A Retrospective of the Future of the Book

Gary Frost
Conservator, Libraries of the University of Iowa

“Even though we all read books and use computers most people are not necessarily interested in the histories of both subjects.” Jeremy Norman

I became interested in the prospect for print books in the context of screen reading about twenty years ago. At that time I considered the issues to be important for library preservation and I see their relevance continuing today. This essay will sketch my own experience of the developments as well as profile some issues of the continuing role of print in a context of digital delivery.

On September 26, 1991, I participated in a one day seminar at the University of Wisconsin entitled; “Whither the Book?”. I am indebted to Barb Tetenbaum, now a Director at the Oregon School of Arts and Crafts, both for her organization of this conference and for her invitation to participate. The program included presentations by Terry Belanger who held forth on “The Future of the Book (If Any)” and Robert Darnton.

The conference folder described the program as follows; “This one day conference will stimulate a re-thinking of the book, a communication medium which passes daily through our hands. Computer and other electronic systems have reached a level of sophistication that places them, with increasing frequency, in direct competition with paper-based publishing. Databases, online journals and electronic mail are changing the ways scholars interact and conduct research. And the introduction of computers and hypermedia systems in schools is changing the expectations of students and their preparation for university study.” The themes of print and screen competition and digital education have both proven persistent.

Four years before in 1987 I attended a forum in which I presented the concept of the leaf master as a book retired from physical circulation but continuing to act as a source for copies of all kinds. This simple idea is related to brittle books shelf replacement copies based on photocopy facsimile. The preservation reformatting discussion over brittle books considered a very small portion of the print collection selected for their poor physical condition and relatively high use. Little did we suspect then that the counterpart of brittle books selection, or the entire remaining research library collections, could and would soon be subjected to massive reformatting for digital delivery!

Now the Google Book model of screen simulation of libraries is influencing the entire library reformatting agenda including special collections digitization. The emphasis is on production and coverage that will enable the much larger audience an opportunity to discover and signal the hidden values in the collections. Such a model evermore clearly assigns the mastering function to the source originals. But there is even a further implication as the leaf master status is extended to, as yet, un-imaged materials. As physical books assume a mastering role the threshold between print and screen accentuates their interdependent transmission role.

The sweeping, speedy coverage of screen simulation of print libraries is awesome to the preservation manager. But, what at first appears to be a move away from the preservation reformatting standards of higher quality, one-time capture, is more likely a move toward continuing mastering from sources better preserved as their values and new meanings are discovered.

Beginning in the 90’s, librarians transitioned their institutions to screen based reader services and the preservation field followed, but the issue of the continuing role of print and the physical book in the context of digital delivery remained uncertain. A wide movement to relocate research library print collections to purpose built storage buildings had preservation benefits, but it was also driven by other agendas that included reassignment of campus real-estate and remodeling of central libraries for workstation reading. Less apparent in the relocation was a changing status of print from a classified knowledge base to physical commodity.

The storage paradigm for print took on a life of its own. First conceived as a storage for “lesser used” collections, the storage buildings are now becoming repositories for all kinds of processing streams. The books are stacked in postal trays at warehouse shelving heights. Their classification is by size and location is maintained by inventory software. Any volume used can return to a new location.

This inventory control of stored collections reflected an even more disconcerting transition as human entry classification for research library print collections became abbreviated in favor of search engine discovery. Electronic bibliographic utilities, keyword search and whole text access also permitted disorder of collections, of books and then phrases and words into a machine-readable mash-up. Digital assignments of “last copy” status appeared to provide license for massive disposal of book “duplicates”.

Meanwhile screen based library access expanded rapidly. By the mid 2000’s Google achieved massive retrospective imaging of print library collections. I will not summarize this redelivery of library service here except to mention the impact on print as the source material for these projects and the fact that, even today, the target repositories remain research libraries and not publishers.

The continuing Google virtual library plan leverages almost every attribute of print source material including, of course, the attribute of their survival or preservation by libraries. It leverages the work of authorship and the investment of publishers. It also leverages Google’s position as the most capable delivery infrastructure. As to which stake-holders will profit most by on-line access to books it is likely that libraries may benefit least.

