Publishing Update

Further to my in class presentation on publication on Zulu, I still find evidence that this is the direction that web publications will take in the future. Imagine one central library located somewhere in the world with massive storage facilities which can provide immediate access to any publication in any desired language at the touch of a button. Obviously there will be a commercial aspect to this and users could be expected to pay for the service. However the elimination of printing, bookbinding, storage, shipping, and distribution costs could make it a cost effective operation for some of the web service providers like Google or Yahoo. It could also be a benefit to the environment through the reduction in the use of timber for paper, not to mention the savings on the carbon footprint. Jason Epstein in his recent publication The Revolutionary Future, would argue that digitization makes possible a world in which anyone can claim to be a publisher and anyone can call him- or herself an author. He says that in this world “the traditional filters will have melted into air and only the ultimate filter—the human inability to read what is unreadable—will remain to winnow what is worth keeping in a virtual marketplace where Keats's nightingale shares electronic space with Aunt Mary's haikus”[1]. He celebrates the possibility that the contents of the world's libraries will eventually be accessed practically anywhere at the click of a mouse, and possibly considering personal storage capacity on a home computer he welcomes the fact that another click might obliterate these same contents, which would ask the question why do we need physical copies of books in this digital age?. Amid the literary chaos of the digital future, readers will be guided by the imprints of reputable publishers, distinguishable within a worldwide, multilingual directory, a function that Google seems poised to dominate—one hopes with the cooperation of great national and university libraries and their skilled bibliographers, under revised world copyright standards in keeping with the reach of the World Wide Web. Titles will also be posted on authors' and publishers' own Web sites and on reliable Web sites of special interest where biographies of Napoleon or manuals of dog training will be evaluated by competent critics and downloaded directly from author or publisher to end user while software distributes the purchase price appropriately, bypassing traditional formulas. Epstein would contend that with inventory expense, shipping, and returns eliminated, readers will pay less, authors will earn more, and book publishers, rid of their cumbersome and costly infrastructure, will survive and may prosper.

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[1] Jason Epstein, The Revolutionary Future, New York Review of Books, Volume 57, Number 4 · March 11, 2010

Looking through what Walsh has to say seems very exciting indeed. There were certain parts that would particularly impress, particularly where he relates how many texts have been long out of print and are now available in versions edited by highly qualified and accomplished scholars, and they fact that these are available in their original format can offer immense opportunities to students studying prime source material. The fact that these digital texts can be accompanied by supplementary materials such as page images, critical apparatuses, essays, and auxiliary primary source material that was never available in the traditional printed book. Walsh would also maintain that by students would have better access by “allowing interaction with the cumulative body of these objects and tools in networked homes, offices, and cafés free from the traditional confines of often remote archives and libraries”. Because of the huge increase in the volumes of information and publication in the nineteenth century, also the increase in literacy through education , plus the beginnings of mass media and the decreasing costs of publishing, there was a greater need for ever more sophisticated and flexible technologies for representing and managing that information. The nineteenth century would be challenged by the phenomenon of information overload, when the amount of recorded information produced becomes almost impossible to process through traditional means, such as reading. Now however through the arrival of digital technology, cheaper printing, the Internet and word processors, communication would be more efficient and scholars have the facility to communicate their ideas and exchange information on topics of mutual interest. These digital technologies would provide the opportunity to incorporate multimedia such as animation, image, audio, and video, into traditional scholarship. This would open up a new dynamic way of presenting literary and historical research.

Looking through what Walsh has to say seems very exciting indeed. There were certain parts that would particularly impress, particularly where he relates how many texts have been long out of print and are now available in versions edited by highly qualified and accomplished scholars, and they fact that these are available in their original format can offer immense opportunities to students studying prime source material. The fact that these digital texts can be accompanied by supplementary materials such as page images, critical apparatuses, essays, and auxiliary primary source material that was never available in the traditional printed book. Walsh would also maintain that by students would have better access by “allowing interaction with the cumulative body of these objects and tools in networked homes, offices, and cafés free from the traditional confines of often remote archives and libraries”. Because of the huge increase in the volumes of information and publication in the nineteenth century, also the increase in literacy through education , plus the beginnings of mass media and the decreasing costs of publishing, there was a greater need for ever more sophisticated and flexible technologies for representing and managing that information. The nineteenth century would be challenged by the phenomenon of information overload, when the amount of recorded information produced becomes almost impossible to process through traditional means, such as reading. Now however through the arrival of digital technology, cheaper printing, the Internet and word processors, communication would be more efficient and scholars have the facility to communicate their ideas and exchange information on topics of mutual interest. These digital technologies would provide the opportunity to incorporate multimedia such as animation, image, audio, and video, into traditional scholarship. This would open up a new dynamic way of presenting literary and historical research.

E-Books

I know that up to now I was unable to get a blog through so at this stage the first chapters have been done to death so I looked at the chapter by Matthew Streggle on E Books. He provides us with a very clear insight into the work that has been done in insuring the availability of texts for study and as he says himself this is a work in progress. He says that “at the time of writing, EEBO contains page images of every page of around 95,000 books, out of the approximately 125,000 listed in STC I and II, so that it can provide instant access to a large majority of the surviving printed texts of early modern Britain. This work started before World War II, and in one sense there is nothing in the "original" EEBO which is not in that microfilm collection. However he makes the point that, microfilm is not a user-friendly medium. He also outlines the work done by FrenchBibliothèque Nationale. Gallica which offers facsimile images of hundreds of books from the early modern period, mostly in French and Latin

He further brings to our attention the fact that “double keyboarding similar to that used by LION to create full-text transcripts” of, in the first instance, 25,000 of the books in EEBO. Interactive Shakespeare Project, with hot-linked annotation which appears in a separate frame on the screen, while yet a third frame contains stills from a production of the play. This would be a useful tool for study and referencing. Reliability on information would be guaranteed by the Early Modern Literary Studies (a peer-reviewed online journal), publishing articles on all aspects of early modern literature. No registration or subscription is required, which is great for the poor student as it is available free of charge to anyone anywhere in the world with access to a web browser. EMLS is supported, in effect, by the university department of the academic who edits it. He says that blogs are yet to prove themselves as respectable tools of the early modern researcher. Technology has moved on giving the researcher better tools.