futureofthebook.com

parable

“In every age, humankind imagines itself to be moving through a period of transition so acute that the effect borders on the dysfunctional. Our own age is no exception. We long for a simpler past, or for a more focused future, but the fact is that every era is one of profound change, and it is now our turn.” Ross Atkinson

Early north and eastern African bookbinding methods are continued in Africa and in Israel by Ethiopian crafts people. This survival is an exception to an entire Eastern tradition of book craft that has disappeared. Yet the perennial features of the earliest codex are still with us. Now the qualities of the sewn boards binding type with its easy opening action and flush edge cover and text has reappeared in high speed binding for computer publications which must lay flat at the keyboard. The adaptability of this ancient structure to face-down scanning for conversion to digital images is also relevant.

As important, the role of the early codex as both transmitter and witness of content suggests the self-authentication of the physical book which has re-emerged as a crucial attribute in our own era of screen simulation and transient messages.

april workshop

History, Art and Technology of the Book; The story of the book is 2000 years old and there is no conclusion. This workshop will explore the invention, evolution and refinement of the familiar book. We will also consider the prospects for the future of the book including a happy compatibility between the physical book and its other presence on a computer screen.

flour sacks

Job printing in small towns included printing flour sacks with eye catching design. Today the t-shirt is the printers’ medium.
Cafe Press
The identity of the commodity is more ambiguous.

planet book

In a book store each one is in competition for recognition. Each book stands alone just like the shoppers. As we read we also notice this exclusion. Even though multiple copies can be read simultaneously by many people, we read books one at a time. Rereading also has constraints and a century could transpire before a book is reread. This arms-length, one-on-one with readers is a dynamic of self-regulation and a sign of life. A graceful companion. And even when we look into the book store at a window, as if seen on a screen, we are still standing on planet book.

rebound

The easiest discredit of the typical monograph in a research library is that it is never used. Any assumed obsolescence of print in comparison with digital delivery only adds to such devaluation. But what if print in context of digital delivery is actually an engine of its new relevance? Even though few physical books are actually read, each and every one of them is needed to authenticate the screen simulations. The entire physical collections back-up, master and authenticate the validity of digital research.

Another discredit of the physical book is even more suspect. This is the fantasy that digital copies can be more easily preserved. Physical deteriorations pose risk, but the multiple hazards afflicting digital preservation favor long term survival of the print book. Digital preservation has yet to assimilate the well established premise of print preservation; that persistence should be built into a format before, not after, scholarly transmission is committed to it.

Print preservation is also a time vector of access. Search results are delivered in centuries as well as in micro-seconds and it is appropriate to consider how many searches of different kinds can occur and recur over the longer periods. Here again print books in association with their electronic finding aids, scan-on-demand and print-on-demand options present an efficient transmission system.

two-bit, ink on paper

“Side-by-side, the K1 text is bolder and jumps out at you. It’s as if the low fidelity, dot-matrix-like typeface of the K1 is better suited for the reading experience than the feathered, crisp, 16-shades of gray of the K2. After 30 minutes of reading on the K2, my eyes get tired and I actually experience mild dizziness, headaches. Never experienced that with the K1.” (from
Kindle blog)

FotB on continuing role of print book collections

Evolving and emerging digital delivery of books has prompted re-evaluation of print collections in research libraries. Are the physical book collections experiencing research displacement and devaluation? Or have appreciations of the role of print books been accentuated by their screen delivery? Or, both? Such questions will be discussed in the ALA/ALCTS/PARS 2010 program, “The Future of the Physical Book”.

We begin the discussion with an annotated bibliography of recent reports and publications that verge on and begin strategic evaluation of relations of print and digital book collections in research libraries.

reality check

“Abandon all technology and live in the woods for a week and see if it’s your laptop you miss most.” Bob Seidensticker, “Future Hype: The Myths Of Technology Change”
scholarly communication news

“In 2008, nearly 480,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from close to 375,000 in 2007, according to the industry tracker Bowker. The company attributed a significant proportion of that rise to an increase in the number of print-on-demand books.”

