futureofthebook.com

penumbra

“…operating at the intersection of books and technology…” Epilogue

Mr. Penumbra’s 24 Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan offers a fantasy story of the very transgressions that we anticipate. This as adventure escapade of intersection between the future and the past of books. It is filled with characters that we know and interplay that we observe, if not engage.

Here I am with the Kindle PaperWhite. It is paper bright, light and thin. Delicate to the touch and to the accidental or inept touch; it is responsive to bionic actions. It also has a bit of hubris of its own as it is certain that I need an amazing Amazon Denim fashion to go out into Coralville, IA. (A commercial presence within books, faded since the 19th century, has returned.)

It is almost essential to read this book on screen display. Without that reflexive reference to the experience the reader can feel displaced. As with other eye/machine read transaction, you need to enter both doors at the same time. Either a paper reader or screen approach alone will feel displaced and over-critical of details. And how is the PaperWhite paper like? How is it and how is it not? This fantasy balances exactly in between in our own terrain.

duh…

Turn your copy shop into book production. Or, why not, turn your own laser printer into a publishing enterprise.

fence

“Surrogates are often suggested in order to mitigate damage and exposure of the physical objects. This solution however is controversial. Some have embraced this practice while others refuse to make the switch. This discussion will delve into each side of the issues, uses, and needs of surrogacy in collections. We are looking to include perspectives from within as well as outside the field that are impacted by the use of surrogates, digital and physical. Which side of the fence are you on?” email, AIC

Sounds like a false choice and a bedraggled binary premise for the panel of the Archives Conservation Discussion Group (ACDG) of the AIC Book and Paper Group now styled as: “Is it Real? The Value and Ethics of Using Surrogates.” Why not discuss how source and surrogate transform each other? Why not discuss a “new normal” of physical and screen access complementing each other, or detracting? Why not discuss archival transmission as a complex, time-based process dependent on both source and surrogate?

Conservators have an obligation to help define composite source/surrogate roles and can discuss precepts such as re-mastering, authentication, deficiencies of surrogate imaging conventions, enhancing source legibility, on-demand and sustainable source and surrogate interaction, source treatment options for non-damaging surrogation, etc..

lrts marc

“As people shift to the web as their first point of discovery, library resources need to be represented there.” “The Academy Unbound”, LRTS 56(4).

The library community is leaking the collections to the web. Linked open data (LOD) refers to mash-up of library utilities and publication of their files conveyed in a resource description framework( RDF) as URLs. So we come to the eclipse of MARC citation and closed utility databases. LOD will take on a life of its own.

Turns out that one deficiency of library cataloging was lack of whole text. This was also its strength as bionic librarians acted as discovery channels cascading the citations alone. An iota here is that I read about it in the paper edition 56(4).

story board

(video of California sand beach)
“Picture a tidewater beach. The surf advances and returns each time tracing itself in the sand. A process is in motion as the ocean laps onto the land grinding sand. Just such an interaction is at work between ourselves and the ideas that we leave on the beach as books. This process works across time on the beaches of culture.”

“Adventure now as naturalists in our investigation of Books to Be. We will observe the present composite of print and screen books, evaluate their evolutions and consider their roles in culture transmission and look for books evolving. While we watch the action of the waves and weather we watch ecology at work.”

(auto reframe to black)
“The bibliographic naturalist in study of emerging books will enlist other disciplines. We select five.”

(diagram of five disciplines with their one line definitions)
“Each of the disciplines is an ocean. We will use only specific aspects and selected methods to address the future of the book. Lets construct our guideline for selective use of much these much wider resources.”

(diagram of five disciplines with branches of topics, ambiguities and roles)
“From each of the five disciplines we will select our topics of interest, remark on any ambiguities or anxieties or inherent conflictions obvious, and then access the roles that each discipline can play in our own composite investigation.”

