futureofthebook.com

inside-out

Issue 14 of the Climate Notebook Newsletter, IPI, presents many important determinants of preservation environment. These summarized are (1) that thermal equilibration is fast and moisture equilibration slow, (2) moisture buffering is (inevitably) multilayered, and (3) the outdoor seasons and their indoor suppressions tyrannize storage conditions. Result of these givens is (1) that thermal shock suppressions are difficult (i.e. from heating or air conditioning failure) and any resulting condensation or desiccation can’t be avoided and is moderated only via collection commodity resilience, (2) moisture shock, on the other hand, is more easily buffered and frequently multiplied by layers of defense, (3) inevitable seasonal drift should be accommodated and not excessively opposed by energy driven indoor compensation (the collections will follow the longer term seasonal drift and have throughout their history).

Another sequence of considerations follows along with the factors described in the IPI Newsletter. This regards preservation monitoring generally and a wider range of preservation data that can be correlated. I suggested this possibility of a wider data “cloud” in the last PADG Mid-winter meeting (Environmental Monitoring Inside-Out). Such streams include data from alkalizing and possible reversion, moisture aspiration of collections, long term baseline performance of buildings, data from item repairs and data from environmental incidents and disasters. These different streams of data have something to tell each other. Such wider interrelation of data streams could converge with the evident movement away from simplistic “straight” line prescription for optimal collection storage conditions.

above the fold

“Throughout December, customers purchased well over 1 million Kindle devices per week.” (via TeleRead)

If personal computers enabled word processing, then book reading devices will enable remote and mobile library service. Connectivity advanced functionality of all screen display, but word processing and remote and mobile library service will remain authentic extensions of traditional writing and reading.

That could be the end of the story, but it isn’t. There may still be a wide scope for consequences. Yet to be transacted are intersections, interplay and interdependence of writing and word processing and reading and remote and mobile libraries

lightning content group

“We are at a very early stage in imagining the future of the book.” David “Skip” Prichard, President and CEO of Ingram Content Group, about the future of books and the opportunities for the book industry (via TeleRead)

No trade fluff here; this a a magnificent profile of book production prospects. Ingram is the force behind the curtain for Amazon fulfillment and integration of print and screen book production.

foreseeable future

“There’s been a significant shift online because of the sales tax savings,” he said. “Consumers see it as instant discount and most online retailers are delivering for free. That puts Sears and other land-based retailers at a significant disadvantage for the foreseeable future.” (Sears and Kmart close stores) CNN

We are still building malls here in Iowa. Such momentum will well overshoot the reversal to on-line shopping with a 15% advance in on-line sales this holiday period over last. Foreseeable mall vacancies will only add to the malaise of suburban living. Unlit and vacant, huge mall parking lots separate people.

Re-congregation into closer proximity is a strategy advanced in a book by David Owen; Green Metropolis, why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less Are the Keys to Sustainability. Shopping proximity and walk able neighborhoods are also exemplified in Iowa. Classical small – not mall – downtowns provide experiences that make shopping a communal activity.

These small town downtowns are also havens for independent bookstores. It could be that libraries and bookstores are useful identifiers of sustainable enclaves. The oddity of walking to a point of connectivity is itself an indicator of how disconnected we have become.

unlinked

“Yes, Kobo is apparently sabotaging publishers’ epubs by including their own css and a javascript file and forcing the use of their (horrible on any reader other than a kobo, as you discovered) styles rather than the original ones. The resulting files are no longer valid epub files in addition to the various other problems since these added files are “hidden” (not referenced in the content.ofp file).”

Storage and display are fused together in a paper book. Screen books, on the other hand, disengage persistence and display. This unlinking compounds delivery scenarios, disrupts editorial control, disturbs typographic refinement and multiplies the separated display and storage costs. Legibility is negotiable.

Many annoyances and frustrations with e-books derive from this disengagement. Proofing is defaulted to the crowd since reflexive correcting between separated served and displayed representations is too problematic. Proof reading is shifted from up-stream in traditional print, to way down-stream. Meanwhile multiple storage formats are variously incompatible with various display devices.

native and immigrants

“Digital Natives are those who grew up with digital technology from birth, whereas digital Immigrants are those who were already socialized in pre-digital ways when digital technology arrived on the scene.” Introduction to an exhibit on digital libraries, University of Iowa.