The news portal at UI Libraries is a well sifted link list for momentum toward the authentication role of libraries and the continuing role of print.
(link)

wave of the future

Tonight I had a class on the Kindle with over a dozen students in our library school. At one point I mentioned that the average age of a Kindle buyer is probably 40. I guessed this because Kindle readers would need to be adept at reading paper books. The students each had a computer at their seats and most were searching for an actual result. The result was 49.

scan on demand

SOD has an earthy connotation, familiar and persistent. Perhaps print libraries are re-finding their social mission through on-demand printing from public domain books. This could adventure in many ways through the rich research library collections and re-adventure through as well. The premise of the leaf master includes the endless, quirky rescan.
SOD

syncopated reading

Enjoyable book reading requires navigation skills (turn to the previous page) and text decoding skills (the young aborigine was lost in the city). In both screen and paper books these two reading skills are syncopated and interdependent with the navigation skills applied to the physical device and the decoding applied to the content. (was lost in the city-turn to the previous page-The young aborigine)

Generally readers consider the content the most important aspect of books but perhaps they don’t fully appreciate that there is no reading without navigation of the devices. The position of the page button is a prevalent discussion issue with the Kindle while its linked page count between phone and device display is an attribute. The lack of “folders” (the simulation of classified inter-shelving of paper books) is considered a Kindle deficiency. Navigation ownership issues also pop-up over digital rights management where content is owned by the screen as contrasted by content ownership on transferable paper. Yet another navigational issue is purchase of content. Purchase for screen display remains in flux while purchase of paper is an established navigation.

A current interest in attributes of “materiality” of the paper book may have emerged with new navigational challenges of non-material screen books. If book content dominates reader interest the equal importance of refined navigational attributes may be obscured. Such navigational attributes include transmission across time and cultures.

ramification

Walter Ong wrote a book about Peter Ramus (1515-1575) who is associated with branching diagrams. These instructional binary trees are termed Ramean trees but the older term to ramify, from Latin for branching tree, is not derived from Peter’s invention. Sometimes disassociations connect.

“The AIC Board of Directors announces the results of the member vote on AIC implementing a certification program for conservators.
The vote failed by:58.6% opposed 41.4% in favor 73% of eligible voters cast a vote.”

A mission to advance the work of conservation of historic and artistic works can now ramify into actions without a single reflection on the binary tree of yes and no. Everyone is needed; move on.

stop smoking

For a breath of air abandon some obsessive blog tracking. Simply walk away, delete the feed, turn-off the personal voice and stop the head game. Disallow yourself.

source item authentication next?

“Indiana’s renowned Folklore and Ethnomusicology Collection, assembled over decades and valuable for its completeness, is also the first “collection of distinction” recognized by Google as a collection that will retain its coherence in the digital transition. [Indiana University Bloomington Libraries 2007-08 Annual Report]
I had not come across the suggestion that Google would be looking at maintaining whole collection integrity in this way before. It would be interesting to see a list of the collections that will be treated in this way.”
Lorcan Dempsey

The emergence of authentication status for physical sources simulated on-line can eventually granulate to individual print copies. This not only enhances research trust in on-line simulation but also sustains re-authentication of images across time and cultures.

duh

The text to voice features associated with hand-held readers could have unintended consequences. Devices such as Kindle could end up facilitating, not new waves of book reading, but illiteracy from those uninterested in learning sight reading.

duh2

Humanists are wary of technological determinism. This is a perspective founded on the premise that tool making is the defining human activity. Such determinism correlates progressions of technology with progressions of human activity. Technological determinism would conclude that the Egyptians built pyramids because of their engineering skill or that the cell phone makes modern Cairo livable.

Technological determinism can position the interpreter. The changing and persistent roles of the book can be monitored from progressions in hand-held readers. This keeps the scroll moving just fine and there is a lively momentum of postings, but there is also a strange feeling of quarantine. In the example of book sustainability, the technological determinist can overlook or neglect older devices still in use that the interpreter can deem obsolescent.