(auto frame to black)
“Such a branching diagram depicting a study field is a Ramist device, invented by clueless Peter Ramus in the sixteenth century. The whole diorama of that Ramist escapade is the source of one of the classical works relevant to our particular study. As Adrian Johns remarks in his Forward to the book by Walter Ong; ‘The idea that thinking could be reduced to an act of spatial arrangement and display proved immensely appealing to practicing teachers. In the century between 1550 and 1650 Ramism gained adherents beyond number. When it then vanished as an explicit intellectual cause, it did so not so much because its limitations had become apparent – they has always been that – as because the attitude it embodied had become a prerequisite for the act of thinking itself.’ Let’s return to the beach.”

(video of California sand beach)
“To move forward with our study of the nature of culture and the destiny of books we need more than a technology. We also need a passion and sense of urgency at a moment of ambiguity in the future of the book. We need a symbot.”

(an Islamic manuscript book)
“A simbot is an emergent composite of cyborg relation after the distinctive components have dissolved. Just notice this screen simulation of the rich pattern of an Islamic manuscript. Observe the interplay of the writing, the satin paper and the hand-held mystery of the book. Note also that it is not there.”

(auto frame to black)
“That’s right, it wasn’t an Islamic manuscript, but a simulation. We need to adjust culture transmission via books to integrate an emergent ecology of print and screen and realize that the composite is a live organism . As a humanist issue we need to engage this symbot, understand origins and projections, and observe the continuing role of the physical book in a context of its own simulation. We are engaging an exciting moment in book history. Welcome to this vantage point!”

way out

You are invited to”The Future of the Book” panel discussion with Robert Bringhurst, Brewster Kahle, Peter Koch, and Harry Reese. Saturday, October 20, 2012 3:45-5:15pm The Koret Auditorium, Main Library, San Francisco Public Library
“The Future of the Book” panel discussion concludes three days of events marking the Book Club of California’s Centennial Symposium entitled “WAY OUT WEST: Fine Printing & the Cultural History of the Book in California.”

“the future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed.” Harry Reese

fair use

“The use to which the works in the HDL are put is transformative because the copies serve an entirely different purpose than the original works: the purpose is superior search capabilities rather than actual access to copyrighted material… Plaintiffs’ argument that the use is not transformative merely because defendants have not added anything ‘new’ misses the point.” Judge Baer

If the university libraries were used in the Google capture of their collections they are also saving Google in court. Now the side effect of use of Google book scans by Hathi Trust is the validation of a fair and transformative use. As Google stated at the very beginning, “we are not scanning books for readers”, they are scanning the books for their search engines. So there is another validation layered over the first; this is that screen books and print books are far from fungible.

lu ten

Linotype University brought line casters from all over including California, Nova Scotia, Missouri, Kansas, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arizona and Iowa. It was fun and agony…the best learning situation!

template

A template for discussion of trends in book transmission can begin with an image derived from printing, a substrate derived from paper and a commodity derived from bookbinding. Both print and screen books can be considered following this template.

With the physical book the printing has been somewhat privileged as a crucial component. Perhaps printing is viewed as an “agent of change” in book transmission because it is more easily associated with words and content. Discussion of the role paper as the substrate for printing is typically reduced in relation to printing and crucial discussion of book commodification is almost absent.

If we address book transmission as conveyed by screen books a very curious inversion of emphasis can be observed. With electronic books commodification suddenly gets most attention as discussion centers on nooks, Kindles and iPads. These consumer devices evoke the most interest while the imaged content fades as a transient stream of electrophor or phosphor appearances. No mention of the glass display substrate is made at all.

This strange outcome of print and screen books comparison may suggest their different roles in book transmission overall. The print book is most associated with content because its content transmission is so effective while the screen book is more associated with device commodity because that materiality persists as content display changes.

paperwhite

This latest paperwhite eink electrophor device gets closer to paper contrast as well as full grey zone rendering. This is my fourth Kindle. The first two were original G3 connectors and the last two are wi-fi. The navigation on the paperwhite is hybrid with touch toggle for page scroll or page turn. It is lighter and thinner and smaller in a progression familiar with all hand held devices. There is also a screen lighting that manages all levels of ambient illumination.