Libraries still seem under-positioned in all this. The preservation commitment and its cost, the collection building and classification, and the library construction of access utilities have all been required to enable this on-line re-mining. Still other prerequisite services, known best to bibliographers, have been fully overlooked. Legacy services of book designers, papermakers, copy compositors, printers and binders have not even been acknowledged in this rediscovery of functionality of the print collections.

Such an adverse context for the status of the physical book collections calls for more deliberate appreciation of attributes of print books that cannot be provided or simulated by electronic screen presentation. This is a strategic issue in library preservation but it can also be expanded into relevance as we look for a more efficient and inclusive array of methods for cultural transmission. How can we clarify the continuing role of physical book in this new terrain of screen reading? One agenda must be to clarify the continuing aspect. Another agenda is to question the newness and discord of the screen reading terrain.

continuing role of print

So many projections of the future of the book just toy with the contrast between the print book and the screen book. Popular discussions question which reading device is best at the beach, on the subway or in the tub. And there is endless evocation of the smell and feel of old books. Even the academic study of the “materiality” of the book appears self-referential and in quarantine from interactive functionality of such an attribute to screen based reading. Meanwhile, many other discussions are biased by presumptive projections of screen advocates where print advocates are cast as misguided and regressive. Trivialities are everywhere.

But notorious print constraints frequently reposition or toggle nicely as attributes. For example, the much remarked print limitations of onerous revision and fixed and link-less text actually afford the “performative space” needed for effervescent meaning and intuitive readings and re-readings. Perhaps a more effective approach is needed to distinguish print and screen books by weighing their different transmission attributes and by realizing their enlacing interactions.

The mediation of the print and screen book, getting from one to the other, is already efficient and pervasive as libraries have demonstrated for decades. Services of bibliographic utilities, smart search applications and screen delivery have transformed print libraries. So print attributes of fixity, navigational and haptic refinement, materiality, and reliable re-access across time, all pair nicely with screen attributes of immediacy, automated search, electronic delivery, and live content.

Another crucial pair of print and screen attributes is revealed by the self-authenticating nature of the print book contrasted with the self-indexing nature of the screen book. The print book carries with it layers of physical evidence, overt content and bibliographic codes that persistently reveal the source and intent of its production. Such features of self-authentication, confirmed with ease of re-readings across time and cultures, give the material book its special role in transmission. But print books resist indexing and have been compiled into libraries only with great effort or with the help of on-line cataloging and finding aids.

By contrast the screen book is self-indexing because the encoding or production process that renders books to the screen also enables keyword search routines. This attribute is really amazing. It is as if printing ink on paper inherently tabulated the letters and remembered them. However, the effervescent screen books resist authentication. Screen books, like touch screen voting, remain vulnerable and un-trusted with ease of unmonitored deletions or revisions and uncertain provenance. And expectations are very different with screen-based research. The content is served quickly while the reader is induced to consume quickly as well.

These are eerie counterpoints. It is as if the screen is filling a transmission void of print and as if print is founding its own more essential, less ramified, role. Simple competition between the print book and screen book is an illusion; each has different function, there are exclusive attributes of each and super-cession is a minor factor. Complementary attributes, rather than contrasts of advantages and disadvantages, have emerged and mutual redefinition is at work. The surge of advance and use of screen-based reading also advances its complementary fulfillment in print and a surge and advance of print reflects its quick adoptions of digital technologies.

The intermediation of print and screen goes either way. We can begin with a look for a reinvented role of print in the context of screen delivery. Print on-demand industries exemplify digitization of manufacture of physical books. Lightning Source produces 30,000 to 35,000 print books a day with an average run of 1.8 copies. Such a phenomenon of electrostatic printing and on-line fulfillment exemplifies the book-on-demand industry and an advancing digital future of print.

A serious threat to such reinvention is faulty production of the print book itself. Poor quality of the physical book, obvious in on-demand production, subtracts directly from efficiencies that have long enabled its success. Of course a threat of atrophy of physical quality and performance is not suddenly new in the history of the book, but it is suddenly more strategic. Exclusive attributes should not be neglected at a time that special attributes of screen media are aggressively promoted.