Set aside that all socialization is now supported by digital technology, the stated distinction of natives and immigrants can be revised. Culturally the natives are intruded upon while immigrants intrude. This semantic revision also has a bit of charm in context with interplay of paper and screen books and print and on-line libraries. Whatever the intrusive digital revolution will displace of the culture of the paper book there may still remain some useful lessons from the aborigines.

One outcome of two-way exchange could be the dawning of a fundamental interdependence of the paper and screen book. As each reveals exclusive affordances a reflexive force of definition will emerge to more responsibly allocate roles for research and transmission. Such an epiphany of shared print and screen delivery modes and shared function of embodied and disembodied content can define the post-digital library and the larger future of the book.

breaking the page

“I’m thrilled to announce the release of the “preview edition” of Breaking the Page: Transforming Books and the Reading Experience (iBookstore, Amazon, O’Reilly). In this free download, I tackle one big-ticket question: how do we make digital books as satisfying as their print predecessors?” Peter Meyers

Peter Meyers (graduate of U of Iowa Writer’s Workshop) has a free sampler of his book Breaking the Page. He begins with consideration of an alternative title; Breaking the Book but he should also consider Hamady’s Breaking the Binding. The Meyer exposition investigates inherent screen format for books and how it will differ and not mimic the paper book.

The Page has become a cross-over topic in study of the comparison of screen and paper books, most recently with Mak’s book How the Page Matters or long ago in Keith Smith’s “punctuation of the page” of 1989, Text in the Book Format.

The Meyer book is excellent even if I was forced to read it on Kindle. Particularly fine are descriptions of attributes of the paper book. Three reading behaviors of browsing, navigation and search are defined that highlight the refinements of print.

Meyer then studies, surveys and proposes attributes of the screen book that could fulfill reader needs. Appraising the state of ebook delivery, he maps the opportunities for a more native, efficient, and satisfying screen book browsing, navigation and searching. I particularly appreciate his definition of distraction as a reading impediment. This is going to be a standard text for book futurists.

Futurist insights could be enriched by a larger book studies perspective. Peter does request information on development of the Table of Contents. This topic alone can advance both forward and backward into fundamental issues of reader prompted parsing.

thrilled

I’m also thrilled to announce the release of the “preview edition” of The Future of the Book: A Way Forward, Iowa Book Works, 2011. A useful evaluation of implications of dual – screen and paper – book delivery, this zany, and informative publication is readable.

Just $10 plus $3 shipping. Send no money. Your mailing address will trigger the order with invoice to follow with delivery. Pay only if dumbfounded. iowa.book.works(at)mchsi(dot)com

boson

A margin or perimeter of encounters of real and virtual is suggested by prohibition of cell phone use or other distractive connectivites while driving or performing surgeries. The two worlds are colliding and the overlaps can be destructive. Meanwhile, The Higgs Boson so called “God” particle has been purported to have been discovered just prior to the Christmas holidays by scientists at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Here as well, theoretic vies with observable. This sounds like such a fundamental confrontation that it must be timeless.

mirror

There is something of a mirror between popularizations of ebooks and print-on-demand books. Both started in enclaves of simulation of each other; ebooks mimic the paper book experience and print-on-demand needs digital technology and electronic files. Their mutual rise in popularity also has similarity; both went through fragmented implementation and commercialization now being overcome.

Both ebooks and print-on-demand also have plenty of room for growth and new marketeering. I am just back from the International Spanish language Book Fair, it is obvious that this print dominated market will itself support explosive development for both screen and paper book innovation.

Another suggestion is a possible (charmed?) 50-50 split in paper and screen delivery for books going forward. This would further suggest an inherent interdependence of the two delivery systems and an inherent integration of the book publishing industry overall.

50-50

“There is a natural limit to the growth of digital. I think it might be 50%. The book as an object is a perfect object. It has a lot of utility. People love it. There is something about a book. We’re going to see again a doubling of our growth over the next few years, to 40% or more. But once we reach a plateau, we’re going to have two businesses: a digital business and a physical business.” Jeremy Greenfield

This would be an almost charmed outcome for the premise of the interdependence of the print and screen book.

bookbinding models

Ever since the web police revamped the binding model collection it has been almost impossible to find it. But it is still there. Now all we need is an up-date to match the current collection; now twice as large.

links

“How does this fit into bike shop news? Most directly, I (Cody) recently began the certificate program at the Center and spend my days madly dashing between bikes and books. Less directly, there is a deep rooted connection between the authentic experiences of riding a bike and reading a book, between the technologies of self-propulsion and analog information dissemination.” 30th Century Bicycle

lament

The ebook revolution was not consumer driven, it was industry driven. There was no inherent market for screen books. Among industry calculations was an intention to provide a shopping device. The book reading simulation is something of a decoy.

