futureofthebook.com

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.

future of reading

“RIT faculty and students are conducting research on the experience of reading in print versus the screen,” says Patricia Sorce, professor and administrative chair of RIT’s School of Print Media. “The conference and the renowned speakers will provide a forum for interaction among participants to discuss whether the newer platforms deliver an enhanced reading experience or whether they detract from the enjoyment of reading and interfere with the comprehension of content.” 2010 Conference

How does the future of the book relate to the future of reading? How does the automobile relate to the highway system? Do you remember where you parked? Do you recall driving across Texas? While driving do you think about the car? Is there any strange noise? Is there any need for a sudden change of lanes? How well are you adapting to GPS display and the apparent neighborhood? With print the rubber hits the road and with screen a voice and arrow talk about a next turn. Who’s car is this? What is an automobile? Should we walk?

FotB will be there at RIT as an industrial spy. Probably walk over to Cayuga Street to visit Keith. Once we spent the night in the rain under the Rock Island railroad viaduct between Peru and Utica, Illinois. Be there and be square.

oxford companion

The Oxford Companion to the Book, a heavy two volume encyclopedia of 1327 pages, is just published perhaps representing a paper Wiki on the topic. There is a series of essays on nationalistic book history followed by an alphabetic listing of terms and biographic description. There are thousands of entries and thousands missing. Two that I looked up; “keyboard” and “book conservation” were not there. I did learn that Google scans books in 430 languages. There is a feeling of an early assumption that the only topic in the entire universe that should never be electronically delivered is the study of the book.

aura

If aura signifies a general quality of older books what is the anatomy of this? We certainly experience the energetic projection of meaning by lifeless objects. There is the overt content, just as you can open a box to see objects inside and also discover that other objects are not there. The authentic array of found objects surprises the investigator. There is also the container and how it opens and closes and any decoration inside or out. These features are not determined but discovered by the observer.

What is going on? Apparently deep self-authentication is radiating from the object or book. The depth of the radiation of meaning is surprising since it responds to any question with confirmation or denial from within its own qualities and without bias toward the observer. The confidence of the engagement is all on one side. Where did the confidence come from? The confidence comes from a past world, as a fossil, to which it is no longer connected, no longer responsive but evocative. It is immune to the present as if it is in a waiting room. We can read the exasperations of the object. Look at aura at Lorcan Demsey’s Weblog.

cool….

George Wheeler, Director of Conservation, Columbia University also made the connection (see previous date posting) between AIC membership rejection of professional certification and underlying mismatch of certification and the actions of practice. We should now “view the pursuit of a certification process not as a failed endeavor but the beginning of a new kind of conversation about definition, identity, and creation of a more intimate connection between thought and action, theory and practice in conservation.”

Another wise emeritus at AIC leaned over to remark that a research paper was so effective “at reducing variables that they were diminished to zero”. So now we must look open ocean and particularly at the specialty of library collection preservation where an autonomous certifying program of instruction has twice encountered an obstacle to sustainability.

a wrap

The action that separated orality from literacy was not the writing of language because this act was for a long time only a prompt for recitation. The transformational act was the folding of the writing substrate. Arbitrarily folding up the papyrus was the template for packet electronic delivery.

beyond slippery slope

“When it comes to the digital networks that now surround us, the fact is that most us can’t just GTFO, even if we wanted to. The sooner we move beyond the addiction metaphor, the sooner we’ll be able to see, with some clarity and honesty, the extent and implications of our dependency on our networked computing and media devices. What happens to the human self as it comes to experience more and more of the world, and of life, through the mediation of the screen?” Nicholas Carr

Potent postings over at Rough Type just now….don’t abstain the screen for the moment.

milwaukee

Powerpoint has enabled us to picture text in ways not possible with Carousel slides. The illustrations and graphics are frequently subverted to captions while the white text does the talking. I wish I knew the plugin to post my own Powerpoint in Word Press, but let me just say I will soon try to post my talk here.

