futureofthebook.com
preservation and persistence of the changing book

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2006, Evolution of Wikipedia

"It blows open what's possible," said Ms. Teachout. "What I hope is that these kinds of things lead to thousands of other experiments like this encyclopedia, which we never imagined could be produced in this way." Zephr Teachout

Watch for a paper edition to validate the communal composition in wide scope, composite reference works. The more frequently this threshold is encountered and crossed, from screen to paper, the more prevalent a pattern of on-line research and publication will become.

really remote storage

I am not concerned with browsability. My concern is the trust placed in the inventory software. Traditional shelf classification provides two different types of findability (the on-line catalog and the physical location). That is, without the aid of the catalog, I could reasonably find an item in its relational shelf order. Inventory software provides only one type of findability and that one is vulnerable to energy and systems interruption.

The size based inventory control of stored books is another jab at the status of print by mindless adminsitrators. But beyond the comodification of books, there is the disregard of the work of librarianship in the service of scholarship and its quest for a plain sense of the scope of the universe.

Just because on-line resources must disappear in a twinkling of systems interruption is no reason that the physical libraries must be infected with this contagion.

August 25, 2006, Advent of Symbolic Thought

The advent of symbolic thought, representing experience indirectly, was a boundary crossed from biologically assigned uses of human brain to roles of cultural invention. Evidence indicates that this transition occurred across thousands of years at the end of the last ice age.

This emergence of symbolic thought was not indicated by the course of human evolution. Although hominid brain was successfully dedicated to complex skills and behaviors these were not predictive of the advent of symbolic thought. This unexpected emergence added a layer of consciousness and a medium of communication unique in the biological world.

The earliest symbolic expression is cave art. A much later expression is the book. These expressions provide proof of the course of symbolic thought and conceptual works. Another symbolic expression is the network of electronic communication, screen reading and digital research. Advocates contend that these developments, again out of context with biological evolution, will propel our species to new utilizations of the human mind. They contend that these augmentations of intelligence will only sharpen and extend a progressive cultural evolution.

Are we sure? Perhaps cultural evolution can mimic the mechanistic role of biological evolution and atrophy toward more instinctual behavior. The added layer of consciousness dedicated to symbolic interpretation may not be inherently stable; it was bizarre to begin with. Computer assistance of symbolic thought may track off in various directions.

It is remarked that younger students have difficulty distinguishing between authorship and plagiarism. They copy content from on-line sources as their own. But what if half their brain is literally out on the web? If so, why should they distinguish internal from external conceptualization? The quicker the search, the smarter the student. It makes no difference if the neural system is bionic or electronic.

This is not an issue of artificial intelligence, but the artificiation of bionic intelligence.

August 19, 2006, Loony Tunes

”But more importantly, books themselves will transition from a product to an experience. As books change in form from simple “words on a page” to various digital manifestations of the information, future books will be reviewed and evaluated by the experience they create."

Futurists are disregarded for good reasons. In the above instance the future of the book is predicted to be nothing different than what it has always been. Futurists predict change as a continuous process and disregard both the inherent stabilities of the sector examined as well as stabilities renewed in the context of change. The idea that sectors such as libraries or works such as encyclopedias are constantly in flux is loony. It is especially loony when a timeless dynamic is construed as sudden change.

My blind side here is the assumption that screen reading will find its place and disappear much like television. Not that it will vanish, but that it will pile on another sector of information transmission and delivery and stabilize in its relationship with other transmission modes such as the traditional book. The book has stabilized and exhibits certain attributes of legibility, haptic performance and persistence that afford it a niche.

Perhaps your concept of “synergy” is open-ended and dynamic in which the reading modes, perceptional (non-medium listening and watching), print and screen are mingling perhaps like a lava lamp. Or perhaps you are favoring rather stable hybrids like cell phone texting or Wiki print-outs. Hybrids and mutants in a context of equilibrium characterize biological evolution. Or is your synergy starting with a big bang advent of digital networking that simply changes the rules for all reading behaviors? Perhaps all these synergies and others are in play.

This is idle speculation if reading skills overall are demeaned and degenerating. If conversation begins to loose wit, if television becomes a genre of home décor, if the web becomes a terrifying interstate, if blogs ramify into self condoning enclaves and if books no longer allure us into conceptual challenges and different perspectives.

My own hope is that the paper book will exemplify what digital transmission can produce; a refined and practical mechanism for reading. That outcome would make my job much easier. So far it has gone the other way and screen reading and digital transmission has tried to advance at the expense of print. Unfortunately, as you point out, book dissipation is most apparent in libraries..