Being born digital is advantageous. In deed, digital technologies and network communication have advanced print reading as much as screen based reading. This is because print reading began with a more refined installed base and was quicker to take advantage of the production and delivery attributes of digital technologies. In this country the conversion from composition keyboard strokes based on physical cams to those based on code occurred in the early 1970’s. Likewise, library classification was converted to electronic access during the same early period.

In addition the print book was already optimized for linear transmission of conceptual works. Economical comprehension in screen reading, however, was immediately forestalled by a need for rapid and extensive deletion of presented material. In fact, the advent of the delete key itself marks the transition from analog to digital technologies.

A simple demonstration of the current inefficiency of screen reading is our daily purge of unneeded e-mail. The reading process requires a skill set for rapid deletion or de-selection of results which forestalls and interrupts efficient assimilation of concepts. This is a crippling circumstance for screen based reading and it may be endemic.

On the bright side, computers augment our native abilities to sort, search and discover. On the dark side, the search results, unbeknown to the reader, can be pre-selected, manipulated or censured. So contrasts between print and screen reading include wider issues. These issues are not much different than those posed by paper ballots vs. electronic voting.

“Under a secret ballot system, there is no known input, nor is there any expected output with which to compare electoral results. Hence, electronic electoral result cannot be verified by humans and the people need to have an absolute faith in the accuracy, honesty and security of the whole electoral apparatus (people, software and hardware). Requiring reliance on such faith may not be considered compatible with democracy.” Wikipedia

There is also not much regret expressed, especially by network advocates, of the eclipsing of the bibliographical identity of a book. Computers can mirror books but they should not be confused with books. Screen based reading actually dissolves books. Search engines provide a reading method that eliminates the coherence of individual books digesting and parsing whole libraries down to word frequencies, search terms and tagged images. The cultural transmission concern is no longer deterioration of paper, but digital dissolution of books.

This digital dissolution is now advancing from books to library classification. The Library of Congress is in the process of discontinuing catalog classification in favor of inventory control software augmented with Google search. As a trend this atrophy may not end this side of a new dark age and this time the dark age will have begun in the libraries.

It is remarked that as new media emerge they mimic older media. It is less remarked that old media return the complement as they exploit patterns of the new. It would be ironic if this massive effort to bring print books to the screen resulted in their reprinting.

Realize that scanners are really printing presses. Once captured the books are actually returned to print and to the production streams of digital print-on-demand operations. Are we verging on the post-digital era when the book at its best will assimilate paper and screen into a unified publishing system?

Certainly Google Books will provide a different bibliographical utility or indexing for these books, but why presume that a precisely formatted conceptual work will suddenly be more easily referenced, assimilated and comprehended on the screen? That’s something like saying these books will be easier to use if they are on television.

Now Google is very protective of its digital copy assuming that the screen parsing and presentation is the proprietary product. But what if readers turn Google Books into a different kind of engine? What if an Amazon-like blog, front end simply processes Google finds across different reading communities, identifies titles of interest and goes to the stacks to scan for print-on-demand?

The needed evaluation, to clarify all this, has yet to happen. We are still wandering among pre-cursive inventions such as digital encoding, photo imaging, audio recording, instantaneous communication and their various integrations and indexing to screen delivery, but we have not yet realized a transition to the post-digital book that will assimilate both print and screen reading. There is an assumption that the traditional print book is fully evolved and highly refined, but what if that assumption is a central problem for the future of the book? What if the book is evolving further?

agenda for book studies

Now we arrive at a conclusion as strange as it is obvious; the distinctions between books and computers and print and screen can be assimilated. To begin with, both print and screen book are digital products and soon may be just two of a variety of “transforms” from a single source XML format file. Counterpoints of print and screen works should be observed in detail to better understand their interaction for cultural transmission and confirm the possibility of a emerging enlacing of print and screen.

