From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2015 20:45:21 -0700
Sandy, this doesn't sound like the traditional codex book. It also
doesn't sound like anything anybody has been able to create till now.
So instead of the e-book and instead of the e-post-book, we have the
e-papyrus-scroll. It represents an advance in ease of access and
portability and a big retreat in functionality. It's an area where
the for-profit sector has little incentive to innovate. Perfect
opportunity for the university press community.
Jim O'Donnell
ASU
On Wed, Apr 1, 2015 at 4:18 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2015 23:43:48 -0500
>
> The kind of document Darnton described (following Cornell librarian
> Ross Atkinson) is far more multidirectional, multilayered, and
> interactive than any codex book could ever be. This is how I described
> what Atkinson had in mind in my ATG essay:
>
> His term for this "new kind" of document structure is "concentric
> stratification," which "might consist of a top level that would
> contain some kind of extended abstract; this level or stratum would
> then be connected to the next level, and so on. Each succeeding level
> would contain the information in the previous level, but would provide
> in addition greater degrees of substance and detail. Scholarly
> communications that would require an extended context, and would
> therefore deserve a monograph in the paper environment, would in the
> online environment merely include more levels than would a
> communication that would in a print environment have been published as
> a journal article." As hinted here, Atkinson sees electronic
> publishing as breaking down the dichotomy between monographs and
> journal articles, and he also sees reading shifting from a linear form
> to something "that is done, so to speak, in three dimensions: first,
> one can read horizontally or linearly within any level of a given
> publication; second, one can read vertically or hierarchically through
> the levels of any particular publication; and, third, one can read
> referentially back through the constituent citations (be these
> explicit or implicit) into other texts on the network."
>
> It struck me that this approach could open up wonderful opportunities
> to make available often esoteric research to a variety of audiences,
> ranging from lay people and journalists wanting basic information
> about new research results in down-to-earth language to highly trained
> specialists who want every last detail including references to data on
> which the results reported are based-and everyone in between. If this
> were to become the future path of scholarly publishing, I could
> readily envisage roles for university editors, reference librarians,
> and public information staff-not to mention computer experts-to play
> in creating such multifaceted, multilayered documents.
>
> Does this sound like the traditional codex book?
>
> Sandy Thatcher
>
>
>
> From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2015 19:35:10 -0400
>
> Sandy, I'm going to disagree LOUDLY with your assertion that the book
> is a linear document with a beginning, middle, and end. If it were,
> I'd be a happy camper with Kindles and Nooks and PDFs. The codex book
> for sixteen hundred years has been a profoundly nonlinear document,
> with lots of easy flipping back and forth, cross-references, indices,
> tables of contents, illustrations tipped in together in one section,
> maps constantly harked back to for ready reference, footnotes, even
> (SHUDDER!) the endnotes that publishers think people prefer,
> bibliographies, and the like. What we have now in digital form is the
> electronic papyrus scroll: start at the beginning and follow it
> slavishly through to the end. If some smart puppy invents something
> in which the electronic representation does *not* represent a
> significant step back from the codex, I'll be delighted. The
> opportunity is there for the grasping.
>
> Jim O'Donnell
|