It was a great meeting. I just don’t understand how ALA and AIC meetings are suddenly so explosively exciting. I was under an impression that real meetings were obsolete.

common knowledge

The array of student diversity is a fractal of the array of teaching diversity which is a fractal of the array preservation practice diversity which is a fractal of domains of documentary record transmission and that is a fractal of a dynamic of cultural sustainability. With fractal visualization any level provides the same complexity as any other. Trajectories between levels are products of choice and exclusion that present a democracy of opportunity.

books of the brave

Gary Frost will direct a two week project to install a comprehensive exhibit of the treasures of the Library of the Recoleta in Arequipa Peru. This education exhibit will depict the amazing story of historical libraries in this highland colonial city. Brought together over four centuries and across four oceans these books introduced European learning into equally complex indigenous culture and so advanced dynamics of empire still in motion in the Americas. The exhibit will also project legacies of book craft and book art that now suggest a lively future meaning for these collections.

The project team includes on-site cataloger and exhibit content author, Helen Ryan, on-site specialist bibliographer, Alvaro Meneses, UI Libraries conservator Gary Frost, assistant and support specialist, Joyce Miller and Center for the Book student Bill Voss.

learning library conservation 2.0

There is probably a relation between AIC certification and library conservation training, both dormant. The limbo of students without a school is accentuated by a limbo of AIC certification. What is the larger impasse here? What factors of sustainability are unmet or unmanaged?

Perhaps the target of certification is not appropriate. Another option, rather than certifying students, is to certify the certifiers. AIC and its specialty enclaves could certify instructional programs. These can range widely and may comprise composites that may not include a graduate conservation training program.

Once identified and certified the array of instructional programs can provide a wide assortment of opportunities for the interested student. The student need not follow a linear sequence, but graduate from one to another, perhaps with a recommended goal of a three year sabbatical. A clearing house office, modeled on the PBI, could be maintained and lend a name to the composite training sequence.

There is a legacy logic to the learning sabbatical derived from apprenticeship, but the important adjustment to contemporary needs is circulation between various instructional programs. The student is both sampling and sequentially advancing. Typical student epiphanies and rebellions are easily accommodated.

Another needed layer is high diversity of instructional programs, from municipal craft centers, to academic book studies, to technical and scientific courses, to studio workshops and factory settings. The diversity must be wide to engender a whole ecology of learning which is now so prerequisite for practice.

This multi-context learning approach, taken seriously, will breed its own details. The students will learn, the instructional programs will learn and the certifiers will learn and that dynamic will be sustainable and invigorating.

hmmm…

“But, maddeningly, the cause or causes of the market’s wild swing remained elusive, leaving what amounts to a $1 trillion question mark hanging over the world’s largest, and most celebrated, stock market.”

It was interesting to watch the attentive counting of paper ballots in the recent English election. The very close result, slowly tabulated, is apparently trusted. At the same time other sectors of stock exchange and automotive engineering continue analysis of unintended effects of transition to electronic delivery. We can also wonder, as libraries transition to mixed print and screen services, about surprises in culture transmission.

midnight bus

(See you some weeks later with reports on AIC, Peru and RIT Future of Reading…..)

dedicated eclipse

“Is the iPad going to take over e-books the way the iPod took over music? Will it kill the Kindle device, if not the Kindle bookstore?”

I have just returned from an in-store nook upgrade. It now provides a reasonable web browser and a screen contrast and sharpness better than Kindle 1 (which is better than 2). But all the front-lit electrophoric, dedicated reading devices may be eclipsed by back-lit multi-purpose devices. The constraints of print are attributes and that the constraints of dedicated devices may not be appreciated indicates the multi-purpose destiny of screen reading.

off to oz

FotB is off to AIC in Milwaukee. Only one enclave is even remotely interested in our “repent or burn” message. This is the library collections conservation discussion group. Our mini-moment is titled “Continuing Role of Print Collections in a Context of their Digital Delivery: Preservation Risks and Preservation Responses”. A better world will be visualized with Print Alcove, Leaf Master, and Strategic Future fulfilling the promised land for print. Next we go to an ALA/ALCTS:PARS-RBMS program at Annual (see below) and then to a whole fall seminar on the future of the book.

Strategic Future of Print Collections

This program, co-sponsored by PARS and RBMS, will be of interest to those concerned with long term access to and status of print collections. A summary bibliography will be provided.

