The second UNESCO World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries will be organized at Lombardia, Italy on 6-8 June. The theme of Focus 2011 is ‘The Book Tomorrow: the future of the Written Word’.

There are three main themes: “The E-book Economy”, “Author’s Right in the Digital Era” and “The Digital Library” – and nine workshops: “Blog versus Newspaper”, “Future of writing and reading”, “Changes in the production and distribution chain”, “Copyright versus copy-left”, “Fair use and Creative Commons”, “Preserving the digital memory”, “The library as public service”, “Good and bad in public and private partnership” and  “The risks of digitization”.

Keynotes are Robert Darnton, Milad Doueihi and Antonio Skarmeta. Other speakers include Esther Wojcicki, vice chairman of the board of directors of Creative Comnnons and the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair Jürgen Boos. Editor and publisher James Bridle, one of the speakers at Unbound Book, and Kristine Hanna, director of the Internet Archive are two of the workshop panelists.

‘The Book Tomorrow’ is tapping into a similar set of issues addressed at Unbound Book, but seems more focused on the debate about copyright, rather than formal changes to the book and on education. 

See for more information:

http://focus2011.org/focus/

Mieke Gerritzen, ontwerper en directeur van het Graphic Design Museum in Breda, verzorgde de boekpresentatie van I Read Where I Am. I Read Where I Am bevat 82 reflecties over toekomstige vormen van lezen.

Mieke Gerritzen @ the unbound book conference – photo cc by-sa Sebastiaan ter Burg

Mieke Gerritzen en Geert Lovink kwamen samen op het idee om dit boek te maken. Gerritzen begon de boekpresentatie met het voordragen van de introductie van het boek. Zij vertelde dat het boek moet worden gezien als een leidraad voor toekomstige lezers. Vervolgens gaf Gerritzen het woord over aan filosoof Henk Oosterling die zijn bijdrage aan het boek voordroeg. Oosterling meende dat lezen zijn oorspronkelijke betekenis heeft teruggekregen: ‘met de hand verzamelen’. Hij vertelde dat we allemaal verzamelaars zijn gebleven van materiële waardes. De tweede auteur die zijn bijdrage voordroeg was Max Bruinsma, hoofdredacteur van Items. Hij vertelde hoe wij tegenwoordig op een andere manier lezen, we scannen de tekst, we krijgen een beeld, dit kan eerder kijken worden genoemd. Hij vindt dat het concept lezen veranderd is. Lezen heeft volgens hem steeds minder met tekst te maken. Overzicht krijgen van een tekst is belangrijker geworden dan inzicht krijgen. Vervolgens gaf de Amsterdamse straatdichter Frank Starik zijn grappige visie op het verschil tussen ‘lezers’ en ‘kijkers’.

Gerritzen gaf ook nog even het woord aan de vormgever Jeroen Barendse. Hij legde uit dat de essays zijn weergegeven met woorden die gekleurd zijn in verschillende grijswaardes tot zwart. De kleur wordt bepaald door een algoritme die gebaseerd is op hoe vaak woorden voorkomen gecombineerd met unieke woorden. De essays krijgen hierdoor gestalte als een ‘tag cloud’. Zo kan het boek ook op een andere manier gelezen worden. Als laatste kreeg Bas Savenije, algemeen directeur van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek, het woord. Gerritzen vroeg hem naar de toekomst van de bibliotheek. Savenije vertelde dat bibliotheken ervoor zorgen dat informatie goed en betrouwbaar is. De bibliotheek zal volgens hem deze rol altijd blijven vervullen. Hij liet weten dat de bibliotheek als zijnde gebouw steeds populairder wordt. Mensen komen samen in de bibliotheek om gedisciplineerd te studeren.

Adriaan van der Weel is Bohn Professor of Modern Dutch Book History at Leiden University and lecturer inBook and Digital Media Studies. He made the closing remarks at the Unbound Book conference.