The most unmentioned allure of print reading may be its critical counterpoint role in support of screen reading, and visa versa. What if neither will prosper without the other? On-line mimicries of print are now nearing fifteen million volumes, but what if these surrogates are exactly that, a searchable database providing expansive access to print? What if the interplay itself, between print and screen reading, is this present era’s contribution to the invention of the post-digital book? Some projections suggest otherwise and even scholarly positions are swayed toward new domination of the screen. But perhaps outright advocates for print have found a premise as well. This would be that the screen and print are really a unified transmission ecology.

agenda for book preservation

The Council on Library and Information Resources white paper, “Preservation in the Age of Large-Scale Digitization”, concludes that while libraries can hope to preserve the vast bit streams of mass imaging projects, the “enduring access of enabling on-line discovery and retrieval of material” is complex and uncertain. Pro-active preservation effort is needed, but this report assigns no specific role to preservation departments. This fact alone suggests a tentative state of the challenges.

The report mentions that an appreciable portion of print collections are “either brittle or at risk” and that “digital copies may be the only versions of work that will survive into the future.” There are at least two suspect elements in this position. First, it is arguable that in the long run the acidic print collections will persist and re-master more reliably than the digital collections. Another questioned aspect is the assumption that preservation of print will inevitably be compromised by traditional use and circulation of print originals. The option of converting print from traditional use to a leaf mastering status is not considered. Print collections can easily persist in the long run if they are protectively stored and strictly used as imaging masters.

Another momentum is in motion to converge with an assigned leaf mastering role for print collections. This is the trend to wider and wider use of non-circulating storage for print collections in secure and protective archival storage facilities. These purpose-built facilities are well equipped and well suited to accommodate a leaf mastering role for print collections. Add an imaging-on-demand service to their on-site capacities and these facilities can aptly be named “collections preservation centers”.

The preservation department can readily assume the implementation and maintenance of the leaf mastering print collections. The preservation department can monitor strict security and protective environmental control for leaf master collections. It can evaluate risks and plan for disaster. It can also provide non-damaging image capture from difficult and fragile items and needed preparatory conservation treatment. The preservation department can provide oversight of authentication and copy legibility or quality control of digital copy and reformat production. It can re-house or enclose the leaf master items for storage. Such duties are easily assigned and readily assumed by the preservation department and they quickly relate preservation services directly with the strategic agenda of large-scale digitization of library materials.

going forward

A focus “on information access made possible by new technologies” has dominated recent library and information studies. While access is migrating to screen presentation at the same time options are opening for reassignment of paper based collections to a persistent mastering and back-up role. Curiously, such a new paradigm may shift eye reading to the screen and “machine” reading or image capture to print.

Such a shift in access strategy would progress to inevitability if long term library service cannot sustain multiple costs of maintenance of digital collections as both mastering and delivery resources. It looks as if affording persistent access to screen presentation will be costly enough. Perhaps it is advisable to engage the practice of preservation in management of the mastering duties of protecting more easily and economically persistent print as a dynamic copy master.

The Council on Library and Information Resources report includes this comment; “A number of funding agencies make grants available for preservation surveys, conservation treatment, and reformatting. Some of these funding agencies may question the value of maintaining and preserving print collections that are available in digital format. If the value of preserving such print publications is not articulated and justified, funding agencies may shift their priorities.”

What better way to justify print preservation than to assign it to a strategic mastering and back-up role for digital collections? Reformatting experience has by now confirmed the recurrent need to recapture across generations of standards, technologies and research agendas. The connection is inherently there, exemplified in a new, extended “purpose of retaining the original” as defined by the leaf master.

endnote

The first screen was the night sky. This presentation of points of light on a black screen evoked imaginary patterns that produced astrology and many subsequent systems of thought. To this day back-lit screens are best viewed in the dark and print best in light.

Origins of text rendition and pictorial rendition were also extracted from skills of engagement of natural ecologies and migrated to environments of technologies. A long practice of projectile defense and deliberate throwing conveyed ultimately to projectiles of text thrown across time and cultures and a long and attentive watching of the natural world conveyed to pictorial representation and ultimately to reading photographs and screens.

At the turn of the 20th century the manufacturers and operators of composition and type casting machines were the IT geeks of their era. Keyboard prompting, programmed automation and electronic displacement of manual composition changed text transmission. Now this “revolution”, as assimilated into letterpress history, is forgotten and almost invisible.

Today instruction in mechanical composition and type casting is needed, not as a specialty of letterpress transmission, but as an instructional exemplar for the current “revolution” of text transmission. Enclaves of print and screen transmission need the connectivity of their precedents.