But the divide, rather than the assimilation, between old and new is a small bias of technological determinist perspective. Other distortion happens with a mechanistic view of any human system; finance, science, politics, theology, or culture transmission via books. Too many cascades beyond technology of social behaviors, transient understandings, educational efficiencies, ecological dependencies and accidental events surround the destiny of the book. And, in the strange case of the book, there is the influence of the book itself on all these vectors.

cbaa notes

“One of the exciting things about CBAA was seeing the number of students in Masters and PhD programs who are working on theses and dissertations about artistsí books.”
Sign of the Owl

This was such a dense and rich conference with a wonderful peer equivalence between presenters and participants. It was necessary to remember that this was the first full meeting of a completely new organization. The UICB hosted the first biennial College Book Art Association Conference ì
Art, Fact, and Artifact: The Book in Time and Placeî
January, 8 ñ 10, 2009.

So evident in this conference is the enthusiasm for the physical book and the enthusiasm for its screen based renditions and accesses. Here is a thematic for the continued validity of humanist study and liberal arts during hard times and strategic college positioning.

e-babel

Teleread is now posting over a dozen news items each day so that the screen is scrolling much faster than readers can build threaded comments. It is a symptom of technology determinists, that such speed is itself news. Twittering isn’t necessarily causality. As for the premise of tracking every reading application, device feature and content distributor, the FotB view is that
Teleread only misses the irrelevance, inefficiency and uneconomic of print book simulation.

double your fun

S-books (screen books) separate the content from the device. That is one difference from the p-book. Another is that they separate the content from the device absolutely when they turn-off or switch titles or hand-off formats.

These are not easily assimilated features in a context of sustainable learning where single titles must be engaged across a library of works. It is also a cost factor since delivery and display must be purchased separately.

prompts

“While Iíll admit that Iím intrigued by the Kindle, it will never replace the rows and stacks of books that crowd my house. And when I first settle into my comfy chair ready to read with that new device, Iíll probably feel as if I had a phantom limb ó Iíll mourn the absence of my fingers slowly turning the pages.” Allison Arieff, NYT

The absence of the haptic prompts is one factor. The absence of the presence of the relation of the book read with other books is another. It is important that we select and read one book in the context of others and this context is most elaborately sustained and kaleidoscopically imposed by physical books. We read libraries too.

s-books

The two dominant screen-book providers, Google Print and Amazon Kindle, pursue models so different that neither may represent the emergent s-book. Google captures from paper in research libraries while Amazon supplies publishers’ files. Amazon delivers to a proprietary device while Google delivers to any terminal. Google books are free while Kindle books are sold. Google owns its own postings, but the capture scans and source paper copies are owned by libraries and the s-book access is assured. Amazon could turn off its servers, or selectively delete, at any time. Kindle books are in device format and Google is in print format.

Both of these models, and their delivery products, relate not at all. Users conflate them because of the general features of screen reading including automated search routines. These clues, everywhere, return attention to the eventual roles of the s-book and p-book. Perhaps we should look at the common definer; book.

news from the ischools, ucla

“Renowned author, printer, book artist, and cultural historian Professor Johanna Drucker joins the Department of Information Studies as the inaugural holder of the Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professorship in Bibliography. In her new role, Drucker will contribute to the Information Studies department in all areas relating to bibliography, including the study of the collection and description of books; the study of the production and use of textual works as physical objects; and the history of books, book art, and of print culture – and their dialogue with information studies.”
ischool

The presence of this mighty teacher will enrich the region including her visit soon to the
Grabhorn Institute

do we need print books?

Create change, find meaning, assure transmission; the print book does it all. The print book is also an opportunist quickly assimilating digital technology and connectivity to transact its own future.

But do we need print books? There are many other media including the internet and e-books. It really depends on your preference in friends. There are personality differences between a physical artifact and a screen drawn transmission and between a simulation and a graceful companion.

