digital print
"And with services like Lulu and the new Borders program, we're seeing some of that social mobility reflected back onto print. New affordances of digital production and the flexibility of print on demand have radically lowered the barriers to publishing in print as well as in bits, and so what was once dismissed categorically as vanity is now transforming into a complex topography of niche markets where unmet readerly demands can finally be satisfied by hitherto untapped authorial supplies."
If:Book
hand-to-hand copyright
Digitization of print works is frustrated by copyright restraint, yet libraries exploit copyright paper books for relatively endless distribution, albeit linear circulation. But linear physical circulation, one reader after another, can't be relevant in the digital world, can it?!
Well, just a moment, is linear circulation relevant in research across time and cultures? Does linear circulation, say the passing of a colonial pamphlet from hand-to-hand, not influence events? Isn't this easy, lawful library "circumvention" of copyright restrain worth a moment's notice?
the network reconfigures the library
Lorcan Dempsey, Strategic Planning Officer for
OCLC, discussed how the network is reconfiguring the people, places, collections, and services of research libraries. He has given this some thought in a context of his wide understanding of online access to library materials.
Lorcan sees the library transforming into an instructional service while diminishing its book storage role. He emphasized the partnering with other campus instruction activities such as departmental exhibits or writing centers. He warned of the "opportunity cost", the cost of diminished options, if the place and social function of libraries are not invigorated as relocated physical book storage empties out the buildings.
From a FotB perspective this all seems too politically correct and another instance of the library world's too easy deference to any new research and reading methodology. The research library has another responsibility to manage the mastering and back-up of textual works over the long term.
We mentioned the continuing role of the "tangible" collections to provide cost minimal mastering and back-up for the digital delivery of knowledge. Of course there was immense impatience with even a mention of real books, let alone any implication of their continuing role in the context of digital delivery. Lorcan immediately pointed out that book storage is not cost free. FotB countered that operation of server farms is not cost free either and that projections over the longer term, tip in favor of the cost free persistence of physical books.
But the real ideological divide here is the popular assumption that screen delivery of books is somehow of greater value than the continuing mastering and back-up role of print books, somehow of much greater value. This is a cultural, USA, attitude that may be one of our favorite delusions; that the newest is smartest.
|
