futureofthebook.com

scraped

“Beautiful books. Made by you. Start tonight.” (on your computer)

Our Coralville scrapbook store and workshop is closing. Another closed, too. The independent scrapbook retail industry has suddenly collapsed. Just a few years ago there were over 5,000 stores nationally, now there are only a few hundred. This was once a paper converters dream, a two billion dollar a year side-stream. A bit of printing, cutting and packaging provided a huge markup and the retail outlets cultivated consumption of paper and product. Gone now.

Gone as well, perhaps, the practice of documenting family history on paper. No more. Photographs, typescripts, drawings and scrapbook arrays; they are all history. We are technically more advanced now. Eclipse of the remaining paper market away from independents to discount chains is an issue as well as a general migration to digital scrapbooking. It is estimated that half of domestic photography may be printed but in another sense 100% of it is not and may be consumed on screen.

ibw

Iowa Book Works, a local of the International Book Workers, has risen up again in the annals of codex destiny. This little workshop of book craft and digital printing is now participating in the new economy and busy every day. There is a mood of prosperity.

We make Ethiopian kits with Mahdar, perfect for Occupiers and other activists. There is also an adventure series on new book economies. These are sold on-line where we join a movement of epiphany bookmakers and book craft suppliers. Watch the video. In addition to Epiphany other long-time book kit makers that continue to prosper include Green Heron and Volcano. We are at Iowa Book Works.

the scene

The scene is set in an old Thompson Café. The floor is terrazzo and the wall behind the booths white tile. At one time you could look through the window lettering and see streetcars passing, but they are gone now. Regulars once smoked in the back booth and you can still see silhouettes in smoke tar where generations have leaned.

She returns to exchange devices and remarks; “I notice that you are reading the Frost book too.” “Yeah, it was assigned in my class.” as he looks up and notices how equivalent they seem. “Did you believe Quixote in the print shop? It sounded like a misunderstanding.” “Oh, I don’t know, it sounded plausible.” An older lady, further down the counter looked up from the meatloaf special. She began to watch the exchange itself.

Elizabeth Eisenstein discusses such moments in her new book; Divine Art, Infernal Machine; The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending. She illustrates that early in the history of book printing the proliferation had already produced “bewilderment and melancholy”, overload and scarcity. The advancing technology became something of an opposite of a determinant. Power agendas, theological positions and social ideologies were all conflicted and institutional strategies dissolved. Attitudes toward printers and the power of print were distinguished by extreme ambivalence.

(excerpt from a new IBW thriller)

neither either or

Dr. Stephan Füssel, chair of the Gutenberg-Institute of Book Studies and spokesperson for the Media Convergence Research Unit at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. “This study provides us with a scientific basis for dispelling the widespread misconception that reading from a screen has negative effects,” explains Füssel. “There is no (reading) culture clash – whether it is analog or digital, reading remains the most important cultural technology.”

This is the same Dr. Füssel who introduced e-ink and “haptic” affordance at the 2001 SHARP session on the future of the book. The study is reported at Science Daily.

books in browsers

Internet Archive and O’Reilly Media will stream a two day conference (tomorrow) on ebook prospects. Abstracts present a useful overview of the transactions. “Ignite talks are special format where each speaker has just five minutes to share their personal and professional visions in 20 slides, auto-advancing every 15 seconds.” Also go through the live links of ebook innovators.

Brewster Kahle: Open Library
Rochelle Grayson : BookRiff
Henrik Berggren : Readmill
Eli James : Pandamian
Hugh McGuire : Pressbooks
Mogens Nielsen : Flatleaf
Miral Sattar : BiblioCrunch
Ricky Wong : Mobnotate
Justo Hidalgo : 24Symbols
Mikkel Ricky : Systime iBogen
Michael Morgan : Re-Vinyl

This conference presents the fourth estate; innovators of ebook publishing and the larger industry of book publishing. The other domains are research libraries, book art and craft disciplines and academic book studies. There is still insularity and self-reference of these perspectives concerning the future of the book, but it is interesting that each are now looking ahead with conference proceedings. Content processors, historical investigators, studio transformers and reader mediation diagnosticians; the enclaves of ebook entrepreneurs, book artists, book researchers and librarians are all participating in a time of new incunabula.

