Interviewed by Meredith Benjamin
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
Early in 2009, Kate Wittenberg was appointed to the position of Project Director, Client and Partnership Development at Ithaka. A longtime member of the AAUP community, she had previously served as Editor-in-Chief at Columbia University Press, and went on to found and direct the Electronic Publishing Initiative at Columbia (EPIC) at the university. As head of EPIC, Wittenberg oversaw pioneering projects in digital publishing, including CIAO (Columbia International Affairs Online), and Gutenberg-E.
Wittenberg brings this history of innovation and experimentation to her new position at Ithaka, in which she focuses on consulting for research institutes, scholarly publishers, and libraries who are involved in the planning and sustaining of digital resources. Among the services she and her colleagues in Strategy, “help clients conceptualize and plan projects, develop business models, think about partnerships, and analyze infrastructure and staffing issues that need to be addressed in the digital environment.”
Responding to questions by email, Wittenberg offered her thoughts on press partnerships, digital scholarship and tenure, sustainability for scholarly publishing, and the thinking that is driving Ithaka’s newest projects. Says Wittenberg, “I believe we are in a period in which there are unprecedented changes taking place in digital research and scholarly communication, and I find it very exciting to be able to play a role in helping those involved in this important work.”
MB (AAUP): Gutenberg-e, which you worked on at Columbia, focused on the relationship between publishers and scholars and the challenges of prevailing tenure standards. Is Ithaka doing any work on these issues?
KW: The relationship between publishers and authors and the related issue of academic credentialing is at the heart of scholarly communication and university press publishing. The Gutenberg-e project suggested new ways of thinking about born-digital scholarship and demonstrated that both scholarly publishing and peer-review can make the transition to a digital environment. These issues are also central to Ithaka’s work, and a number of our projects here focus on these and related issues. In one of our current projects we are consulting with a research center that is developing an inter-connected set of digital initiatives that will introduce new models for publication of digital scholarship as well as the mechanisms for peer review and credentialing of that work.
MB: It seems that while publishers have been willing to try new digital models, junior scholars are reluctant to change, fearing that those making tenure and promotion decisions are not as open to these formats. Do you think presses can work more with scholars to change these perceptions or is this something that will have to happen within the community of scholars?
KW: This gets right to the heart of the problem. I honestly don’t know whether changes in the perception of digital scholarship can come from the outside through innovative work being done by presses, or whether it is something that must be generated by the scholarly community itself. I suppose I really believe that it will have to come from a number of places. That is, as presses provide an increasing number of viable options for publishing peer-reviewed digital scholarship, and as scholars themselves demand the platforms and tools that will allow them to present evidence and make arguments in new ways, the academy will have to create new mechanisms for credentialing and professional advancement that acknowledge the value and richness of
these new types of scholarly communication.
MB: What are the biggest obstacles to press partnerships with other institutions?
KW: Historically, presses have worked independently from other parts of the information industry. Until now they have not only controlled the development of content, but also its discovery and delivery, creating and managing their own systems for content development, production, and marketing. In a print-based world, it was possible to remain largely independent, and thus maintain one’s autonomy and “brand” in the publishing environment. I think that this tradition has made it difficult to create close partnerships with other organizations, partly because of a concern about losing one’s identity. But now, the old model of working in an industry that operates independently from other sectors of the community is no longer effective. The desire to remain apart from other players in the information industry has become a handicap for presses in an environment where collaboration and partnerships are necessary in order to succeed.
MB: Has the current economic climate made the need for new partnerships and initiatives more urgent for presses?
KW: Yes, the current climate has clearly increased the urgency for new partnerships, and although this need has been driven by a very difficult economic environment, I believe that in the long-term, this drive to collaborate and innovate is a good thing. Presses cannot deal with the dramatic challenges posed by the economy and advances in technology alone. While one natural reaction to these changes is to focus on trying to repair the traditional model of university press publishing, I think that all of us involved in this field are starting to see that partnerships, collaboration, and new models are where we need to focus our energy in order for presses to survive and thrive.
MB: Has the Case Studies in Sustainability project affected Ithaka’s thinking about future projects that it might undertake?