December, 2006, IA look for the P (preservation) word

"Information assurance addresses how we gather, protect, and evaluate information. Students who choose this field of specialization explore how we can assure the quality and credibility of information and the authority of its sources (individuals or organizations) as well as the methods used to make such assessments. They also study techniques for protecting information from alteration, loss, or unauthorized use (including uses that violate privacy), and structures for ensuring that information is accurate, complete, and available when needed and authorized." ischool

scanner is really printing press

"Microsoft is releasing a beta version of Live Search Books on Wednesday. The book search engine performs keyword searches for books that have been scanned as part of Microsoft's book scanning project, in the same way that Windows Live Search searches the Internet.

Microsoft has restricted the beta release of Live Search Books to only include noncopyright books scanned from the collections of the British Library, the University of California and the University of Toronto."

Microsoft Live Search books really does go to the search term (Linotype) and pops-up ca 30 out of print/ out of copyright books. (They evidently scanned all the libraries last week.)

But is the concept really a front end for print on demand? What if the search term also brings up current POD titles and Microsoft has a bit of sales of those hard copies? What if venders also supply bound versions of the out of copy right screen books? Are the library scans really germinating a new stream of printing?

Publisher Live is doing just that; positioning POD titles as results from Live Search books search terms. (but they seem to be shut down...black helicopters?)

performative modes

Whenever there is discussion of an entirely new context for digital publication I imagine the same transformation conveyed backward into analog innovation. Paper folding teaches us to be alert to innovation and a likely reverse fold of the familiar. Reinventing the fundamental codex structure beginning with fold impositions is exactly what is occurring in print on demand technology.

Likewise an application for screen publication and network authorship should start with multidimensional idioms already fundamental to digital publication. There are at least three of these preconditions. (1) All expression must be transposed to performance genres of typography, animation, photography and audio. There is no unmediated speaking, writing, drawing or gesture. (2) Constraints of screen rendering must be satisfied. Overcoming that two dimensional frame is as challenging as it has been in all graphic depiction (3) Transience and interruptions of depictions must be absorbed and selection and deletion oversight must be maintained. Such preconditions and others hedge in the scope of collaborative publication.

disconnectivity

"The Renaissance brought the end of direct relation between the crafts people and the source of their materials." Chris Clarkson.

Like the transition from primary orality to writing, this distancing of the originator from the materiality of communication and from the tecnologies of its delivery, continues. It continues layer on layer of transformation until only the shadow of the message can be claimed by the originator.

Worst case, the originators will no longer know themselves except by looking at their projections on the screen.

A recent essay discounts fine printing because it does not induce, and frequently distracts from, efficient reading. But any innocuous literary and graphic content can be compensated by graceful physical qualities and elegant production skills. The materialities of the book can be read as well and can produce very rewarding stories and adventures.

But when particular goals of graceful physical qualities and elegant production skills are unachieved in fine printing, they are unachieved exactly in the context in which these qualities can comprise the content. For example a crippled structural action is rather typical of fine press books; the cover falls away while the text pages remain wedged closed. Or the text block is raggy with deckle edges when trimmed edges would better reveal the drape and spread of the opening, or, there is too much margin whiteness for the little blackness of the printing. Such stilted material features make the fine press book haptically unreadable. This is much more serious than any skimmed poetry.

April 2007, will the real e-book pop-up all around us?

"Area residents and visitors to the Amana Colonies can now explore the community’s heritage through a high-tech game of navigation and puzzle-solving using the Global Positioning System (GPS). The Amana Heritage Society’s “Passport to History” GPS adventure is a fun, educational, and family-friendly activity. It’s a great way to tour the Amana villages. You can get started on your adventure by picking up your passport and instructions at the Amana Heritage Museum. Use your own in-car or handheld GPS unit, or borrow one from the museum."

Get ready for this; the real e-book is a blank book. The hand-held reading device tour can also be the souvenir print-out. A personalized book-on demand. Or any travel log, or any family trip. This would appeal to the educational market including the home schooling community.

October, 2007, fear of the fear of change

The first readable screen was the night sky, points of light on a black field. Observers of the night sky began to construe patterns, then omens and cosmographies and astrophysics based on readings of the night sky. Screens still work best in the dark and provide a whole domain of reading. Other reading surfaces work better in reflected light.

Screen reading advocates fear the stasis of continuities of bionic reading. They fear that there may be no particular linkage, or supercession scenario between different reading modes. Most particularly they fear that there may be persistent exclusive attributes and disattributes in any reading mode that has been around for a long time.