Adriaan van der Weel @ the unbound book conference – photo cc by-sa Sebastiaan ter Burg

Van der Weel began his closing remarks by asking the question: “Why do we have books?” There are many valid reasons stated in his answer: first, humanity used language and then subsequently writing was used to externalize our memory. He continued his closing remarks by pointing out some final conclusions of the conference. Van der Weel affirmed that technology changes us whether we like it or not. He ponders how much control we actually have? He repeated the statement mentioned earlier in the conference in regard to the effect of the internet, stating that it makes people less individualized and more social. To this statement Adriaan added the conclusion that we now cease to be apes and become ants. According to Van Der Weel, it still remains to be seen whether this will stimulate collaboration instead of solo-reading practices.

Van Der Weel admits that he now feels more puzzled about these questions than before this conference. His brain was jolted both ways and he remains unsure as to where he stands. This has lead to confusion which is positive because it stimulates people to think about the changes taking place. Changes such as whether electronic books still have symbolic value or not or whether they stimulate individuality or collectivity. There is not only electronic opposed to physical books but also both, as well as the possibility of PoD. You can make something public immediately or write it down after long periods of thought. Van der Weel was intrigued by the question of materiality, specifically, if another material is used other than paper, would it have the same cognitive effect? More research must be done to find out whether we are using the best materials for optimal learning. He also wondered whether it would be possible to empower both the reader and author rather than focus on the devices. It is a matter of cultural revolution, eventually time develops something new. Adriaan concluded with the question: What will come next as a result of cultural evolution?

‘Booksprint’ is a working model for collaborative book authorship, and has since inspired a FLOSS tool called Booki. Its genius is that it takes the proven model of the ‘codesprint’ that open source software communities have used so successfully – to develop huge amounts of code in single intense bursts of focussed collective labour over one week of living, thinking, and working together – and applies it directly to book production. Wireless and F/OSS geek and grassroots technology generalist Thomas Krag introduced Booksprint to the Open Source Publishing Tools workshop as an inverse story about the matter-ing of publishing: “..an outsider’s view of this whole book thing.”

Moving On to Bookness

The Booksprint idea came about while Kraag was working with wire.less.dk, a non-profit he co-founded dedicated to establishing internet infrastructure using open wireless technologies in developing countries. Their company model – “two Danish geeks travelling the world” – was not at all scalable to the wireless networking they wanted to see developing. Limited attention was being given to existing manuals and didactic wikis (“it never occurred to us to ask why anyone else would use our modules when we never read anyone else’s modules”) while the labour involved in ongoing “teach the teacher” sessions was unrealistic. The net at that time in some parts of Africa was also so slow as to not handle simple file downloads of didactic materials. What seemed necessary was a singular authoritative book. It was not possible to put one together from existing quality published material because the book had to be on a free creative commons license, legally open to any translator who wished to translate it, and most importantly, it needed to be able to be legally re-sold locally, so that translators could benefit from their investment in translating it. Kraag realized he was not prepared for the task…

I didn’t want to write a book for 18 months, because at heart I’m pretty lazy, so I called a bunch of friends working on wireless networks that were already coming to a conference in London: “Can we stick around for a week afterwards and write this book?” Some of them said, “Are you crazy?” The reason I thought we could do it is through the existing production model of the codesprint. We sit together and it increases our efficiency. So I found 5000K which was enough for tickets, and to pay someone to go on holidays to Morocco and leave his house to us for a week.

The Conversion of a Genre of Text Labouring into Software Tools

The text still needed to be edited for 6 months, but ‘Wireless Networking in the Developing World’, has had 2 million downloads since and is in its 2nd edition. The process was tedious, using emailed and cut and paste files, proprietary software, and open source outputs. Better tools have developed since 2009 when Adam Hyde began using booksprint for FLOSS manuals and has since fully developed the booksprint model in to Bookie software, a robust and customised collaborative authoring tool. ‘How to Bypass Internet Censorship’ was written with Bookie directly in to the browser, with the crew pressing the “publish” button on the 7th day.

