History of the Book 

History of Books and Printing: A Research Guide

The New York Public Library has a world renowned collection of physical artifacts documenting the historical development of written forms of communication. While the General Research Division has a long standing tradition of collecting supporting material in the book arts that traces the evolution of the book and its production, the Division also concerns itself with the material that describes the intellectual, economic, and cultural impact of this evolution on the surrounding society. At present, the format and transmission of text is in the greatest period of flux since the invention of movable type and printing. At the same time, the study of the history of books is achieving legitimacy as a multi-disciplinary scholarly pursuit. The following guide will attempt to provide direction to the appropriate source material within the Division.

The Future of the Book 

The New Age of the Book by Robert Darnton

... Consider the book. It has extraordinary staying power. Ever since the invention of the codex in the third or fourth century AD, it has proven to be a marvelous machineãgreat for packaging information, convenient to thumb through, comfortable to curl up with, superb for storage, and remarkably resistant to damage. It does not need to be upgraded or downloaded, accessed or booted, plugged into circuits or extracted from webs. Its design makes it a delight to the eye. Its shape makes it a pleasure to hold in the hand. And its handiness has made it the basic tool of learning for thousands of years, even before the library of Alexandria was founded early in the fourth century BC. [read more]

E-Books: An Idea Whose Time Hasn't Come by David D. Kirkpatrick

In October 2000, Dick Brass, a vice president of Microsoft in charge of its efforts to promote electronic books, presided over the first annual Frankfurt eBook Awards, held at an opera house in Frankfurt. Financed mainly by Microsoft, the awards presented prizes of up to $50,000 to winning authors of books available in digital form.

"Someday, when electronic books replace print, these will just be called the book awards," Mr. Brass said in an interview then.

But the managers of the National Book Awards can rest easy for now. So far, demand for reading the texts of books on computer screens has been tepid at best, and last week the International eBook Award Foundation discontinued the awards and suspended its activities. "It has become increasingly difficult to raise the necessary funding," Alberto Vitale, the foundation's chairman, said in a statement. That is, Microsoft stopped paying. [read more]

(link via The Shifted Librarian)

"Free Mickey" 

Copyright law vs. innovation by Doug Bedell

Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig is waging a lonely fight to free Mickey Mouse.

Most of his audience last month at the SXSW Interactive Festival had no idea Mickey had even been trapped. But by the time Lessig finished with a 90-minute multimedia presentation on the future of copyright and intellectual property, images of the world-famous cartoon character behind bars were indelibly etched on their collective psyche.

Lessig repeatedly flashed images of the imprisoned rodent onto a nearby video screen to make his point: Corporations such as Walt Disney Co. have successfully pressed for extensions of copyright powers far beyond the intent of the Constitution's framers.

As a result, the ability of the Internet to provide the building blocks for innovation has been shackled, and the creative process that allowed Walt Disney to build his cartoon dynasty has been snuffed, Lessig said. Unless copyright laws are dramatically altered, Lessig told the Austin Convention Center audience, "There will be nobody who can do what Disney did, ever again." [read more]

Sadly, another one bites the dust 

Rocky Mountain Low: Colorado Springs Indie to Close by Edward Nawotka

McKinzey-White Booksellers, the 19-year-old Colorado Springs bookstore, will close at the end of June. Twenty employees--six full timers, 14 part-timers--will be laid off.

Owner Karen Bauder blamed burgeoning competition from the chains and other retailers for the store's demise. She told PW Daily, "It was a downward cycle that began four years ago when B&N and Borders moved in and opened within three blocks of us. Then a Media Play opened across the street. Plus, a Wal-Mart behind us also sold books and Sam's Club opened down the street." She said that within a year of the chains opening, McKinzey-White lost 50% of its business and was never able to recover. "It sort of stunned me. I just couldn't win, there's just no way," she said. [read more]

Do yourself and your community a favor -- search out and support a local independent bookstore.

Are books too expensive? 

Who's Responsible For High Book Prices? by Dennis Loy Johnson

Why are book prices so high? Not just new hardcovers, which are mostly hovering -- for another five minutes or so -- just below $30. But have you noticed that even paperbacks, the thing that revolutionized the book business once-upon-a-time by virtue of being affordable, are now just as over-priced as everything else?

And prices climb so steadily you can see it happening from season to season. You don't have to read trade reports to know that there's a wide-spread belief in the book industry that "consumers" don't see much difference between, say, a $25.95 book and a $26.95 book, or even a $27.95 book of that matter. As if they didn't have us over a barrel. As if there was something we could do about it. (And as if there were any logic at all to a system that believes a dollar or two means nothing, but the difference between $26.95 and $27 will send people running out the door screaming.)

Then there are those ludicrous advances making the news more and more regularly -- just this past week, "Cold Mountain" author Charles Frazier got $8 million out of Random House for a one-page description of an idea he's got for a second novel. An 'idea.'

Is it any wonder books are so expensive? And is there any question whose fault it is? [read more]

What's it worth? 