Physical books have a life of their own among us. Many hangout in libraries where they are safe, but they survive on the street as well. They are authentic steam punks and they generally outlive their makers. They are us.

kindle2 too thin

Has it occurred to anyone just why e-book devices could have disputed size, weight, thickness, or debated navigation features or preferences of shape? It is because e-book transmissions convey no physical features, none at all. The reader is left to synthesize or prefer something to hang on to. (from
TeleRead)

Paper books convey all their physical features across a magnitude of about 1 to 100 in weight, size, thickness, etc. In fact each paper book transmission is physically different. Although the reader does not need to specify these features, there is ample variety and scope for preference. E-book advocates mention the font size option because it is a rare exception to the insipid conformity of each transmission to the same screen.

good housekeeping seal of approval

The current
transaction to use the MARC 21, Field 583 (action note) to register a preserved print monograph comes close to identifying a leaf master status for that object. This implication, that a complete, authenticated copy is assured of retention can then also confirm a continuing role for the copy to act in any instances where future authentications or image recaptures are required. Specifically the identified book can then be employed as an exemplar for authentication of its screen simulation.

Whenever any such authentication or re-authentication of a screen simulation is accomplished, the screen simulation can then carry a logo or symbol, not unlike the infinity sign connoting use of alkaline paper, indicating the match or mismatch (i.e. missing map, color, scale, etc.) with the identified preservation copy.

no cover

Have you noticed the thumbnail covers at Amazon Kindle catalogs? These color images are used to list the black and white e-book titles. They look like little paperbacks. It is an attempt to provide packaging for a medium-less transmission. DVDs, CDs and their precursors were all physical media, but not e-books so for the purpose of retailing there is the interesting need to represent something that is not a thing and sell it.

Packaging also plays a role in accumulations like libraries or DVD racks. How will e-book accumulations be managed? The Kindle is even without folders. Name a medium that has no cover and you will discover a transmission that has no medium.

decoy

I agree that Amazon has deliberately disguised Kindle as a book reader. The actual agenda is elsewhere as a connected fulfillment device. Here are three reasons: With Kindle as a book reader it projects Amazon as a Library without any of the educational mission or cultural commitment. It positions technical evolution of the hand-held reader in the challenging domain of book simulation just as the photocopier industry discovered. It disguises outright marketing to educated customers and keeps within the politically correct confines of literacy advocation. (Teleread,
long play)

authentication stamp

Screen simulations of print books need an authentication stamp. This would be a mark or logo much like the infinity sign that verifies alkaline paper in print editions. The authentication stamp would indicate that the screen simulation has been collated along side a known print copy. More importantly it would also signify that the screen simulation can be collated again along side the same print copy which has been preserved as a leaf master in a research library.
Preservation Masters

brts/sdpa

“Sustaining the Digital Investment: Issues and Challenges of Economically Sustainable Digital Preservation”, Interim Report, Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital preservation and Access, December, 2008.
http://brtf.sdsc.edu/biblio/BRTF_Interim_Report.pdf

Perhaps it is significant that the library preservation field is considered “young”. The field emerged with the advent of deteriorating paper and the practice has become diversified and credible, as media have proven evermore transient.

Another indication that library preservation is correlated with the advent of transient media, is the lack of its correlation with permanent media. There really is no intervention needed to physically preserve a Gutenberg Bible; it preserves itself.

Such a continuum suggests another. Is it consequential that digital preservation practice must be invented AFTER the advent digital media and after our widespread academic and social dependence on it as a transmission mode? The inherent self-preservation attributes of the earliest printing and media materials were inherent BEFORE our wider dependence on them.

Hidden within this situation is the suggestion that preservation actions are increasingly relevant as our transmission media are more transient. But the challenges only increase and we may yet need to rediscover the efficacy of persistence and sustainability as a precursor of library access.
(more)

steam punkers stay tuned

1840 Columbian coming to an Iowa server farm.

new ong

One insight of Walter Ong is that old media are not displaced by new but are transformed. Old and new trade places. In today’s context the print book has been transformed by digital technologies for its access, production and distribution including transmission directly to end user production. Meanwhile attributes of the physical book, such as self-authentication, digital mastering and default preservation, have become appreciated anew in the virtual environment of screen reading.