(10:30am – Noon, Sunday, 27 June 2010, Washington Convention Center, Room #206)

affordances

Mystery about Print affordances came up in the last Webinar from ITHAKA S+R. It’s a bit amusing that there should be such mystery about how print could have exclusive attributes not inherently present in their screen equivalents. There really isn’t mystery about attributes exclusive to print, but what is a bit mysterious is why screen equivalents of print are so devoid of those same attributes. The print attributes that I have in mind come under headings of navigation, legibility, persistence, authentication and constraint.

Navigation: This is the attribute of haptic communication in which the manipulation of the mechanical format conveys additional meaning without distracting comprehension of content. Primate dexterity and a deeply embedded capacity for hands to prompt the mind are fully optimized by the codex mechanism.

Legibility: There is nothing more illegible than a black screen. Network loading and interruption, application, device and platform incompatibilities, battery drain and power requirements impair screen legibility. Browser default line length and justification distortions reach extremes of illegibility. The printed page is immediately legible.

Persistence: Print is passively persistent and provides both storage and display functions for a single, one-time cost Screen persistence is not assured due to content decay and mutability, provider interventions or demise and multiple media, software and hardware obsolescence’s. Fail-safe eye legibility is an exclusive print attribute.

Authentication: Print is self-authenticating with a capacity to sustain continued forensic and bibliographic investigation. The overt nature of print content assures a positive or negative result for queries. Print content and its material presence is inherently immutable.

Constraint: The constraints of print are attributes. The material constraint eases economies of authorship and production, and packages research and creative investment. Constraints of book design, typography, papermaking, printing and binding assure direct delivery to readers. Assured re-reading across time and cultures provide research validity and organization.

……………..(Addressograph)…………… Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1960 from wood s lot

about book reading

“Physical books and e-books are both text at their cores. Book designers long ago established rigorous rules for laying out text blocks so they disappear to the reader. They took pride in turning the physicality of a book into a tool for efficiently and elegantly getting information into the mind of the reader. As any good typographer knows: the best typography goes unnoticed.

Our e-readers seem to have forgotten this heritage. They’ve forgotten that their core purpose is simply to present text as comfortably as possible; to gently pull the reader into the story. Every other aspect of experiencing a book is predicated on this notion.” Craig Mod

The elegance of truth and an expose of the book reading distinction between back and front lit display. Here the more silent display of front lit (Kindle) is compared with the chattier back lit display (Apple iPad). There is the equally important projection of the ease and challenge of the destiny of electronic book delivery. All presented in fine style, good telling and clear graphic. A classic. See also Books in the Age of IPad and the endless comment scroll.

Also watch the Text 2.0 video.

book about book

The Thread That Binds tells of interviews and visits with hand bookbinders. The interviews are gracefully conveyed and written by Pamela Luetz and the editing flows along both as a road trip and a happy parade. The weaving of the stories is a happy work of bookbinding itself.

The book does tell a compelling story and the voices of Pamela’s subjects are each authentic. I have had the wonderful privilege of knowing and working with many of them and can I recognize them each. The compelling part is how tangential, yet fulfilling each of their lives has been. Each of these bookbinders has invented themselves and each has a deviant streak. This tells us all something.

indeed…

I have this note from Kristin: “I found this david levy talk on youtube… thought you might be interested…”

Layers of meaning here. Levy’s initiative to bring mindfulness to the on-line experience is so refreshing and suggestive; a sudden breeze. His identification of the library as a contemplative space that is everywhere rings a bell. His rapport with the Google geeks is way cool, his timing is impeccable and the voyeur youtube presence is fun.

homestead rocket

“Volunteers are invited to participate this summer in the operation of the 1950’s Print Shop in Homestead Iowa. We will be demonstrating small town letterpress and be printing our fifth edition of the Homestead Rocket. This is a great opportunity to learn and teach and feed the goats.

The Homestead Print Shop is a joint project of the Center for the Book and the Amana Heritage Society. We will be participating in a larger Saturday program of Amana heritage interpretation and we will also augment the Friday Farmers’ Market newly relocated to Homestead. The proposed dates for Homestead Print Shop operation are June 18/19, July 2/3, 9/10, 16/17, 23/24, 30/31, August 6/7, 13/14, 20/21 and September 3/4. Our sessions run from 10am to 4 pm. Homestead is about 14 miles west of Iowa City. To volunteer contact Gary Frost.”