November 9, 2007, keeping and watching

Its curious how a perturbing aspect of an aura or smell or tactile feature frequently comes up in comments about the physical book. It is as though there is a suspicion that it means something.

The basis of tactile investigation prompting assimilation of concepts is deeply embedded from evolutionary experience. Primate dexterity and distinctive right and left handed manipulation prompted both neurology and evolutionary advance of the brain. Conceptualizations were prompted by tactile investigations and arms leveraged actions. This learning path of the hands prompting the mind is exemplified by the codex book. Later cultural traits of personal possession of objects including actions of portability and display are well reflected by the codex. And book possession can also be shared across time and culture indicating the codex capacity for persistent existence and library accumulation. The physical configuring of books in classified library arrays prompts researchers to conceive latent books between and among those shelved. Conveying concepts in physical objects is not a paradox, but an embedded mechanism of learning.

But here is an interesting thing about screen reading. It also has an unsettling aura of its own. We like to watch the screen in a mild hypnosis as if we were watching a campfire. What is all that about?

The first screen was the night sky. White dots on a black field. (screens still work best in darkened environments) Patterns were imposed including omens, constellations and astrophysics, but it remains a field receptive to almost any pattern and any perceived pattern is vulnerable to a realization that it is an illusion. We want stars and pixels to be objects, but they are not objects that can be possessed, they are objects that can be watched.

What if reading combines possession and watching into a composite experience? That would be pretty fascinating! It would also begin to explain a disconcertion with formats that feature one or the other of the component experiences.

December, 21, 2007, primary, secondary, tertiary

Walter Ong suggested a that a secondary orality (augmented by television) could arise within the context of text literacy. Such layering could also be continued to visualize a secondary text literacy (augmented by personal computer screen) emerged in a context of tertiary orality (augmented by cellular telephone).

A secondary text literacy would also emerge as new skill sets of on-line navigation, selection and discovery are directed back to print assimilation. Such a reflexive interaction could grow, and not diminish, the role of print. Likewise increasing levels of skillful comprehension, as required of quick, compressed and nuanced screen presentation, can also be reflexed to print.

Certainly there is no simple arithmetic that requires increasing screen based learning to be directly linked to diminishing paper based learning. Or is there an arithmetic that requires that increasing formats for oral (aural/visual) communication need to be linked to diminishing formats for text literacy (print). Or will increasing screen readership and diminishing print readership necessarily relate to measures of reading comprehension overall. More likely increasing skill sets for comprehension of conceptual works will layer and accumulate and feature increasing varieties of technological mediation. This has been the norm across media history. Reports of withering reading skills may be based on a arithmetic which delivers the wrong answer inverted.

January 9, 2008, sustainable networked screen book

"...is constantly revised, but never needs to be reprinted (or repurchased); one that is lean and simple and doesn't require a small server farm or a special device; one that makes an enormous impact, but leaves a teeny tiny carbon footprint; one we can live with for ever and ever without getting bored or satiated." Kim White

The sustainable networked screen book doesn't inevitably distinguish itself in comparison with the paper book. This is because contrasting functionalities of the paper and screen book complement each other and their compatibilities overwhelm their differences. As such it is curious that screen reading advocates always pose one as revolutionary and another as regressive.

Reflect that a fixed reference of printed text, identified author and acknowledged edition are not in themselves inferior qualities. And at FotB we contend that conveying conceptual works in physical objects is a comprehension strategy and that physical books are enhanced by new relations with on-line bibliographic utilities. As for carbon and energy unit costing, the evaluation crosses so may layers of life cycle definition, technological reliance, social benefit, efficiencies of comprehension and cultural transmission method that it is probably a comparison that can be made to support either screen or paper delivery.

Thursday February 14, 2008, format options

The iPhone and its equivalent devices are today's stand-ins for the functionality of the medieval Book of Hours. This is because these personal electronic devices habituate us to secular prayers of connectivity and intercession. Our life of daily devotions is just as arranged as those of long ago and the functionality of the Book of Hours still identifies the pious and literate.

Another curiosity of this comparison is the role of the book format. The Book of Hours was the best seller of the manuscript era. Most people of the middle ages never even saw a Bible. The book format presentation of scriptures would need to wait the advent of printing. So this early functionality of the Book of Hours to schedule daily prayers was an expedient adaptation of an available format in a culture that favored rote devotional behavior. But this was not, like print schedules and directories, an optimal adaptation of the book format that would only emerge later. Then, as a format for knowledge transmission, the book found its optimal function in relation to both the Book of Hours and the iPhone.

preserving access

It is time for libraries to take credit for the services that they perform which make the mass book digitization projects rational activities. For example, only libraries will image the deteriorated books. Corporate book digitization projects promote themselves as high production activities compared to the slow and careful reformatting of libraries, but these high speed capture projects cannot be bothered or delayed by difficult and fragile items. So, the library reformatting exactly complements and fulfills the mass conversion projects. In the same context, corporate conversion programs cannot be distracted by any standards of image quality and copy authentication which are so carefully achieved and maintained by library reformatting.