Shopping fulfillment is refined with an evocation of adventure within a mall. Even in this black, dedicated book reading environment, the allure of distractive shopping opportunities is close at hand. At the same time the book reading function is also refined with choice of font, type size and margin allowance. Little amenities of library tagging of progression in given titles and some kind of touch annotation (that I miss-prompt as a page turn) are welcome.

It is interesting how the black, electrophor nook and Kindle devices flirt with their complimentary color, phosphor devices. There is a meta-expectation established in screen decors, screen touch zones and chassis grips. There is also a strange counter market as searchers are redirected to print titles not available in the Amazon utility.

accreditation

How accredited is the future of the book as an authentic humanist research agenda? We know it crosses interests of book studies, book technologies, cognitive aspects of reading, library preservation and book arts. But is it capable of advancement as a decisive research agenda on its own?

Can the future of the book as a research agenda find premise and continuity? The future of the book, by definition, appears to reach for inaccessible evidences and metrics. At the same time accentuated projection and speculation abbreviates regard for the past. Screen book advocates can view history as something that is yet to occur.

How can a more complete projection across past, present and future accredit future of the book research? To begin with it can be realized that the paradigm shifts that provoke our current composite print and screen book transmission occurred in the 19th century. These included the advents of instantaneous communication, audio and photographic recording, digital encoding, and mass media. Our current century has only managed the integration of these fundamental innovations.

We can also advance by taking down partitions between print and screen book affordances and advance to the study of their interrelations and possible interdependences. Obvious topics of paratext apparatus, complementary function fulfilling a new definition of book transmission, cognitive attractions of composite book use, and new library services have yet to be realized. Beyond mimicry between print and screen books we need to discover a new composite medium of authentic physical and virtual electronic books.

text neck

“While 75% of the world’s population spends hours daily hunched over their handheld devices with their heads flexed forward, they are all in constant danger and at risk of developing Text Neck. The frequent forward flexion causes changes in the cervical spine, curve, supporting ligaments, tendons, and musculature, as well as the bony segments, commonly causing postural change. Among the chief complaints associated with Text Neck are pain felt in the neck, shoulder, back, arm, fingers, hands, wrists and elbows, as well as headaches and numbness and tingling of the upper extremities.”

The malady of text neck is a syndrome of complaints associated with tension induced in the neck as derived from the fixed grip of a reading device. The focal length hand-held position is the same as with printed books but the variable sizes, weights and manipulative variations of print books are absent. In their place is the frozen grip of the e-device that induces the neck tension.

information stimulus

TeleRead has a good scroll this morning including a David Rothman synopsis on public library e-book access. Among his approaches is library purchase of Overdrive. He is concerned that the digital public library traffic will be leaked away by other free access. There is also a fun item on home book scanning with unlibrary incentives, but not unreader interests.

killer app

From Bob Stein’s Sophie to Peter Meyers Breaking the Page, thoughtful futurists have visualized a native electronic book. The dawning of this species is yet to emerge as screen books still mimic print books.

Less apparent is the infiltration of print books among screen readers. These infiltrations range from Espresso books, to photo books, to the shadow print versions of ebooks. Such infiltration is not surprising; the nimble print app has been adapting quickly to readers’ needs for two millennia. It was print production and print library utilities that first exploited digital technologies and distribution of means of production downward to end-users powered a photo copier and print scanner wave still with us. Print books were not born yesterday and print books, now all born digital, grow up happily in the screen world.

fine press book

This project was produced by our own locals Shari DeGraw and Em Ellison. Wood cuts by Gaylord Schanilac.

bibliography to come

Here is a gathering of resources for those interested in the continuing role of print books in a context of its screen delivery. Such a prospect must consider the intersection, interplay and possible interdependence of paper and screen books and also consider a wider future for book transmission. But only works with implications for the future of the monographic book are considered here.

This bibliographic constraint is an attribute. As it is, our small topic of the future of books will address plenty and crosses disciplines between book studies, current book technologies, cognitive features of books, book preservation and book arts. We also survey conferences, forums and discussion threads on the theme of the future of the book. There is also deliberate moderation to constrain hype or hyperbolae from either fringe of print or screen book advocacies.