Only now are consumer laments emerging. Black electrophoric e-ink and button navigation did provide a reasonable simulation of book reading. Industry agendas are now moving away from book dedication toward multifunction entertainment. The color phosphor screen and touch screen navigation is the path of least resistance of a large installed base. Color e-ink development has faded.

The lament is among dedicated book readers over the eclipse of the dedicated black device. The ebook revolution continues to be industry, not consumer driven. Consumers read on their phones.

real future

Digital technologies have advanced the paper book as much as the networked screen book. Advances in the physical book include new book papers, inks, adhesives and covering materials made possible with digital automation of manufacturing. As significant, competition presented by screen books has prompted identification and accentuation of exclusive paper book attributes. Some of these attributes are constraints difficult for screen book advocate appreciation. For example each paper book conveys only a single title. This obvious limitation has, never the less, enabled organization, reorganization and visualization of libraries, engendered an economic base for publishing, and validated academic and literary achievement.

Another seeming limitation of the physical book is its fuse together of the storage and display functions. This integration, so disordered with the screen book, has long proven a sustainable and cheap assurance for cultural transmission. Screen books decouple storage and display breeding multiple, uncertain and recurring costs.

Another positive outcome of competition of the screen book has been focus on the future of the paper book. The paper book has not rolled over and played dead. There has been functional clarification of its roles. While displaced from some reference genres, the paper book has accentuated its role in academic monograph as print on demand has extended its reach. Illustrated books for sciences and arts have advanced as they benefit from digital pre-press design and editing. Partextual features refined for paper magazines, newspapers, journals and books have proven variously difficult or impractical to migrate to the screen. These amenities of reader expectations have prompted major reinventions for the screen including, for example, touch-screen navigations. But at the same time print has an advantage of a highly refined “installed base” of book paratext including such almost invisible fundamentals as pagination, recto/verso duplex, and efficient two page spreads.

Digital technologies have advanced the paper book as much as the networked screen book.

hasta lo que viene

“The book in Spanish is the second largest publishing market in the world and one of the most dynamic in translations. Each year, FIL Guadalajara brings together the most important book-publishing offer in this language through 1,900 participating publishing houses from 40 countries.” FIL

I am just back from the International Book Fair in Guadalajara. This is an annual exposition of Spanish language publishers. This entire publishing sector is still print based. Various factors other than outright conservatism are at work.

As regards infrastructure agility electrostatic printing is growing and extending the reach of printing in general. This print-on-demand is extending to retail installations with Espresso and similar gear. Here the Hispanic world is different as banks, corporations and restaurant chains are significant publishers. There is also a very modern Mexican paper making industry specializing in copier papers.

I did encounter e-book developments with dedicated devices and utilities. These and Spanish e-listings elsewhere may also have a backside with walk-in print-out.

As a generalization, Hispanic culture is intensively visual and book work is dominated by high design and color printing. There is a grounding of the book as a physical work. It is unclear how such traditions will convey to the screen.

gringo

For the gringo the Mexican book arts scene feels like cartels without violence. Famous organizers and their disciples manage markets and cultivate elite addictions. Behind it all a working class of street printers and crafts people survives. Behind the salons, diplomatic concourses and captitolism presumption a small garage, with a quiet, immaculate Intertype keeps the socialist revolution alive.

The gringo can suspect that both enclaves need each other. Haunting melodies of piano cascade as the player reads the obituaries or the gaunt architecture of vaults and a dome with streaming sun stands up before a visual furnace of “admiration and horror” of Orozco frescos. It is scary; the swirling man of fire.