It doesn’t really matter if its not completely polished… it still feels great… The first day you write the table of contents and the index… on friday night you upload it to lulu and its done and it feels so good. a week of all nighters is so much more doable than a year of working on something.

Highlights

Because Booki is open source, you can download it and adapt it as you want. FLOSS’ design has beautifully simple READ and WRITE interfaces and PUBLISH buttons down one side, and a chat section down the right, where you can talk with and share material between other authors writing alongside you remotely. It can handle versioning, tracking authorship (for attribution for different licences), Javi, wiki style sheets that generate html, and a whole bunch of other things. (Check out the van that the Booki crew built for Booki that can drive around and print books!) All the licensing is handled by the site itself and built on Hyde’s own licensing expertise.

Discussion

Krag has not received government or local government funding for his work and instead relies on philanthropic investment since 2002. In the closing discussion, the huge issue of translation software was raised. Simon Worthington of Mute has done research into this and states there really isn’t much, especially not open source. A rare strong example is Pootle. Krag noted FLOSS manuals exists in 5 languages already and can do split views, but this is an area that needs a lot of work. One of the main problems is that professional translators have very established workflow methods – the bottom line is that have to send to translations in Microsoft Word as standard. Femke from OSP mentioned that the EU’s translation department has incredible tools – but only in Microsoft!! One of the exceptions is the Spanish local governments, which do some very good work with open translation, including machine translation – they have some of the same remits that the EU have which means they have to translate large amounts of government text. This may be somewhere to look for modelling solutions.

Floss Manuals Booki available here.

Veljko Kukulj is an IT professional with over 20 years of experience. He was the last speaker in the session, Horizons of Education and Authoring.

Veljko Kukulj @ the unbound book conference – photo cc by-sa Sebastiaan ter Burg

Kukulj started his presentation with the question of “What is truth?” He explained that common emotional truth is a combination of facts and interpretations. We hear ‘truth’ every day in the media. Traditional publishers collaborate on the same truth which they publish as collaborative work. He explains that one author results in one truth, while many authors produce many truths. Subsequently, many truths exist at the same time, but how should publishers handle these multiple truths? How should these differences be handled? Kukulj provides a possible solution: allowing multiple truths and highlighting them by zooming in on the data. All of the data should be verified and if it is wrong, then it should be shown and told. When have access to lots of information, we can search and find patterns and eventually decide what a truthful statement is.

Kukulj explains that truth can be established when data is shown in small pieces because it is easier to agree on small bits of information. Technology can be used to reveal these particles of data. He explains how cultures have different interpretations of history, conflicts and wars. How can these conflicting views be made accessible?
In his presentation, Kukulj shows a project by the company Geanium about the First World War. This interactive chronological visualization represents the assassination of Franz Ferdinand which triggered the First World War. This event is shown in chronological form with in-depth data and details of the actual sequence of events that took place.

PDF of presentation available here: Publishing Truth

Robert Max Steenkist is a professor of publishing studies at Universidad de los Andes. He was the last speaker of the session Ascent of E-readers.

Robert Max Steenkist @ the unbound book conference – photo cc by-sa Sebastiaan ter Burg

Robert Steenkist started his talk with an introduction on the book in Latin America. He informed: “In Latin America we do not read.” Robert explains that there are in fact many publishers in Latin America. The publishing activities in Colombia are concentrated in the cities. 7 publishers publish half of the titles and 400 publishers produce the rest. Books are very expensive in Latin America because they have to be imported.

How are new technologies helping this?

Robert continues his presentation with some facts about new media in Latin America. He shows that many people maintain a blog while many people do not have a computer or access to internet. For this reason cell phones are very popular in Latin America. Steenkist illustrates the strong activity in the new media field in Latin America by using the example of the Colombian politician Atanas Mockus. In 2010, The politician had the most followers on Twitter and Facebook and his name was the fifth most typed name on Twitter worldwide.