All that selected reading together is enough to advance an understanding of a continuing role of the print book in a context of its screen delivery. This investigative agenda is a project of the University of Iowa Center for the Book. The project is named “Books to Be” and the bibliography is also augmented by blog and seminar activities.

The Center for the Book is an innovative arts and research program dedicated to the past, present, and future of the book. Located in the University of Iowa Graduate College, the Center pursues a distinctive mission, integrating practice in the art of the book with study of the book in society.

We are living through an exciting moment is book history. Welcome to our vantage point!

tether

“The 263 titles I tallied, though probably not the complete list, still provide a fairly comprehensive look at what Amazon has published so far and where it is headed. Here are some of my findings:
» 261 of the 263 titles are available as print books as well as digital books.
» The average sale price of an Amazon Publishing paperback is $9.92. (The average price of a trade paperback in 2010 was $10.14, according to publishing research firm R. R. Bowker.)
» The average price of an Amazon Publishing e-book is $6.91. (The average price of an e-book in 2010 was $5.75, according to Bowker.)” The Truth About Amazon Publishing

Print and screen book sales are not tethered to each other and neither are their average unit retail prices. There does appear to be a blank stare print unit revenue advantage of 1/3. It is also worth a passing consideration that the publishers’ e-book infrastructure has been built with print revenues.

Going forward publishers will not care to abandon print and that is apparent even in genres of high screen book adoption where the vast majority of titles are released to both formats. Over all genres a future could be imagined where print and screen unit sales are equivalent although the higher print revenue could hold on to a 1/3 advantage. That trend would not establish a print/screen tether, but it would begin to suggest a print/screen interdependence; that neither will flourish without the other.

reverse

“Integrating mobile devices such as smartphones, e-readers, and tablets into your library can be a daunting proposition. In the past few years, libraries have seen a decline in public PC use and a sharp increase in use of free, public wireless devices such as iPads.”

Strange, just in the middle of library renovation to remove stacks and increase workstation studios, we may have reason to reverse the process.

Imagine an upholstered future of a research library well adapted to student naps. Infiltrating the lounge are the bookstore stacks with face-out display of new print publications. Around the perimeter are the high-speed copiers ready to supply double column, text and note format, class reserves as well as vintage text and current journal items. Or, if still preferred, library resources could be displayed at your sofa.

by-pass

“In preparing for the 2012 cycle, we have transitioned our survey from a paper-based to an online survey methodology and revised our questionnaire to address current strategic priorities while maintaining comparability with our historical Faculty Survey findings. We plan to release our findings in a freely available report in spring 2013.” ITHAKA S+R

This series needs to maintain a consistency but that can also mean a persistent omission. There is a need to dig deeper into “conflicted” faculty enthusiasms for both print and screen books. Evermore comparative measures of these enthusiasms as separated agendas will by-pass a need to discern inherent interdependence between the print and screen formats.

There is an echo of another comparative study. “Evidence in Hand: Report of the Task Force on the Artifact in Library Collections”, CLIR, November, 2001, that was so busy weighing the balance between the attributes of the artifact vs. the attributes of the surrogate that it overlooked the attributes of their interaction.

The curious indication from faculty and student surveys (Book Industry Study Group, Ithaka S+R) on the comparative use of print and screen texts is an expressed enthusiasm for both display methods. Just such a curiosity should be followed-up. The surveys should ask, “Are both print and screen displays necessary for efficient learning.?” And following that, “Do you suspect that print and screen displays of texts are complementary for efficient learning? Do you suspect that they may even be interdependent?”

cognitive prosthesis

Cognitive science is not silent on comparative screen/print reading. The discipline is based in brain functions and constructs of memory, memory encoding and planning activities that characterize human perceptions. Books are a very recent prosthesis of conceptual works encoded to devices and they are specifically refined to augment the busy mind.

An interesting aspect is the extra-bodily nature of books even though they effectively encode conceptual works of the mind. Onto that issue can be added distinctions such as screen or paper display and many other sub-distinctions of these.

Books influence memory and retention, especially in recursive construction of concepts. This can be illustrated with the evolution of language; we do not use a word once. The meaning builds as we use a word again and again. Books actually become especially important in long-term meaning where concepts are relayed across time and cultures.

