Welcome!

Can you describe, very briefly, the scope of this web site?

This web site visualizes the future of the codex book. We consider hybrid topics between reading behaviors, traditional book use in the context of digital delivery systems, library preservation and book art. An underlying concept is that libraries are playing out the future of the traditional book right now. In this perspective, libraries play as large a role as a progressive publishing industry, an avant guard book arts community or enticing technologies of book equivalents.

You mention that there is a fulfillment infrastructure at this site. What do you mean by this?

Here you will find
COMMENTARY, antiquated, long pontifications,
REPORTS, current, short notices of meetings and events,
WORKSHOPS, hands-on sessions presenting FotB book making methods,
STORE, a place to get
Iowa Book Works book craft kits, and a brief page of
LINKS. These resources are intended to provide context for the continuing coverage of relevant contingencies at
NEWS.
There is also a VOCABULARY explaining terms used at this web site
a
GLOSSARY of bookbinder’s terms and a
BIBLIOGRAPHY of sources on the history and future of books.

Is there an FotB manifesto?

Screen based discovery, research, and connectivity augments the relationships between books. In libraries these resources act like bibliographic utilities, helping to find books, but not replacing them. The scenario in which digital resources supplant print resources has not occurred and the attributes of the codex book have been sustained in the context of digital delivery and screen reading. These are attributes of legibility or immediacy of meaning, haptic efficiency using the hands to prompt the mind and persistence or dependable transmission across time and cultures.

Can readers contact you?

I welcome any comments! My name is Gary Frost and my email is <g.frost@mchsi.com>. There is also a picture of me.