Placing value on Information by Audrey Fenner

Society regards information as a commodity and the possession of it as an asset. Economists would like to account for information in the same way as physical assets, but no discipline has given us an accepted model for such treatment. Disciplines regard information differently, and it is more difficult to develop systems to measure information than physical commodities. The price system has been used to assign value to information, but does it provide the best means? Can librarians plan for the future, justifying increasing expenditures to their funding agencies, in the absence of a meaningful information measurement scheme? [read more]

Tough act to follow 

After Oprah by Laura Miller

Since Oprah Winfrey announced two weeks ago that she's ending her television book club, some new players have stepped up to the plate hoping to beat her record in swatting authors onto the bestseller lists. USA Today has announced the launch of a book discussion that will take place both in its Life section and on its Web site, and in June the "Today" show will begin a club in which popular authors will invite viewers to read the works of "undiscovered" writers.

Both media outlets have sizable audiences, but it's hard to imagine either one matching Winfrey's influence on book buyers. Her power to bump up a book's sales figures by as much as a million copies (at the peak of her club's popularity) tended to confuse observers about the nature of the club itself. Despite its use of the broadcast medium, the Oprah Book Club worked according to an old-fashioned principle. Publishing savants have long known that word of mouth is the most effective way to sell lots of books, especially when those books are novels. The people who spend their money on fiction are mostly women, and most of them tend to try out new books and authors on the recommendations of trusted friends or booksellers.

Winfrey's book club represented a kind of supercharged word of mouth: In her case, the mouth reached 7 million ears daily. ... [read more]

Business and the web 

Business pros flock to Weblogs by Martin Wolk

Omar Javaid describes himself as a "pretty prolific" Internet reader who used to fire off hundreds of e-mails each week with news tidbits that might interest staff and customers of his consulting firm. Then about six months ago he began a sort of online diary known as a Weblog and began posting his thoughts and findings there instead.

The experiment has been so successful that Javaid says he plans to expand it until virtually everyone at his 60-person company, Mobilocity, has a Weblog. Javaid's brief experience has convinced him that far from an exercise in self-indulgence, Weblogs actually can be used to increase worker efficiency.

Javaid is hardly alone. Increasingly professionals in many fields are adopting a technology that until recently was considered to be largely the province of insomniac teen diarists and technology geeks.

Journalists use weblogs to build and maintain an audience. Lawyers use them to discuss cases in the news. Educators use them to encourage class participation and offer resources to students. [read more]

Web is the future for business

Business use of the web is about to get serious.

The next two years will see businesses start to remake the software they use to run their organisations as they start to put the net at the heart of everything they do, says a report by consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers.

It predicts that the move to more web-centric ways of working will be aided by industry groups and software companies defining and standardising how programs should swap information via the net.

But it also warns that a lot needs to be done to make web-centred software secure and reliable before businesses start to use it in everything they do. [read more]

This is a joke, right? 

Browsers: Can They Be Stopped?

The Australian Publishers Association and the Australian Booksellers Association have joined forcesÝ in an attempt to prevent Browsing, the customer practice which is believed to cost the industry millions of dollars a year.

"It's time we finally tackled this problem head on", said new APA President Greg Browne. "For too long customers have wandered about our shops, looking at our stock, leafing through our books, and not buying stuff. It must be stopped".

The Associations are working on a white paper on the issue, tentatively entitled Browsers: Can They Be Stopped?, which canvasses a number of possible solutions to the problem.

"The difficulty is making sure that customers feel compelled to buy lots of books, without providing disincentives for them entering the shop", said Browne. ... [read more]

Happy anniversary! RLG DigiNews is five years old 

RLG DigiNews: Taking Stock at Five Years

Five years ago, RLG published the first issue of RLG DigiNews. A lot has changed since then--and a good bit has remained the same. We're using this anniversary issue as a case study to reflect on those changes. This feature article discusses key turning points for RLG DigiNews from the access and preservation perspectives. Our FAQ asks "where are they now" as it follows up on two projects that were announced in the first issue. In the June 2002 issue, we'll report on several more. The fate of these projects, like the other changes that the editorial staff of RLG DigiNews has witnessed, are revealing of both the opportunities and the obstacles that line the shores of a swiftly moving technological sea.

RLG DigiNews had its roots in an RLG electronic group-based document, "Diginotes," compiled by members of PRESERV as a way to keep pace with the rapidly developing field of digitization. In the two "issues" distributed via email to a special RLG discussion list, "Diginotes" contained announcements on, and citations to, "library imaging technology and applications." Though "Diginotes" ceased after two compilations, the need for timely information on the topic of digitization did not. [read more]

Photocopiers and buggy whips 

Digital Copiers and Scribal Musings by Fred Stielow

A funny thing happened while shopping for photocopiers for the Walter P. Reuther Library of Wayne State University. They are apparently becoming obsoleteãgoing the way of the phonograph record, punch card, and fountain pen. The industry is quietly converging on digital scanning and the microchip. This new technology goes beyond a simple replacement. It has significant implications for the future of libraries and archives along with interesting echoes from their past. [read more]