Here one factor, not quickly disputed, becomes important; screen-reading devices are libraries as they display many books while a print book displays only a single title. Recursive transmission is facilitated with objects such as paper book. They provide an immutable display of a single conceptual work and are authenticated as such. This strange, almost paradoxical, efficiency (extreme DRM if you will!) helps to explain reliance on paper books.

Screen books also present extra-bodily display of conceptual works, but the displays are actually as variable, transient, interrupted and conglomerated as our busy minds. This is why students avoid learning risks presented by screen textbooks.

manifesto

As we take action we also decide; the future of the book can be deliberately approached. Rationales for action are there as the speed of change also accelerates the march of book history and it is not too soon to examine the history of the electronic book. We also decide to take action in contrast to inaction. Inevitably, we should actively participate in the future of the book debate. We are well positioned to understand the intersection, interplay and possible interdependence of the physical print and virtual screen book. At least, we should witness the destiny of the book emerging now.

counter image

Perhaps each of these images has a counter image with a phone.

fugitive medium

“sustained management and maintenance that would have seen it through successive transitions in the physical media by means of which the texts could have been transmitted. … authorities both east and west lacked the will and means to maintain a great library. An unburned building full of decaying books would not have made a particle’s worth of difference.” From p. 359 in Bagnall, Roger S. 2002. “Alexandria: Library of Dreams”. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 146 (4): 348-362.

extra soma

” Included for the preservation perspective was a fiery noetic performed by Christian Bök who is conducting a experiment called The Xenotext which involves genetically engineering a bacterium that can become an archive for storing a poem in its DNA genome for eternity. Over apochal, near eternity time spans the evidence of a sentient species on this planet, will otherwise disappear. Bök rates documentary mechanism as inadequate beyond 10k years. Yet as Bök admits, his cypher for noetic preservation and genetic archiving is a bizarre ecological mission against the existential threat.” MIT Future of the Book conference

An extra soma DNA encoding now has an authentic archival application and the projected longevity of eternity is fairly attractive. As reported in NYT science, the striking feature is the utilization of DNA chemistry outside the cell or in an extra soma context. This does depart from Bök’s bacterium host. It also provides an eerie metaphor of the out-of-body paper book contrasted with the screen book. The screen book takes on a reflection of the transactions of the mind while the paper book stays beyond transience, distraction and interruption.

cognitive bibliography

Cognitive bibliography departs from comparative study of published works. The tangent utilizes a model of other cross disciplines between cognitive science and various systematic topologies. Examples would be cognitive evolution or cognitive archeology. Cognitive bibliography can also be welcomed into cognitive humanities.

Cognitive science studies processes of the brain that transact perceptual experiences into useful concepts. Study of lithic technology of prehistory, for example, advances beyond a typology of products as a cognitive approach considers the knapper’s acquisition, practice and transmission of skills.

Cognitive bibliography then studies books as a conceptual strategy for transmission of knowledge. Attention is given to processes of knowledge formulation as implemented by books and to the interplay of mind and the physical display of ideas. Books are external products of internal concepts. They also offer another illustration of “exaptation”, or the mobilization of pre-existing capacity to new purpose.

A cognitive science approach to bibliography also mobilizes projections of the future of the book. Just as a cognitive approach works backward to decipher processes that result in past products, the same approach can be used to interpret emerging products such as screen display of books. Here we encounter the potent contextualization that cognitive science provides. Processes of hominid conceptualization, elaborating both slowly and suddenly, are persistent and recursive.

Cognitive science studies processes of the brain that transact perceptual experiences into useful concepts.That definition is also inverted by books. Books are perceptual experiences conveyed from useful concepts.

cognitive science 2

A subspecialty of cognitive science is the evolution of language. Aside from all the component and interdependent features, an important utility of language is recursive meaning. A word is not used once. It takes on utility by use over and over. Recursive use gives the word meaning well as as a communication status. So the word starts to become the mediator itself.