Each time I step into this old shop there is a lovely surge of smell of animals, smithing and printing. We look out of the windows on scenes shared by the Amana Colonists; unchanged except for the location of the geese. The Linotype starts again and we publish all the News that can be gathered in that place.

scrivener

“New York-based theater collective Group Theory probes the psychosonic landscapes of Herman Melville’s classic novella Bartleby, the Scrivener in an intimate chamber ritual that transforms the private act of reading into a communal encounter. A strange literary-theatrical hybrid, this Bartleby is a performed palimpsest of rereadings, a hyper-lucid window onto a famously difficult text in all its haunting ambiguity and violent comedy.”

This off-Broadway production by futureofthebook.org refugee Ben Vershbow echoes Terry Belanger’s production of Samuel Johnson at home.

residual risks

An OCLC report rates risks of transition in the operation of US research libraries. Risks apparent are those associated with unexamined continuation of practitioner routines and collection agendas but corrective measures also engender their own risks. So the challenge is optimal navigation of the assured transition. So suggests the report.

Many other sectors have already encountered subtle and then disastrous consequence from transition of physical product to electronic delivery. So far the libraries have adventured as much as possible into on-line access and digital resource while continuing maintenance of print. Now the time has arrived for libraries to deliberately align or dis-align with the strategic plans of their parent institutions.

The most decisive position will be alignment with direct service to faculty first and administrative agenda secondarily. As with the canny local support for public libraries, faculty strategists are finding their best agenda is support of the library, not only as an expedient buyer of resources, but as a mediator of the compounding and shifting multiplicity of the media that scholars must now navigate daily.

The implication of the assured transition from print to screen is also theme to the skewed ITHAKA S+R faculty survey (see below). The “same direction” trend of all disciplines to increasing dependence on screen resources should be tempered by any relevance of growth from a zero base. Advent of telegraph resulted in wide ranging dependence too.

future history of publishing

A floating format, a serialized novela, on the history of publishing 2010 to 2020 is useful. The collapse of the large publishing houses echoes the subtle and then disastrous possibilities of industrial sectors that mismanage electronic delivery of physical product.

Other features of the future include the rise of smaller scale independent publishers who collude with freelancing application developers and authors to produce exactly the works that customer profiles outline.

It will also be a surprise to learn of the resurgence of the physical book.

logic of logic

Print books are manipulated directly as prerequisite to access. Interdependence of content and format is taken for granted and the print book reading experience rehearses and confirms a merge of artifact and information.

Does the logic of interdependence of material format and content reading in the print book template another interdependence between the print and screen book? Perhaps if print plays the role of artifact and screen plays the role of information.

ithaka s+r

The ITHAKA S+R Faculty Survey (April 2010) reflects responses on the role of the library, influence of digital research methodology and trends in scholarly communication. An assumption of transition from print to digital resources is projected.

The analysis can be considered skewed in terms of questions posed and results interpreted without due qualification. Skewed emphasis is illustrated by a focus on search and discovery components of research confirming that research begins with on-line resources but without due regard to subsequent components of the process.

The skew is also apparent with an assumption that monograph transition to digital equivalents will follow a model of journal transition. Here inertia, rather than circumspection, is attributed to faculty preference. The transition is represented as incomplete rather than conflicted. A logic of preference for screen access is quickly extended to a logic of format super-cession that extinguishes the function of print.

Consideration of an entire anatomy of interdependence of print and screen, of source and surrogate is avoided in this survey interpretation. The possibility that digital access augments the authentication role of print is absent. Just such a transaction from source to representation has long been modeled by language translation and the layers of such transaction, from underlying code to legible screen access or from print source to screen parsing, is avoided.

Another inversion of interpretation is support for preservation. Here a faculty advocacy for preservation is turned to advocacy for digital preservation without regard to distinction between owned and leased resources. The institutional burden of preservation has been assumed as a corollary of outright ownership of print collections. Subscription access re-transacts this logic of sustainability. Faculty advocacy for digital preservation may actually reflect a longing for institutional ownership of library resources.