The main problems with the publishing industry in Latin America are that the laws protect books and big publishers. Although the government treats the book as a democratic tool for development, they do not provide access to books. Robert affirms that this is a strange policy. He explains how Latin America does not have a best seller culture. The nature of the industry is based on the theory of Chris Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’. Diversity is very important for the publishing industry. ‘Bibliodiversity’ is a political tool for independent publishers so that they can stand against the big publishers. Bibliodiversity is very important according to Robert since books play an important role in preserving knowledge which would otherwise be lost forever. The governments promote bibliodiversity by stimulating free circulation and providing support to less popular authors against the powerful multinationals. However Robert notes that the governments do not include new media in these strategies.

PDF of presentation available here: Unbound Book Presentation.

A short synopsis in English of Gerlof Donga’s presentation ‘Digital studying 2011’.

Gerlof Donga, research coordinator usability for Amsterdam E-boekenstad, started the workshop E-readers in Dutch Education with a presentation about digital studying. He explained that research should be done to investigate how e-readers can be used in education. Gerlof started the presentation with explaining the difference between reading for entertainment and reading for information assessment. The investigation as to whether e-readers are suitable for studying has yet to be determined. In order to understand information, people actively use the text. The e-reader should support the different reading strategies. E-boekenstad is working on two research initiatives to investigate whether e-readers can support the different reading strategies. One research initiative is executed in cooperation with Microsoft to test the e-reading platform Yindo. The other research venture is in cooperation with Paerson to test the eText viewer. Gerlof ends his presentation by saying that research must be done with both students and lecturers, because lecturers are the driving force behind the implementation of e-readers in education.

Gerlof Donga @ the unbound book conference – photo cc by-sa Sebastiaan ter Burg

Gerlof Donga, Onderzoekslijncoördinator usability en docent onderzoeker binnen het project Amsterdam E-boekenstad, begon de workshop E-readers in Dutch Education met een presentatie over digitaal studeren. Hij legde uit dat digitaal lezen nu pas echt gaat doorbreken. De vraag is nu hoe boeken moeten worden uitgeleverd: offline op de e-reader of op internet via een portal? Veel boeken worden via een online portal aangeboden. Gerlof vertelde: “2011 is the year of the tablet wars.” We gaan nu pas uitvinden wat e-readers gaan betekenen nu we de hype voorbij zijn. In de nabije toekomst komen we erachter wie de leiding krijgt op e-reading gebied. Gerlof vertelt dat het interessant is om te onderzoeken hoe studenten hun iPad gebruiken. De studenten gebruiken hun iPad voornamelijk voor gaming, video en muziek. Hij merkt op dat er op het moment weinig apps zijn voor informatie verwerking of voor lezen.

Gerlof vervolgde de presentatie met het uitleggen van het onderscheid tussen lezen voor ontspanning en het lezen om informatie te verwerken. Het lezen voor ontspanning is het hype gedeelte van e-reading en heeft een hoge vlucht genomen. Teksten die bedoelt zijn voor informatie verwerking worden ook elektronisch aangeboden, deze teksten worden echter afgedrukt om te lezen. Om studeren mogelijk te maken op een e-reader moet eerst worden vastgesteld hoe men leest om informatie te verwerken. Om informatie te begrijpen moet je actief bezig zijn met de stof en je moet van gedachte kunnen wisselen met anderen. De e-reader moet alle verschillende leesstrategieën ondersteunen: oriënterend lezen, globaal lezen, intensief lezen, kritisch lezen, studerend lezen en zoekend/doelgericht lezen.