The book is another such language-like mediator. Recursive use lends meaning and communication status and the physical medium enables transactions across time and cultures. It can also be mentioned that reliable and context rich recursive utility depends on a low rate of mutability.

Check out Cognitive Archeology and Human Evolution, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

tangible display

Each medium has requirements for storage and display. Paper books do require space, but that is about all. Screen books require electricity, connectivity, and display device. Separated requirements for storage and display add complexity to screen prerequisites. Screen book advocates sometimes assume their medium prerequisites are eternal rights while physical space is unsustainable presumption.

And another thing: screen surface and paper substrate; one transacts content and the other embodies content. Content itself is consistently ephemeral, both conveyed and received. The only tangible is the device commodity and among those there is only one tangible display.

pro-action

The book is a tool of our consciousness. It converts ideas into things. There is also a recursive function as books then engender further research. Using this book tool we have built our history, literature and science. It has functioned quietly but efficiently across time and cultures.

The current rush of changes in print and ebook formats is dramatic evidence of our close companionship with books. A flood of digital reading devices and hybrid software and hardware designs are emerging as the print book is augmented by screen delivery and associated cloud libraries, ebook collection building, automated index and searching, and screen learning. While all screen book simulations deviate from print conventions the hybrids that emerge exhibit print and screen formats referencing each other and often resonating with each other. This rapidly developing book production and consumption landscape is dynamic and unique in media history.

Advancing into this media environment we intend to investigate the topic popularly known as the future of the book. The topic is already avidly discussed in technical and information science forums. We wish to contribute within the context of cognitive humanist study and observe the impact of these changes on human creativity and learning.

Stay tuned…

unrecognizable

The book preservation class is meeting in the old Bindery in the new Center for the Book at North Hall. Other than the bindery you will not recognize the place! There is a new computer lab, a huge new letterpress and graphic studio, all kinds of student amenities and all is newly painted and furnished. It is as if there is a new future of the book.

(I took this image from TeleRead…)

still crazy

“CFP: What Is the History of (Electronic) Books? Four decades after the launch of Michael Hart’s Project Gutenberg and three decades after the publication of Robert Darnton’s seminal essay, “What Is the History of Books?,” are we able to start telling the history of electronic books? If so, what are the ways by which authorship, publishing, reading, and scholarship have been influenced, shaped, or changed by electronic books? Do electronic books transmit texts in new ways? What relationships do electronic books create or threaten amongst authors, publishers, and readers? What does it mean to collect and curate electronic books?” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada

Bibliographic studies are beginning to see the screen book as a historical topic. That is where FotB has been as well. Our abstracts are either too feeble or too crazy, but it is fun to watch the post-digital surge.

new testament

Janice, book conservator at the Smithsonian, remarks that Jefferson’s paste-up production of his version of the Gospels clearly demonstrates his fine hand skills.

I would go a bit further with that projection. The surgical excisions, leaving delicate webs of the margins intact, also demonstrate Jefferson’s high regard for books. He uses his quill knife with such a careful, attentive deference.The very fact that these excised volumes survive is telling.

Also evident, in my own projection from this artifact, is Jefferson’s stately understanding of the distinction between manuscript and print and his further understanding that he was producing a hybrid. For example, note the strict typographic line breaks and leading of the hand written title page.

Best of all, we can project in Jefferson’s hand made distillation of the Gospels his quiet pleasure at cutting away debris of dingy Church Councils and revisionist enclaves determined to improve on simple morals. He also left the miracles unused. This must have been both an enjoyable fantasy as well an escape from political and institutional ineptitudes surrounding him.

Yes, Jefferson took some deliberate care with making the Bible. Actually that is another point to be observed; the excised narrative is not just a string of fragments. This is actually a new, new testament and the surviving Bibles with the cut-outs serve as an old testament. Here’s the CSPAN-3 video link: Well worth the full viewing.

prime time

A larger group has met to advance investigation of the future of the book. Interest groups include the Digital Humanities program and University Archives. We propose three products. These products are a bibliographic portal, a program of research seminars focused on the future of the book and a live moderation of exchange and discussion as new disciplinary approaches emerge from the portal and class work. Stay tuned…