We have given consideration to enclaves of research libraries, academic book studies and book arts and crafts. These are each constituents in the future of the book. We have also given glancing notice to another constituent even more influential than the others. This is the enclave of ebook innovators and its surrounding industry of book publishing. Taken together these stake holders should have some sway over the destiny of the book but they are all clinicians of the most influential group of all; book readers.

And yet, put every interested group together and we can notice that the destiny of the book is beyond manipulation. This has been demonstrated with episodes such as transitions between scroll and codex, or the advent of printing, or the influence of technologies of word processing, or reflexive courses of reformation and counter-reformation. As with the Linotype, the past tells us more about the future.

futures of the book

“The Past, Present, and Future of the Book, Friday-Saturday, February 3-4, 2012, Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa. The explosion of new digital book technologies has paradoxically energized more traditional studies of the book. This conference, to be hosted by the Cornell College Department of English and Creative Writing in Spring 2012, aims to advance cross-curricular work and to foster on-going collaborations in scholarship and teaching by bringing together scholars, artists, and librarians from multiple disciplines who are interested in the past, present, and future of the book. Interdisciplinary break-out sessions will identify and develop pedagogical best practices and may lead to team-taught courses or publications in scholarly journals. Participants will leave with innovative plans for scholarly collaboration, new courses and assignments related to the book.”

FotB will participate with a review of future of the book conferences and seminars. It can be observed that a topic central to media mediation still requires face-to-face transactions.

verge of an episode

We are on the verge of a different episode in the history of the book. Responsible approach must include serious regard and practitioner focus on issues and a measured response and mapping of the study of the future of the book. We can favor working seminars in the early stages both to tease out the scope and topics. It is amazing how much ground is out there. What is driving the continuing enthusiasm for scrapbooking? What is self-publishing if not a quirk of manuscript tradition? How embedded are paratext expectations? What is the book reader’s stake in touch-screen haptic? And so on…

de-dedication

Kindle8 now supports html5. Among the prospects for de-dedication of the black book reader is the mash-up of genre paratext structures. The comics panel composite, the childrens’ pop-up and animation, the newspaper side-bar and inset, and the march of cook book paratext are all due for a make-over display. Reader expectations will be mushed together.

The identity of the book as embodied in paratext of headers, pagination, page design, index and so on will be dissolved followed by dissolve of book genres and book reader expectations. Meanwhile all books will be displayed on a single device as a fundamental dissolve of the state of a book. The devices are the decoy allure to this eclipse.

Does anyone doubt that print will persist if only to offer context for this metamorphosis?

hott blog

Professor Elaine Treharne of the History of Text Technologies posts comments of interest for the future of the book at her blog.

emeritus prospectus2

…er, another book, a fabulous adventure also ten dollars plus three shipping. Just send your mailing address with subject “book order” to iowa.book.works (at) mchsi (dot) com.

Adventures in Book Conservation

This is an album of various investigations of interest to the specialty of book conservation. There are short studies in book structure history and various narratives of book conservation methods. Whatever your own interest in books, I hope you can find some enjoyment and germinate some questions.

All the best,

Gary Frost
Iowa Book Works
Coralville, IA

Book Structure History
Advent of Case Construction Book Binding
Paper Binding: Advancing the Codex
Sewn Board Book Binding More Than a Thousand Years Later
Scenes from U.S. Book Production in the Mid-19th Century
Future of Wooden Board Book Binding

Book Conservation Method
Adaptation of Sewn Board Structure to Book Conservation Practice
18th Century Pamphlet Rebinding
Sized Papers and Augmented Adhesives Using Gelatin
Structure and Action in Book Binding
Swan Song for Book Conservation

abstract

The book now spans both print and screen formats. Close attention to this circumstance of mixed delivery options reveals a surprisingly complementary and interdependent relation of affordances and a third stance going forward.

Specialty enclaves of library preservation, academic book studies, and studio book arts are moving beyond contentions or “tipping points” to a fulcrum position of interaction between print and screen books. Other, wider sectors of publishers, educators, authors and information technologists are also assembling a composite stance.