Oriënterend lezen: de lezer moet kunnen bepalen of de tekst bruikbaar is. Dit wordt op het moment niet ondersteunt door de portals. De portals geven niet duidelijk weer wat elk boek behandelt.
Globaal lezen: de tekst skimmen, de lezer moet snel de hoofdzaken kunnen zoeken in een tekst. Ook deze fuctie wordy niet goed ondersteund. Zover de functie snel bladeren aanwezig is bij E-inkt readers werkt het maar beperkt.
Intensief lezen: de tekst kunnen begrijpen is mogelijk bij gebruik van een e-reader.
Kritisch lezen: bepalen of een tekst betrouwbaar is wordt niet ondersteund door de portals.
Studerend lezen: de tekstinhoud verwerken en onthouden. De ondersteuning van studerend lezen hangt af van de e-reader. Sommige portals hebben moeite met het weergeven van een snippet van informatie.
Zoekend / doelgericht lezen: Interactie met de tekst en nadenken over de tekst. Sommige e-readers ondersteunen navigatie door de tekst.

E-readers moeten al deze stappen kunnen ondersteunen. Gerlof legt uit dat ze dit willen onderzoeken. Kunnen deze leesstrategieën losgelaten worden op de portals? Hebben deze portals een meerwaarde? Gerlof vertelt dat E-boekenstad bezig is met twee onderzoeken. Het Yindo onderzoek in samenwerking met Microsoft is al gestart. Dit is een onderzoek waar 20 studenten aan meedoen om de usability aspecten van het e-readingplatform Yindo te onderzoeken. In het andere onderzoek, dat momenteel in voorbereiding is, wordt de eText viewer onderzocht in samenwerking met Paerson. Aan dit onderzoek gaan ook 20 studenten meedoen.

Gerlof legt uit dat studenten het niet erg vinden om te lezen van een scherm omdat ze daar gewend aan zijn. Waar studenten wel moeite mee hebben is navigatie want op het moment biedt papier veel betere navigatie. Gerlof vertelt wat belangrijke wensen voor e-readers zijn. Echter veel wensen zijn op het moment nog niet of slecht mogelijk bij de verschillende e-readers. Een van de wensen is usability van e-readers omdat het belangrijk is om te bepalen waar de lezer is in de tekst. Lezers willen vooruit en achteruit kunnen in een tekst. Ze willen kunnen bladeren naar een bepaalde paragraaf of hoofdstuk. Bij veel e-readers kun je hiervoor de index gebruiken, via een zoekopdracht. Maar de indexen van de meeste digitale boeken bieden weinig interactie. Gerlof legt uit dat de Mobipocket bijvoorbeeld weer bladzijdennummering toevoegt. Bij veel e-redeaders is het moeilijk om vooruit te gaan in een tekst of naar een bepaald hoofdstuk te gaan. Actief bezig zijn met een tekst wordt slecht ondersteunt zoals markeren, gebruik van bladwijzers, ezelsoren en annoteren. Bij een digitaal boek wil je kunnen aangeven waarom je een bladwijzer hebt gemaakt. De mogelijkheid van annotatie wordt door Amazon opgelost met een toetsenbord, ook een virtueel toetsenbord is mogelijk. Je wilt ook dat de annotatie zichtbaar wordt wanneer je de tekst deelt met anderen. Een andere wens is meta-annotatie, dit maakt het mogelijk om na te gaan op welk tijdstip een annotatie geplaatsts is en hoeveel er van een boek is gelezen en hoe vaak. Ook een woordenboek moet aanwezig zijn en internet toegang. E-readers moeten ook audio ondersteunen, zodat de lezer de stof ook auditief tot zich kan nemen.

Gerlof eindigde de presentatie met de mogelijkheden voor vervolg onderzoek. Onderzoek moet worden gedaan onder zowel studenten als docenten. De docenten zijn de drijvende kracht omdat als zij tegen studenten zeggen dat ze een bepaalde e-reader moeten gebruiken dit ook echt gebeurd. Voor het onderzoek moeten de studenten langdurig testen in hun thuis omgeving.

