literary studies.

The conference usually paired speakers from commercial and academic environments. This was very revealing because of a depth of consensus between the sectors. This was a consensus that print and screen will so influence each other that the hybrids will take on functions different from their parents. But there was also a confidence in both commercial and academic sectors that advancement of reading skills is within their capacities. And, as I mentioned, the Web is over.

books of the brave

A University of Iowa Center for the Book team (Gary Frost, Joyce Miller and Bill Voss) has completed a project to install a 26 case comprehensive exhibit of the treasures of the Library of the Convent of the Recoleta in Arequipa Peru. This education exhibit depicts the amazing story of historical libraries in this highland colonial city. Brought together over four centuries and across three oceans, a jungle, an immense desert, and an eerie highland, these books introduced European learning into equally complex indigenous culture and so advanced dynamics of empire still in motion in the Americas.

The library of 22,000 volumes spanning the 16th to 19th centuries is rich in linguistics, history, sciences, arts and literature, religious doctrine and scripture, and philosophy. The library was founded in 1661. It features many early Peruvian imprints including unique copies.

Pisco, pre-Incan party goods, and the influential of Arequipa mixed with piped French classical music and Franciscan book iconography at the opening reception. The UICB team had center stage, but also kept the fire exits opened.

How did the books get to Arequipa?

Initially all the books came from European countries. Even after the introduction of printing into Mexico and Peru (a century earlier than the first printing in English colonies) the publications of the Americas remained a small and specialized portion of library collections here.

Fabulous voyages were required to bring books to Peru. Outward voyages went southward to the Canary Islands where the westward winds were encountered. A long Atlantic crossing brought the cargo to Hispañola in the Caribbean. Another voyage across pirate waters came finally to land at the isthmus of Panama. This overland crossing of swamp and mountains was no less difficult than the previous sailings. On the Pacific coast newly constructed ships began the long voyage down to Lima. Finally, books destine for Arequipa still required the long desolate crossing of the vast inland desert before the books reached the start of the highlands.

Why are the books worn out?

The books in the library of the Recoletas are not pristine. They were heavily used and the evidence of this is also evidence of their great meaning for readers. Just look at the repeated fingerings of this little catechism! Reading of it was a devotional and lively action.

Today we must discover new lively meanings of the library of the Recoleta. We must study and preserve the collections, but also need to appreciate the role of books as active companions in our life long learning.

Is the library just old books?

The Library of the Recoleta is more than old books. It is a place of meditation, understanding and insight. Here readers prepared their minds for great dramas of contact between cultures and great challenges of interaction. So the library is not just books but it is also a state of mind. At its best the library teaches us humility and confidence and a sense of the lessons of life.

Does the library of the Recoleta have any future?

Yes, we should read books, but books are a very small part of reading. More reading is accomplished by audio and visual literacy; listening to music and watching television is also literacy and now there is the internet and digital connectivity.

But just as the padres carried their Gospels, we carry our cell phones. Everyone wishes to possess the object that delivers a powerful connectivity. The future of the Recoleta library depends on the strength of our desire for more powerful connectivity. This library can teach us attentive and avid desire for knowledge and communion with wisdom.

books of the brave 2

“The real question — and the one that is generally not being addressed — is whether MFDs or SFDs (multiple or single function devices) are better for those just beginning their reading career: Do I want a 10-year-old to be exposed to the distractions of an MFD or focused on reading by using a SFD? How do we teach a child the love of reading? How do we teach a child reading for reading’s pleasure? Can a child learn to love reading when the lure of games and Internet surfing are just a screen touch away?” Teleread

Is it too brave a mention here that the paper book is an intensive SFD? The constraints of print are attributes.