KW: Yes, this project has definitely affected our thinking about future projects. We have been thinking about how to maximize the impact of this project for the community, and we are considering a number of possible next steps. One possibility is to develop tools for project leaders that will help them plan and implement sustainability strategies from the early stages of their work. Another idea is to develop a curriculum or institute for project leaders that would enable discussions and interaction among leaders who are facing similar challenges and need some guidance in thinking about their business and organizational planning. We are interested in knowing from the scholarly publishing community what would be helpful next steps in this project in terms of the challenges they are facing.
MB: What sorts of new initiatives or experiments do you see as most promising for making scholarly publishing more sustainable?
KW: Scholarly publishers face real challenges, but also significant opportunities in the current environment. Academic presses have played an enormously important role in advancing the scholarly communications process, and the value and skills that they bring to the table can remain important going forward. Presses must be seen as central to the university’s mission, as well as important players in the scholarly communications process. I believe that the most promising activities for presses will involve the following: thoughtful but bold experimentation with partnerships that complement their skills and reduce their costs; a clear focus on the next generation of readers/users and their changing expectations and needs for scholarly content; and a willingness to embrace change by re-envisioning their role, and thus making themselves essential partners in the academic process.
For example, presses might begin to see themselves more as research centers that play a significant part in leading innovation in a scholarly discipline, rather than as production-and-dissemination organizations. Or they might consider partnerships with technology organizations that can support the new ways in which scholars and students conduct research, teach, and learn. A number of presses are already moving in these directions, and this is a very positive and exciting development. It will be important for the scholarly publishing community as a whole to do this on a larger scale as our environment continues to present both new challenges and opportunities.
Tools of Change 2009 and Other Interesting Meetings
Brenna McLaughlin
Electronic and Strategic Initiative Director, AAUP
In February, I attended the third O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference (TOC) at the Times Square Marriott Marquis in New York. I found myself thinking that the ecstatic vision of a changed human relationship with “content” is growing stale apace, even as e-publishing platforms, models, and devices become a more workable reality.
As the economic picture seemed to get bleaker each day, it was mildly surprising how few of the sessions made reference to how the changing financial climate may affect not only publishers’ ability to retool, but readers’ desire to pay for gadgets and access. To be fair, this conference (like some others we’re familiar with!) suffers from an embarrassment of interesting session topics scheduled concurrently, so I hope that I simply missed the speakers who addressed the economic downturn. And once again the buzz of interest in the hallways and breaks and the information about new platforms and working models shared freely by the attendees more than balanced out the occasional empty blast of rhetoric.
As I wandered from session to session with a (paper) notebook and a cranky PDA that refused to log on to the conference WiFi, my fellow attendees demonstrated the power of one “tool of change” as they twittered up a storm. While drinking in the tips and stories from one set of panelists, anyone with a connected laptop, netbook, or the ubiquitous iPhone freely eavesdropped on the other sessions. In one respect, this was fantastic—you didn’t have to miss much. In another, it easily led to what one such equipped colleague ruefully termed “session envy” as I shamelessly peered over her shoulder to get a look at what was going on down the hall. (Interestingly, in May a paper analyzing the effect active twittering has on academic conference attendees was released.)
Fortunately, it is still possible to virtually attend many of the sessions, and at more than 140 often-cryptic characters at a time, too. The TOC 2009 web site makes available videos of many of the sessions, presentation files, and access to lively and continuing discussions via the conference blog, Twitter, and Facebook page. Go to http://www.toccon.com/toc2009 for an immersion into the events and ideas of the conference. If that’s not enough, the 2010 TOC is scheduled for February 22-24 in New York City.
One of the videos available is of Bob Stein’s talk “A Book is a Place…” Stein, founder of the Institute for the Future of the Book, spoke of his concept of a book as a place to meet and discuss and learn; it’s a concept that the Institute’s projects—CommentPress, Sophie, and the networked books they’ve supported—have all been reaching for. The day before the Tools of Change Conference began, Stein hosted a small meeting of mostly scholarly publishing representatives and the CEO of GiantChair, a Paris-based digital distribution platform. The group, including folks from NYU, MIT, Duke, the Michigan Office of Scholarly Publishing, and California amongst others, brainstormed about the role of publishers and possibilities of collaboration both upstream and down in a digital book environment.