Voor meer informatie:
http://www.e-boekenstad.nl/

http://e-boekenstad.wikispaces.com/

Klik hier voor het artikel uit de Havana over de workshop ‘E-readers in Dutch Education’:

http://e-boekenstad.nl/unbound/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/havana33_25mei2011.pdf

A short synopsis in English of Joost Kircz’s presentation ‘Most important results of user research Griffieproject E-boekenstad’.

Joost Kircz, project manager of E-boekenstad, explains in the second presentation of the workshop E-readers in Dutch Education about the research results of the griffieproject. The aim of this research was to find out what the consequences are of both tablets and e-readers. The iRex and the iPad were tested by counselors because they read a lot of texts every week. Another aim of this research is to investigate what is needed for a local government to work completely digital. Joost gave some of the results: 11% of the councilors prints out the text and saves it, 18% saves everything on paper and 37% saves everything digital. How do the councilors use the material? 60% mark in and around the texts, 30% marks pages and 52% create their own texts. Which functionalities of an e-reader are important according to the councilors? In order of importance: readability, search function, text editing, scrolling speed, battery life, memory, screen size, weight and private use. However the research showed that not only the functionalities of the e-reader are important, but also the communicative process for the transition from paper to digital. For accepting the digitization process, both trust and awareness are important. This research made the counselors aware that not only is a suitable device essential, but also document management and structure.

Joost Kircz @ the unbound book conference – photo cc by-sa Sebastiaan ter Burg

Joost Kircz, projectleider van E-boekenstad, vertelt in de tweede presentatie van de workshop E-readers in Dutch Education over de onderzoeksresultaten van het griffieproject. Het doel van dit onderzoek is om een beeld te krijgen van de consequenties van de verschillen tussen tablets en e-readers. Om dit te onderzoeken moeten testen worden gedaan met mensen die bewust en consciëntieus veel moeten lezen. Daarom is ervoor gekozen om de e-reader iRex en de iPad te testen onder gemeenteraadsleden omdat zij per week erg veel teksten lezen en verwerken. Een ander doel van dit onderzoek is om te onderzoeken wat er voor nodig is om een gemeente digitaal te laten werken. Dit onderzoek is uitgevoerd in samenwerking met Notubiz en Docwolves.

Aan het onderzoek deden gemeenteraadsleden, griffiers en burgemeesters mee. Joost gaf eerst enkele cijfers over het onderzoek. De enquête werd gehouden onder 241 raadsleden en werd ingevuld door 37%. Ook vond er tijdens het onderzoek individuele gebruikersgesprekken plaats. Per vergadering worden 106 pagina’s gelezen. 11% van de raadsleden print het uit en bewaard het, 18% bewaart alles op papier en 37% bewaart alles digitaal. Zij besteden gemiddeld 17 uur per week aan hun werk als raadslid. Hoe gaan de raadsleden om met het materiaal? 60% markeert in en om de tekst, 30% markeert de pagina en 52% maakt eigen teksten.

Welke functionele eisen van een e-reader vinden de raadsleden belangrijk? Op volgorde van belang: leesbaarheid, zoekfunctie, tekstbewerking, bladersnelheid, batterijduur, geheugen, schermgrootte, gewicht en privégebruik. Niet alleen de functionele eisen zijn belangrijk, ook het communicatieve proces rondom het vervangen van papier naar digitaal is belangrijk. Om de digitalisering te accepteren is bewustwording en vertrouwen belangrijk. Door het onderzoek werden de gemeenteraadsleden bewust dat niet alleen een geschikt apparaat nodig is maar ook de structuur van de documenten en documentbeheer zijn belangrijk.

Joost vertelt dat het onderzoek uitkwam op dezelfde problemen als die er in het onderwijs zijn. Hij vond het een leuk onderzoek om te doen en de raadsleden waren volgens hem ideale proefkonijnen: ze zijn precies, ze lezen veel en ze willen veel lezen. Joost eindigde zijn presentatie met de conclusie dat de gemeente het hele werkproces moet aanpassen om papier arm te werken, alleen e-readers inzetten zet volgens hem geen zoden aan de dijk. Om dit te illustreren haalde Joost een quote aan uit het onderzoek: “Wellicht is het een idee als je met de e-reader ook kunt printen.”