Components of the composite stance include continuing print book roles of back-up, mastering and authentication in a context of its own screen delivery. Interplay between screen and print emerges in complements of storage and display, navigation and device access. Persistence and display functions of print are fused together while screen books disengage persistence and display resulting in distinctions of costs, editorial management and reference transactions. Navigational interplays mingle codex manipulations and touch screen prompts each with different implications for neurology and comprehension. Print and screen devices interplay fulfillment services, connectivity and portability. Gratuitous linkage of screen convenience with print displacement is examined as well as other risks to reliable transmission of literary culture.

Projection of a continuing interdependence of print and screen book as a longer-term future for the book is offered. Research agendas, conference reports and a bibliography of publications concerning the future of the book are provided.

prospectus emeritus

For ten dollars and three dollars shipping you can get the book; “Future of the Book A Way Forward” by the editorial staff of futureofthebook.com. Enjoy 90 action packed pages with illustrations and informative paratext. Email request with subject: “book order” to iowa.book.works (at) mchsi (dot) com. Supply shipping address and book will be sent with invoice enclosed.

last laugh

“A newspaper is tactile, engages all the senses, and leads to more immersive reading than what people might do online.” Arun Gupta, OWSJ

Occupied Wall Street Journal has put out a second issue. This paper newspaper is a polished graphic work with Thomas Paine essay copy. Its Kickstarter project funding is wildly successful. OWSJ is another pilot of a new economy where the product is given away while the underlying advocacy is sold. People wish to consume in support of causes that they believe in. It’s a new economy

Meanwhile the street demonstrations feed the news cycle and the media searches for the motive or agenda of the rabble. The actual demand is for new economies beyond and outside the collusion of corporations, banks and politics. Only a good newspaper can express, distribute hand to hand and document for the future such a revolution.

equipoise

The sweep of the book reading devices continues as their presence in retail stores and their access to collections surges forward. It reminisces the sweep from film-based cameras or wired home phones. Is the print book about to be displaced?

Well we should look at the activities that these device types enable. Those would be pictures, conversations and book reading. Interfacing each device is a bionic user. For the reader it is almost impossible to distinguish a digital picture from a film derived picture and it also just about as impossible to distinguish the digital from analog conversation, at least in terms of transacted communication. But what about the equivalence of print and screen for the book reader?

Almost anyone can distinguish a paper book from an ebook. A variety of functional and physical distinctions are at hand and the reading experience is materially different. But so is riding a horse compared with driving a car. Is the equipoise of the equestrian about to be shifted?

Previously invisible features of print book are emerging in a new context of screen books. The paradox of transmission of conceptual works via physical objects is one of these. Perhaps conceptual transactions are embodied to paper because this act itself mimics a deep efficiency of discovering concepts by physical manipulation. We can also look in another place to understand transmission of conceptual works as physical objects. This would be in the field of book art. Here the object and its screen simulation co-operate together. Even the practitioner artists sometimes miss this obvious realization.

The book art object invites solitary manipulative investigation free of competition with its own screen representation. Meanwhile the screen presentation transcends that solitary soliloquy and within its audience context, has its own richness where visual and textual parsing can be navigated and rehearsed with the aid of Power Point projection. The object invites authentication of subtle detail, material elegance and typographic and graphic command. The sheen of the screen invites encoded indexing of the work among genres, practitioners and critical regards. Just such a modeling of print/screen interplay constitutes a strategic stance and a crucial role of book art going forward. And if that was not enough, the images of screen presentation of book art convey nicely back to print where they can be precisely augmented with exposition.

future conferences

“Although the digital revolution is possibly the most radical change in the history of writing, one can wonder how other similar transitions fared: from the scroll to the codex, from manuscript to printed book, from printing on the handpress to machine and offset printing, from writing by hand to writing on the typewriter and the word processor?”

The number of future of the book conferences, recent and up-coming is increasing, albeit from a zero base. This London conference as well as the SHARP annual should be curious.

in the basket

The four color Ricoh aflicio is wirelessly networked through the Airport router to our three terminals. This is an infrastructure that a few decades ago only a publishing house could aspire to. Meanwhile authors of all kinds are becoming their own publishers. We put the rat’s nest of wires, modem and node in a handmade basket.

new economy

Meanwhile, in a down economy, health services continue as a fabulous growth sector. But care of our bodies hardly extends to regard for the well being of books. This inequity now exists at a time of new urgency for the longevity of books.