Where are the weaknesses? Much too much elite book art is just work of graphic design folded. Complexity of codex format is circumvented. Calligraphic line brings motion to design but no mobility to reading. There is no link to the legacy and presence of bookbinding.

meanwhile

US mass market paperbacks fell 54% in September and trade paperbacks were flat. Hardcover sales were down 18%. Ebook sales doubled and were up 137% for the first nine months of 2011.

publishing discovery

“If we believe that convenience reading is moving at light speed over to e,” Mr. Schnittman said, using the industry shorthand for e-books, “then we need to think about what the physical qualities of a book might be that makes someone stop and say, ‘well there’s convenience reading, and then there’s book owning and reading.’ We realized what we wanted to create was a value package that would last.” NYT

paper browser

We are off to Mexico. Here the revolution between the network and paper browser rages on. We anticipate a conflict within a conflict as print advocates scroll their touch screens and popular culture finds print futuristic. FIL (International Book Fair, Guadalajara) provides a surprise peaceful landing of Europeans in the Americas.

mise en page

“So habituated to its operation, we often overlook how the page sets the parameters for our engagement with ideas.” Bonnie Mak

How the Page Matters by Bonnie Mak is a great work of book study and book materiality with layers of expert interpretation. Many works address the role of paratext and yet stumble over physical features that enable the paratext to operate. Not this. There is a wonderful description of papyrus, for example. Of especial interest is her skilled explanation of page mechanics across all the display formats, including screen.

“The histories that are constructed upon the digitally encoded page are histories of the digitization, not of its exemplar. Every digital page has a specific materiality and therefore matters in its own way. Suffused with individual circumstances of production, circulation, and transmission, each page is witness to and participates in its own social history, even in the digital present.” Bonnie Mak

drone

In a larger context of automations and robotic displacements the military drone appears to be displacing large varieties of manned missions. This transition offers a suggestive trope for the screen book as a displacer of manned print books. Will the skies be purged of a manned presence? …er, no, the book space will just be more crowded.

pap(e)r

The Print Archive Preservation Registry (PAPR) will coalesce records of holdings of shared print repository. There will also be validation processing but the reason why may not be as apparent as it is compulsive.

The removal of books from research libraries is now underway. Savings, from diminished costs of on-site print, are remarkable even while such saving will be diminished by full costing of the repository operations. Administrators perceive that the move to shared print should not be justified by operational cost savings or reclaimed space alone. The strategic justification is transition toward a more agile and wider service in support of screen based instruction and research. There is also the credible issue of buffering the legacy collections from future risks of wholesale purging by future administrations.

All these changings are being managed on-the-fly. Conventions of the dichotomy of Special and General collections are transcended even as they are jointly dragged forward to determine access, curation and research function of the shared print. Evidently an entirely new status of print collections has emerged without prior operational routines.

Also in limbo at the moment is the actual function of stored print. This is a collection referenced to a simulant collection of screen equivalents. This shadow or phantom identity is itself challenging to understand. The back-up, mastering, and authentication roles are not yet detailed or extracted from their library specializations. And faults are not of the mirror, but of the vanity of perfection. Library print collections copies are well known as imperfect.

being infrastructure

“Preservation is, in fact, one of the library and archive community’s big goals, and digital preservation is relatively well supported. Still, we should always remember that the technical aspects of preservation that we talk about on these lists are merely synonymous with preservation as it appears in our institutional mission statements.

A lot of preservation work (in digital preservation especially) is speculative, asking questions about how long the present state of affairs will continue, what will be necessary for that continuation, and how changes can be made gracefully. As a result, I would suggest that the only realistic conversation to have about preservation management is how to manage risk in a situation where preservation will always be a primary institutional goal, but a secondary operational priority. If you find that paradoxical, I agree, but I think it has the advantage of being an accurate assessment.”
Jake Nadal, UCLA Library

“These girls from Smith College came by and made this print, which still makes me giggle.” Kyle Durrie, Movable Type

feral emu

The overt content of a book results in diversified and variegated meanings as interpreted by different readers. That common observation can obscure an underlying mechanism of diversified meanings. Each reader also presents a different perspective lent by a unique composite of books previously read. Add to this disposition a unique expectation applied to any unread book.

This accentuated display disparity, similar perhaps to the naturalist’s bionic diversity, sets the stage for niche and enclave refuge. Among readers such refuge is found among genre addiction, book club synchronization, and device favoring. Even odd reader behavior could be interpreted using this ecologic approach. Rarified letterpress book fans or, more commonly, specific author readerships take on a protective stance in the wider world.