Het eindrapport van het onderzoeksproject Gemeentegriffies: http://www.e-boekenstad.nl/wp-content/2011/04/Def-eindrapportage-gebruikersproef-griffieproject-Kreutzer-070411.pdf

Voor meer informatie:
http://www.e-boekenstad.nl/

http://e-boekenstad.wikispaces.com/

Klik hier voor het artikel uit de Havana over de workshop ‘E-readers in Dutch Education’:

http://e-boekenstad.nl/unbound/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/havana33_25mei2011.pdf

Miha Kovac is the currently publisher at Mladinska knjiga and full professor at the Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Miha Kovac @ The Unbound Book Conference photo cc by-sa Sebastiaan ter Burg

In Session I of the Unbound Book Conference entitled “What is a Book?“, Kovac affirms that this is not a new question. The book has always been described as an object, however few have asked about the function of the book, what is the book doing?

Kovac describes the book as a technology for organizing, storing and disseminating complex, textual/visual information. He distinguishes between the P-book (printed) and the E-book (electronic). In the case of the P-book, the content and platform are intrinsically connected. The technology and economy of printing and publishing determine filtering processes.

The socio-cultural features of the P-book are as follows:

1. Book professions were created as result of the horizontal publishing business model.
2. Individual reading practices became common.
3. Fixity of text became one of the pillars of scientific communication.

Kovac stresses the importance of the P-book as an object of symbolic representation. P-books are part of our identity, we keep important religious texts, revolutionary novels, books that serve as national symbols, and books that encompass personal memorabilia. P-books offer us a more tangible artifact with which to relate and attach sentiment to.

Conversely, E-books separate the content from the given platform. Their capacity is far bigger than that of P-books. The sociocultural implications of E-books include the shift from the horizontal to the vertical business model. With this type of hierarchy, most of the book professions have changed. In addition, the former linear, private reading practices which were brought about by P-books are being substituted by controlled E-reading and multitasking. Kovac explains how the publishers main role will be to effectively market their books and fight for the attention and visibility of a given book. The symbolic representation of the E-book is still being invented and configured. This is slightly more challenging given the ephemeral nature of E-books.

When asked which factors are worth preserving in the E-book, Kovac mentions the fixity of texts, horizontal models in the book industry professions and linear models of reading.

Some may dismiss the notion that E-books are less capable of carrying symbolic representation or a sense of attachment. However, this argument seems easily refutable. Surely, some may feel an emotional attachment to the cell phone that they held beside their ear for years, but ultimately, all digital technologies become obsolete. The text inside printed books can eventually fade and the cover may weather, but as Kovac mentions, one of the key characteristics of the P-book is its inseparability of form and content while the E-book does not manifest the same interchangeable quality. The P-book is a whole unit, the E-book is merely a vessel which can contain and transport data. P-books have an everlasting emotional and intellectual symbolism. The challenge will be to recreate this symbolic charge in E-books and other digital technologies to foster a similar kind of bond between the user and the device.

For more information, please visit http://mihakovac.cgpublisher.com/

PDF of Miha Kovac’s presentation available here: What is a book.

Mute is an independent editorial and technology initiative, a key space for critical independent cultural writing in the UK, a magazine, a book publisher, and a collective since 1994. Over the years Mute has produced multiuser CMS, live coding AV software, community wireless networks, and OS software packages alongside innovative online and material print projects, commissions and events. They have been generating exceptionally powerful Print on Demand book projects since 2005 (and are right now doing great experiments with paper types and new printing techniques in this area). Their experimental approach is informed as much by financial constraint as by critical artistic intrigue. Indeed their resilience and lateral movements have only become more inspiring following the announcement of 100% cuts to their funding by Arts Council England, just as they are forming unique technology and business partnerships to work up some of their latest publishing initiatives.