What has changed is that the conceptual works that librarians evaluate and organize are now more mortal than they are. This adds a futility to the work of librarianship. The churn and transience is regarded a virtue of electronic discourse, but, unfairly, the resulting distraction is allocated to librarianship. Next librarians will be blamed for biased enclaves of political action when the librarian’s objective and discipline-neutral approach to information is the antidote needed. Here, again, the allure of wide, global connectivity is attributed to the electronic discourse and any dysfunction is left to librarians.

paratext 3

“In sum, an index is a kind of a collection of pre-made searches: rather than diving headlong and unawares into a search oval’s do-it-yourself void, an index presents would-be searchers with an already assembled, alphabetized list of the 500 or so most common query items.” Peter Meyers, TeleRead

Curiously it is exactly paratext that screen book advocates intend to abandon or revamp. We should pause before dissolving or disrupting such an anatomy. For one thing it is a two-way bridge and disregard of book paratext could play out in derangements. This is an actual neurological scenario and Nicholas Carr has offered extensive discussion of that topic. We should also pause before dissolving or disrupting a premise of intermediation between those who work closely with physical books and those who work to assure their optimal screen delivery.

Don’t believe that paratext is the defining trait of the book? Try negotiation of a hypertext mystery, a Twitter feed novel, or book reading interrupted with e-mail, blog postings, absent pagination, pop-up live link, search or commentary. Paratext features of the book must be stretched across such new mediation and yet remain consistent with bionic needs of the reader. If patterns of comprehension are interrupted we will be reading interruption. Reading is like that.

paratext 2

“The codex is built for nonlinear reading — not the way a Web surfer does it, aimlessly questing from document to document, but the way a deep reader does it, navigating the network of internal connections that exists within a single rich document like a novel. “ NYT Review of Books

paratext

The entire editorial staff of FotB is currently assigned to the book; The Future of the Book; A Way Forward. So other postings may be few.

There is no lack of contention over the future of the book. There is presumption of sudden shift from print to screen by advocates as they await the digital rapture. At the same time there is also a persistence of the iconic role of the physical book as print advocates await their vindication. Such stand-offs can’t be productive. An option and the premise of this discussion is to look exactly between such stances at a tertiary identity for the book now.

Simple assumptions from both viewpoints have long been discredited; simple super-cession or exchange of print books by screen books has not occurred and assured persistence of print books in a context of their screen delivery has not arrived.

why write books?

A need to convey concepts out of body and into objects is a species characteristic. It proved advantageous to social evolution and even across the longer reach of species evolution. The current interplay of this out-of-body tactic of cultural transmission is interesting as a more traditional manuscript to print migration is now mediated by an intermediate state of manuscript to screen option that dissipates the transformation of ideas into objects.

long room battle

“The Trinity Long Room Hub is pleased to announce that it will host the 2012 conference of the Society for the History of Authorship Reading and Publishing (SHARP) at Trinity College Dublin in June 2012. The theme of the conference will be ‘The Battle for Books’. The conference will begin on the afternoon of Tuesday 26 June 2012 and end on Friday 29 June 2012.”

Also public symposium on the Future of the Book, October 18, 2011, Iowa City.

guess what?

FotB and its production arm of Iowa Book Works is going to produce a book; Future of the Book: A Way Forward.

“We are meandering into important moment in the history of the book. Popular expression has it that we are at a “tipping point” but we are more likely positioned at a fulcrum. Just beyond the trivialities of polarized advocates, the distinctive features of screen and print books have suddenly come into in plain view as the formats actively define each other. Eventually a synthesis will emerge to obscure such origins but it is too early for that. Synthesis has occurred before as with manuscript and print. But for now, between print and screen books, it is a weird moment.

For now we can look exactly between the screen and print book. We can observe interplay and teetering. We can confirm an old adage of media studies that new mimics old and old begins to mimic new as inter-players anticipate a synthesized transmission role together. Other interplays of scroll and codex, manuscript and print, print and paper or electrophoric and phosphor display all present this pattern of synthesis. The advent of literacies and exchange of folded correspondence first dramatized the continuing saga of interplay between scroll and codex. Cycles of manuscript and print continue and a swing from Latin cannon to vernacular genre energized the synthesis of printing and paper . An interplay of display adapted best to daylight or dark offers a mini-epic for book reading devices today.