Such circumstance motivates book consumer services. The alluring Amazon suggestions and emerging retailer systems that “curate” customer behavior open new avenues for reader domestication. But watch out for the feral emu.

paratext super-cession

The new newsstand apps (i-pad, Kindle, Nook) collide paratext conventions of newspapers and magazines. Such a amalgam could then collide with paratext conventions of the book. Experimental booklet “singles” could be a precursor of such convergence. When all such conventions of paratext identity are smashed together the screen publication will have achieved autonomy. That includes autonomy from print publications.

vocabulary

Common words can be specialist terms. Here are some suggested for that subsequent use.

book -format with a speciated paratext expectation
cloud -inherent content of unopened books
convenience-presumptive affordance of screen reading frequently compromised by navigational mis-prompt
connectivity -personal intercession by a higher power
constraint -attribute enabling attentive reading
embodiment -associated material narrative of reading devices
enlace -transpired interdependence of print and screen
interplay-transactions between print and screen
print -paper based display
screen -phosphor or electrophorus display

reading an old book

I recently participated in a study session of an un-cataloged manuscript. It is a collection of sermons and other works attributed to Bonaventure (1217-1274) and it was produced in a German region around the turn of the 15th century.

Two expert paleographers and medievalists investigated the overt and inadvertent paratext and speculated on both exemplar formats and useful life of the manuscript. Various scribes divided the work using quires of fine paper. They copied the Latin and made remarks and asides in medieval German. “This is done and now I need a drink.”

It was suggestive that this examination of the manuscript also required readings by a papermaker and bookbinder. Each of these specialists also had stories to relate and observations to ponder. The object conveyed just as much material text and paratext as the literary manuscript and this information was equally authentic. There was no screen; everything was there in the room.

The transmission potential was huge. It encompassed not only the features apparent, but the whole compilation of evidences, narrations and validations and the specialist readers as well did readings in their own era and yet were transported another. The manuscript was almost knowingly acting as a mediator

revolución

The IBW is off to Guadalajara to join the codex revolution. The scene will be the announcement of the Mexican chapter of the Codex International. A manifesto is already prepared. This will be a side enclave of the International Book Fair.

The question is if this revolution has been pre-empted. There are many book making apps out there. Can the artisans really compete? Or can there be a one revolution within another? Stay tuned.

sidebar

“Eliminating hyperlink distraction. I can’t be the only one out there who finds the mere presence of hyperlinks distracting. Even the majority of times when I don’t follow the links, I find myself struggling to ignore the noise of the unknown: What awaits if I follow that link? Why did the author put the link here and not beneath some other phrase? My mind wanders when what I really want is to focus.
Enabling link evaluation. Sometimes all we readers need is a bit more info about what a link points to. Then we can make better decisions about whether the click or tap is worth our time. In the original excerpt I posted, a curious reader can right-click the link to expose the URL — that at least reveals a citation’s source. But is it worth taking the time to do so? And do most readers even know that trick? I think that simply adding a smidgen more info — for example, what I added in my sketch — could help readers quickly judge the value of the target.
Offering the possibility of adding “read later” tools. Most people know about “time-shifting” reading services like Instapaper and Read It Later. They’re great for scooping up worthwhile reads that we don’t have time for during a busy day. I think it might be interesting to implement a similar service in a document-specific way. That is, give readers a quick way to say, in effect, “that linked article looks great; please hang onto it and give it back to me when I’m finished reading this piece.” I didn’t add that feature to the sketch, but doing so would be a relatively simple matter of adding in some kind of “read it later” icon next to each link.” Peter Meyers from TeleRead

If our reading is interrupted we will read interruption…that is what reading is. These proposals of optional constraint of screen text present a rare affordance of electronic text that enables attentive reading.

reader gift book offer

Special offer! For fifteen dollars ($15) and three dollars ($3) shipping you can get the TWO books; “Future of the Book A Way Forward” and “Adventures in Book Conservation”, both by the emeritus staff of futureofthebook.com. Enjoy 150 action packed pages with illustrations and informative paratext. Email request with subject: “two book offer” to iowa.book.works (at) mchsi (dot) com. Supply shipping address and book will be sent with invoice enclosed. Offer good to 2012. (books available separately for $10 each)