Simon Worthington @ The Unbound Book Conference photo cc by-sa Sebastiaan ter Burg

Progressing Public (Publishing) Goods

Co-founder of Mute, Simon Worthington, framed the Mute platform for the Open Publishing Tools workshop attendees via the organisation’s attention to meta-issues, or “overall publishing”. The group are fundamentally invested in the notion of public independent publishing infrastructures, which entails pragmatic, research-based responsivity to the real present needs of fellow independent publishers locally and worldwide. Their current focus is on ebooks, html5, and print on demand. These are the tools that are really going to keep ‘critical’ cultural writing independent in to the future. In the discussion time afterwards, Simon summarized in the following:

… our goal is about keeping a culture of criticality in place. If you’re publishing in an independent way then you don’t exist in the market because the market doesn’t give you a reward because you don’t sell enough titles because of the way culture is valued – as creative industry – which pushes out the cultural writers and cultural journals. This period of living through the free web.. we’ve embraced it but there is no solution to the demonitization of the web. There is no balanced ‘flat fee” across the web… so (what Mute focusses on as) the ‘end’ (c.f. the means) is about public infrastructures for culture and community.

Mute’s ‘Progressive Publishing System’

The core of Simon’s presentation introduced Mute’s very exciting ‘Progressive Publishing System‘, an “ePublishing conversion, distribution & remuneration software system” designed to break though barriers to access for creative, remunerative e-publication by independents. The system makes it much more possible for small publishers and e-authors to:

* generate eBooks for kindle, Tablets, HTML5, and Print On Demand books
* easily convert and repurpose books, journals, articles, web content, blogs, back catalogues, and archives
* distribute digital books to major online retailers
* supply POD publications through Amazon FBAs (‘Fulfilled by Amazon services’)

The Difference the System Makes

PPS most significantly conquers the huge problem of conversion: the necessary technical breakdown of a document’s inbuilt markup code for layout, font and images in to (re)publishable formats. Until now this involved huge incontrovertible hours of human-computer interaction, breaking down texts in to bits, rebuilding and reproofing them within next / other platforms prior to republication. Existing tools like Word, Indesign, Web CMS are unfit for this work; and publishers’ workflows otherwise corrupt or don’t handle metadata. The repetition of conversion and proofing labour multiples multi-platform publishing costs, especially when texts move through differently incompatible (proprietary) softwares, limiting small publisher opportunities to output in convergent (and therefore more monetizable) ways.

The PPS system’s single source approach to coding contrarily separates out the text and images of a document, mechanically describes them so that a computer system can know what they are, and puts them into different outputs. The solution intervenes as architecture at the level of workflow – reducing the workload by a factor of 5, according to Worthington. The innovation comes in the separation of content from delivery platforms, in order to enable greater workflow integration, connect with Web 2.0 API’s and even additional services like translation, and enhance rich metadtata integrity throughout this process. The system itself is therefore both a “content repository” and a solution to outputting, in its management and splitting of just two types of publication metadata: information about the publication for sales distribution purposes; and a structured XML schema of the internal document structure readable by platform conversion services. The two metadata types are designed to synchronize with the realities of what Mute calls the “post-production life cycle of publications”: publisher’s workflows, distributor’s sales services and platform conversions. The idea is that publishers are left with enhanced conversion possibilities and removed barriers to all variety of the new platforms (e.g. tablets and eBook Readers), an increased reach by connecting to sales distributors (e.g. Amazon, Apple, Ingrams), and a healthy ePublishing presence and revenues, such as through one-stop-shop web services.

E-published Resources and Wikis for E-publishing

Mute’s thorough, collaborative research and documentation about these new tools, as well as their surveys of existing solutions to e-publishing, can be found online across a series of open docs, links and related wikis. Their new website will also be launched very soon.

http://linkme2.net/pd
http://theknowledge.aodl.org.uk/index.php/Publishing