Another Ong insight is that these hand-off transformations accumulate. Orality has been revamped by interplay with writing, with printing, with broadcasting, with internet and with all these together. Yet, people are still talking.

See the newly added typescripts of lectures including, “Media Transformed: Electronics and Printed Books” at the
Ong site

pioneer again

ìAlthough demand for online access to digital books has been growing, books as artifacts continue to have a real value,î said Oya Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Information Technologies. ìThis initiative supports the reading and research patterns of users who prefer the affordances provided by physical books ñ they support deep reading, underlining and writing comments in the margins. The Web is great for easy access and browsing, but because digital content can sometimes be ephemeral, physical books continue to serve as valuable reference sources on your shelf.î Ö (from TeleRead)

Cornell was the pioneer in digital reformat of rare books when the Xerox Docutech was new. The precept was scanning for output to paper. Now as “affordances” begin to factor, rare books can be renewed as such again.

reading in the digital age

The ars technica
essay and comments adventure into the ownership choices between paper and screen for book reading. False choice. All books are “digital” and DRM format is not relevant; the e-book is still owned by the screen and the p-book is still owned by the paper. The real choice is selection between the attributes of paper or screen. You will never be able to physically compare two e-books side by side or re-read an e-book excerpt quickly twenty years later or self-authenticate the edition in hand four hundred years later. At the same time, the e-book has one click convenience and immediacy to say nothing of its finding and text parsing aids. So which sort of “ownership” is desired? Probably both.

Also reference Jim Baen, Universe and his posting by
Eric Flint.

“But itís all baloney. As Iíve established in earlier columns, it is simply prattle to claim that publishing is rapidly moving from a paper to an electronic format.
No, sorry, it ainít. The overwhelming majority of books written, sold and read are still produced on paperóand while electronic reading is growing, it is growing slowly. (Outside of a few specialty areas, like encyclopedia publishing.)” Eric Flint

awareness

“One of the great evolutionary triumphs that brought our minds to the level of sophistication we now enjoy was the ability to take up more and more information from our environment. But Dennett believes an even greater evolutionary leap came when we began to off-load information TO our environment. He argues that, first through tools, which contain their instruction manuals within them by nature of their design (he gives as an example, the self explanatory hammer), and then through language, we have learned to manipulate the outside world in such a way that it serves as an extension of our minds.” Shannon Moffett,
Three Pound Enigma

This opportunism, or projectile predation, of casting our own consciousness out of body is a perfect template for the book. Moffett mentions exactly that including also “opera scores, photographs and MP3s”. She continues; “Fisher takes the idea one metaphysical step further that ‘although our lives are located in our own hearts and minds, they are also located, perhaps most poignantly, in the space between us’”. Here the template emerges of the latent book between existing books on the shelf. Don’t try this on your Kindle.

google and the future of books

Ever since my first awareness of comparison of paper and screen based books I have been sure that there was real difference. This difference was at least between efficiencies of comprehension, navigational and access methods, authentication, materiality and learning outcomes. A confirmation of such difference, for me, was the presumptive contention of screen advocates that the two formats were interchangeable with all sorts of super-cession pathways. This seems like saying that vertical page presentation is equivalent to horizontal screen presentation or that text is equivalent to graphic.

Robert Darton in an
essay on “Google and the Future of Books” channels the Enlightenment with hope that the interplay of paper and screen books has already been rehearsed. Sustained threads of debate and attentive expression of 18th c. communication set a standard whenever in-expression and short attention span take over. But what if in-expression, short attention span and the ability to disregard are actually new tools for thinking in context with screen reading? Perhaps the fast food paradigm revives the slow food paradigm and both fulfill each other. If quick results incite quick consumption then slow results could revive longer reflection.

Played out, a third possibility is suggested; that there are consequential differences between paper and screen books which act as counterpoint components in a larger transmission ecology. In the end Darton is anxious over a Google domination that could only occur if paper and screen books are interchangeable. Perhaps we should also consider a darker domination where paper and screen books have separate futures, but are both corporately constrained as media of electronic display and print-on-demand. Then only libraries of print masters can forestall that eclipse.