Another amusing misconstrue is apparent in the positive faculty response for preservation of e-books even though there is little interest in their use. The reason that dedicated reading devices which most closely simulate their print sources are not preferred over print sources is just that; that they are most equivalent, yet inferior. As with surviving microfilm copies of disappeared newspapers there is a desperate need for preservation of the simulation.

Finally there is the ultimate skew of the digital transition. Here the advance of digital transition in scientific disciplines is posed as a challenge in library service. The libraries must not only chase the new paradigm of digital access to serve science, but also prepare for the on-coming “wind down” of print and super-cession by screen reading for humanist disciplines.

Has it ever occurred that scientific disciplines and practitioners may now lack exactly the humanist access and perspective that libraries are encouraged to discard? David Levy recently lectured on the topic and a larger challenge for scientific data sets posed by their very commodification of questions of source and simulation.

two nicks

There is a flurry of excellent provocation and excellent commentary at Rough Type. Discussion includes the advent of the post book where the book becomes an app or way of reading rather than the object for reading. The i-Pad is emerging either early or late in the evolution of personal electronic connectivity and the cloud indicates the storm of the digital darkage.

As a preservation prophet Nicholas Carr begins to appear as the digital Nicholson Baker. He senses threats and risks of culture transmission and sides with most precarious patrimony. But now the loss is not just the authentic newspapers but the authentic news; the actual truth or actual author’s intent or actual authentic source and trustworthy re-access. Nicholson and Nicholas suggest that we need to preserve preservation as a logic.

authentication

The authentication role is not as apparent when the focus is on outright paper to screen transition. However, the physical original will sustain continued forensic and bibliographic investigation. Another attribute of this capacity is the overt nature of physical evidence; the feature is either present or not present. Screen representation of documents cannot fulfill this role, even with more elaborate description.

In various sectors, from credit finance to elections to automotive controls, we have noticed a subtle and then devastating influence of loss of trust in products that transition from physical to electronic delivery. Libraries, archives and museums should be attentive to such outcomes.

As we move forward with certification of repositories, collections and items as accessed on the screen, we should also be alert for the efficient and economic roles that source physical collections can play in exactly that certification.

green i-pad

“With e-readers like Apple’s new iPad and Amazon’s Kindle touting their vast libraries of digital titles, some bookworms are bound to wonder if tomes-on-paper will one day become quaint relics. But the question also arises, which is more environmentally friendly: an e-reader or an old-fashioned book?” NYT

thresholding

In the book realm there is distinction between writing and reading. Perhaps this is legacy of manuscript and print as one signified writing and the other reading. Now it is fashion to reconfigure the book realm digitally. OK, why not synthesize book writing and reading? Writing was reading as the author rewrote and reading was writing as the reader overwrote, or re-visualized, the text.

We could begin a future of the book synthesis with a keyboard. That is, a device of revision distributed to each reader. Slates, tablets, pads and pods appear as pure delivery devices but can bring up a touch keypad. Print books appear as pure delivery devices but can be mirrored by such devices. Just what kind of distance is there between?

The distance between is a threshold, the difference between lurking and discourse. And thresholds encountered in books are there for a reason. We do not need to dissipate them, but engage them. Can we use the threshold between paper and screen? A perfect place to start would be textbooks where the paper book could sustain unison reading and the device mirror could correlate homework and in-class commentary. The same goes for the academic monograph engaging both the scholarly record and community discourse.

All the other genres could be tempted into this thresholding. FotB smoke and mirrors?; Read both books by Marilyn Deegan and Kathryn Sutherland, Print and the Digital World and Digital Technology and the Froms of Print. “Marilyn Deegan did her PhD at Manchester the same time as me, and Kathryn Sutherland was my eighteenth-century tutor! I’ll get the book.” Elaine Treharne, Florida State book studies program

i-pad footprint

“For all of this content to be delivered to us in real time, virtual mountains
of video, pictures and other data must be stored somewhere and be
available for almost instantaneous access. That ‘somewhere’ is data
centres – massive storage facilities that consume incredible amounts
of energy.” GreenPeace report

costing

A possible method of comparison of energy cost for paper or screen books is to discount the common overhead associated with both. Leave either a print book or a computer out in the rain and they become unreadable. Beyond that there is a difference in prerequisites for reading. Print books require space and screen books require electricity. Space for shelves and book opening are needed for print libraries. On the other side there is nothing more illegible than a black screen.