Trivialities are everywhere. Print book advocates always mention the smell and feel of books and screen advocates always mention a good story or the disembodied content and they disdain digital rights management or other obstacles to free content. Each grasps at distinctive affordances of their favorite medium, but those affordances deserve much better definition. Some specialist communities have capacity to provide such definitions. For example the library preservation community is one of the few that can actually explain the continuing role of print books in a context of their screen delivery.”

book watching

What about book reading device mobility and portability? The trend has been to smaller and evermore connected devices. This trend may reflect our own physical and mental mobility while it also suggests consequences of books acting as out-of-body conceptual works.

Paper books have a tendency to become sessile. As they accumulate in small or large amounts they become immobile and non-portable and the student backpack load drives promotion of the screen textbook. Early book reading devices were scaled as dictionary weight items, but miniaturization took over trending all the way to wristwatch format. A strange implication being that books can be so mobile and portable that they disappear.

Mobile computing generally has both a futuristic and passé connotation, but what is the implication for books? Size, weight and connectivity associated with book display could be a zone of special influence of electronic devices on the future of the book. Not that print books have not adventured far and wide with such factors, but that screen display will shift literary genres, episodic formats and reading opportunities in odd, new ways. Here mobility and portability of the screen book devices may prove more influential than hypertext, multi-media, or book searching or book enhancements together.

Stay tuned…

a suggested method

“Annotations created this week are likely very consistent with annotations created last week, etc. But as we learn, we can’t really go back and resolve earlier inconsistency. We have a constant struggle to maintain consistency between the online database, the print edition, and InfoHawk.” Special Collections Curator

Various inconsistencies haunt descriptions of book bindings. Many terms are ambiguous (i.e., hinge and joint or spine and back) and, if taken altogether, represent vocabularies of different practices (i.e., bibliographic description, book trades, preservation practice) and language origin. Different incentives (i.e., treatment report, catalog description, book sellers prospectus) complicate correlation and consistency of definition (i.e., case binding, publisher’s binding) is lacking.

Annotations of bindings in the online database could be encumbered by these obstacles. To advance efficiency of use and entry consistency we should determine objectives of any such annotation. No collection is primarily a collection of historical book bindings but it is reasonable to augment the description of rare books with a description of the provenance of its material state. Such description can aid research as it positions each copy in a context of initial and subsequent uses by past readers. Examination of the book binding can do just that.

Here is a suggested outline method for description of the material state of a bound book. (1) determine if the book is extant in its initial binding. (This would be the book’s first binding contemporary to the production of the imprint.) (2) determine if such an initial binding has been modified by a range of re-fabrications including repair, recovering, restoration, etc., (3) determine if the book has been rebound at a subsequent time.

Such a method immediately constrains enumeration of physical features except as direct evidence of the initial or subsequent binding state. It limits and implements the working vocabulary of terms. It offers consistent and comparative information for the library user.

Three words; kerf, edge and crop all prompt field observations of the initial, disturbed or subsequent physical structure of a book. These are the quick keys that indicate the presence or absence of an initial binding and its possible relation to the period of production of the imprint. Kerf refers to the evidence of previous sewing stations and their patterns, edge refers to the clues of edge trimming methods and re-trimmings and crop refers to evidence of missing annotation and margin.

Bindings subsequent to the initial binding of a book cause damage to evidence from the period of production including disruptive collation, association of disparate works and outright damage to physical pages and delicate images. The damage is notorious both to the object and to its study. It can consist of re-sewing, fold gluing, hammer rounding and backing, edge trimming and cropping, bleaching and washing of leaves, over pressing, inflexible back linings and, the final insult, a fashionable, new cover.

a divide

“One writes only half the book; the other half is with the reader.” Joseph Conrad

This convenient divide also suggests the tangent of a more native screen book. It would be a book on the readers side separated from the process and closures of the publishing side. When a book is completed, its use is begun. The electronic screen book, in a future beyond print mimicry, will emerge, flourish and disappear within the reception of the reader.