And what happens if a book must be (heaven forbid) rescanned? Just who is both mastering and backing-up these precarious, corporate fly-bys? And, finally, corporate book digitization assumes that you can have access without preservation. Is that really possible? Not if access is an activity across time and...er, across generations. In that context preservation IS access.

March 13, 2008, e-book diagnostic

FotB got the top italic lead-in to a detailed study of the prospects for the e-book. In the study various complications for the wider adoption of e-books are considered. Proprietary formats, digital rights management, i-pod equivalence model for the reading market, and culture resistance contrasting student and faculty preference are all posed as nearing remediation.

"So is all of this talk of change just hype? Or is real change around the corner? What has happened to e-book technology and markets to suggest that we may be nearing the end of two decades of e-book anticipation? Prior to this point, we can see a handful of distinct reasons why e-books have failed to take off as expected. In the sections that follow, we will look at some of these barriers, related recent developments, and, where possible, projections for the future." Educause

In every consideration a broader factor is unmentioned; p-books may continue to grow even as their share of the reading market declines. Remember that growth is measured from installed base and e-books began at zero. It is also useful to more accurately contrast p-books (delivered to paper) with s-books (delivered to screen) since all books are now "digital".

With the individual complications there are also side-bars. P-books have long since resolved the proprietary platform issue by subsuming the very real proprietary formats within a seamless delivery mode of paper. As for digital rights management, p-books resolve that with linear circulation of a physical object; a truly clever solution. The i-pod equivalence model overlooks legibility and haptic efficiencies, default persistence and differences in musical and textual delivery paces. As for culture resistance, the notion that we will outgrow an antiquarian interest in print overlooks the timeless differing preferences between younger (more visual and audio) and older (more textual) readers.

March 19. 2008, bridges

"The success of libraries is not to be counted by the number of books, either digital or paper, held by libraries or the number of pretty pictures that libraries can put online. Libraries are successful to the extent that they can bridge communities and can leverage the diversity of the quest, the research, and the discovery. Libraries are successful when they offer new services and when they help others discover services provided by others. By building bridges among these various sectors, libraries will be able to define themselves in the next generation. They will become the architects of collaboration." Peter Brantley

Be honest, does this really sound new? Isn't this what libraries do anyway? What is different is that the librarian's old skills suddenly have new relevance and value. Think of the librarian's strange skill at evaluating an unread book! That's exactly what is needed to measure the quality of a website or compile relational citations of links.

What has also 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 futility involved is allocated to librarianship.

Next librarians will be blamed for biased, ethnic-like enclaves of political action and partitioned virtual community exactly at the moment when the librarian's over-arching and discipline-neutral approach to information is what is needed. Here, again, the allure of wide, global connectivity is allocated to the electronic discourse and the disconnections left to librarians.

March 27, acrl environmental scan

Environmental factors now swaying strategic research library administration sound no different than environmental factors swaying management of a restaurant or auto repair shop or any other service enterprise. The university library is viewed as a business, the students as customers and the service as network driven.

The library staff, meanwhile, is buffered for displacement and reassignment. The whole context is dynamic demand for new access, online learning and technology rich use. A relentless churn is moderated by debate over intellectual property versus presumed free access.

Collections sustaining this new age appear forgotten. They too are configured for displacement and reassignment, but they are also positioned for sudden disregard. Strangely this new disregard is occurring as the collections continue to grow in size and meaning. They are positioned to appear lacking in continued function.

But they have continued function and it is a basic functionality to sustain research across time and cultures, to organize and authenticate products of scholarship and creativity, and to preserve tangible objects that convey conceptual works. Is that functionality still relevant to the growing array of delivery mechanisms and service demands?

It is if the tangible collections are both mastering and backing-up these new consumer services. It is if the tangible collections are self-authenticating, are default and cost free persistent, are reliably legible and have exclusive attributes for learning. And it is if the research libraries have a different purpose than a restaurant or auto repair shop or other or any other service enterprise. Even the preservation department and its specialists may have work yet to do if tangible collections still define a research library.

In a surprising future the books may move out and the screens may move in, but the library will relocate with the books.