These prerequisite requirements of legibility may be a wash and the full life cycle costs of both products could be debatable and complex. Imagine mapping the life cycle costs of batteries! Other energy costs are in delivery, device display and data storage, especially in a longer term. Here print has a distinctive attribute that is a single one-time cost for delivery, device display and data storage while these costs are all separated and extendable with electronic books.

There are other kinds of costing as well. These are costs for sustainability in content certification and authentication and outright persistence of service. The research libraries have a good record of persistence and a preservation mission that is necessarily lacking in the corporate world. In other words, research libraries factor a “cost” for culture transmission provided by reliable reaccess. In this perspective print has yet to be obsolete and can bridge our cultural needs.

i-reader

“As a text delivery system, the iPad is perfectly suited to readers who don’t read anymore.” Nicholas Carr

self-indexing

Walt Crawford’s Cites and Insights is Google indexed. It works well, but how can this corpus of historical review of the transitions of libraries and book transmission be used? The old FotB saw suggests that the counterpoint of self-indexing is self-authentication and this is a bridge that can be crossed two ways. A prime agenda is authentication of the influence of magnification, a distortion to which all media based discourse is vulnerable. Is “news” well managed or does its management engender managed news?

Walt provides our most comprehensive, skilled and insight enriched news of the transitions of libraries and book transmission. Perhaps Google Search can confirm the excellence of his news management.

rejected

“Thank you for your submission to the “Ebooks as Bibliographical
Objects” panel. I received over a dozen proposals and had to make
tough choices. Yours was not among the papers I am accepting.”

> A Logic of Their Interdependence: Complementary Attributes of the Print and Screen Book
>
> “The lively connectivity of the screen is an attribute but the constraint of print is an attribute as well.”
>
> This presentation will consider the logic of interdependence between the paper and e-book renditions of the same title. Precedent for interdependence between print and screen is provided by the era of newspaper microfilming. Today interdependence between paper and e-books emerges in a context of intensive screen delivery of print collections generally. Synergistic (1) device navigation, (2) marketing and retailing, (3) delivery format and classroom logistic indicate a persistent interaction. E-book market response now prompts print-on-demand sales and library certification of digital imaging of books prompts certification of print masters. The complementary nature of print and screen editions is confirmed as self indexing screen and self authenticating print both prove strategic to research. The presentation will illustrate each sub topic.

Its always fun to surmise if the topic of the strategic future of print will infringe or not infringe the strategic future of e-books. It is also fun to sense the strictures that each camp imposes on wider views.

scrolling forward

“Trained in computer sciences at Stanford, Levy was a researcher at Xerox/PARC and a practitioner of calligraphy and bookbinding before taking up the library sciences appointment at Washington. He is the author of Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age and his current work calls for an information environmentalism to parallel movements in climate control and environmental sustainability in the natural world.”

David Levy presented an excellent lecture on the advent of the computer based writing system. He was there and he was tempered by another training in crafts and calligraphy. Now he is taking his attentive approach to another agenda. Why have libraries always allured us with their aura of a place for contemplation and how can that mood shift readjust a sense of information overload, speed-up, fragmentation and distraction?

He has applied for an IMLS planning grant to introduce workshops of mindfulness and contemplation to busy libraries. Already librarians are drawn to his challenge to find a new Zen of on-line connectivity. Together this quiet permaculture, native to libraries, will turn an addiction into a surge of personal fulfillment.

prairie lights

President Obama made a visit to Iowa City yesterday. He stopped in at Prairie Lights bookstore and if you look at the NYT front page picture you will see him at a photo moment holding up Rove and Romney print books. Imagine him achieving this iconic moment with electrophoric devices.

There really is no particular linkage between e-book growth and indie book store prospects. Amazon is actually using e-book sales to predict print sales. And both print-on-demand and ultra high speed print copy scanning suggest new two-way transactions between paper to screen and screen to paper in a larger growth of book reading.