It was clear that the usual suspects will continue to dog university press and other scholarly e-initiatives: sorting out rights and the dirty question of financial support. But it was also clear that local realities could lead to successful ventures for university presses. Harvard shared a bit of their experience launching the Journal of Legal Analysis, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of law scholarship supported by and developed from the university’s law school. California indicated that they had seen—and filled—a need by developing a suite of publication services available to units across the California system, UCPubS. Both of these initiatives are fairly new, and each press is waiting to judge its effects, but they are hopeful signs of the innovation and cooperation possible amongst the scholarly communications community.
Recommendations of the Section 108 Study Group
Peter Givler
Executive Director, Association of American University Presses
The full Report of the Section 108 Study Group has been released and is now available at http://www.section108.gov/. Introduced in 1976, Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act specifies what are known as “the library exemptions,” the conditions under and purposes for which qualifying libraries and archives can make copies of copyrighted works without infringing. These library exemptions were framed in terms of the analogue technologies of reproduction then common. Though there have been several modifications to the Section since then, none have addressed the new capabilities, and challenges, of digital technologies.
To address these issues, the National Digital Information Infrastructure Program (NDIIP) of the Library of Congress convened the Section 108 Study Group. I was a member of this Study Group, which met fifteen times between April 2005 and January 2008. The group’s charge was to recommend to the Librarian of Congress possible alterations to the law that would accommodate new technologies.
Seeking to ensure that the group’s recommendations would reflect the balance required by the national interest between the concerns of libraries and archives on the one hand and rights holders on the other, the nineteen members were drawn from a variety of institutions and enterprises: public, university, and national libraries and archives; museums; commercial and nonprofit publishers; the film, music, and television industries; and photography.
Our report represents a consensus reached among nineteen people with overlapping but never identical interests after nearly three years of discussion and debate. It specifies where we were able to agree and make recommendations, although sometimes those recommendations are made with the stipulation that agreement is contingent on certain underlying conditions being met, or problems resolved. It also specifies where we could not agree and were not able to make a recommendation, and why.
The report now goes to the Librarian of Congress, James Billington, and from him to the senior U.S. official concerned with copyright law and its administration, the Register of Copyrights, MaryBeth Peters. She will decide how to implement the recommendations and begin the process of translating them into law through an amendment to the Copyright Act. That process will require its own round of public comment, discussion, and debate.
Section 108 currently says that a library or archive that is open to the public or to qualified researchers, is making copies “without any purpose of direct or indirect commercial advantage,” and affixes a notice that the copy is being made under the provisions of this section, can copy:
• an unpublished work for preservation or for deposit in another library,
• a published work to replace a damaged or stolen copy if an unused replacement copy can’t be acquired,
• a portion of a work for a user, including a user at another requesting library,
• and an entire work for a user, including users at other requesting libraries, if the library has determined that a copy can’t be obtained at a “fair price.”
Since the current Section 108 is one of the most confusingly organized and least transparent sections of the Copyright Act, the Study Group recommends that this section of the statute be reorganized using these more logical categories: eligibility, preservation and replacement, copies for users, and miscellaneous provisions. The Study Group’s recommendations are described below, but please note that these are abbreviated statements. For a full statement of the recommendations, please refer to the report itself.
Among the recommended revisions to 108 in the Eligibility category, the group suggested that:
• museums be granted the protections afforded to libraries and archives;
• functional requirements, such as a public service mission and trained library or archives staff, be used to determine the status of a “library” or “archive,” to help define qualifying institutions in an age when the Internet has blurred these definitions;
• and libraries and archives be allowed to outsource certain tasks permitted by Section 108, if the expertise or equipment required lies beyond the resources of libraries, archives, and their employees.
Recommended exceptions for Preservation and Replacement include permitting the creation of a limited number of copies of any at-risk materials, whether published or unpublished. The current exemption for unique unpublished works such as letters, diaries, manuscripts, and the like, for which the loss of the original is the loss of the work, is similar to today’s increasing number of “born digital” published works, which do not exhibit warning signs of deterioration before they become inaccessible and are technically at risk of loss from the moment they are acquired. The group recommends exceptions for the preservation of publicly disseminated works and of publicly disseminated online content. Rights holders would be able to opt-out of having their works preserved in this way. In addition, the group recommended “that criteria be established to determine eligibility for this exception,” and that these criteria would be based upon an institution’s technological suitability to carrying out the preservation and maintaining the integrity of the resulting digital files.
Section 108 permits libraries and archives to make single copies for users, both directly and through interlibrary loan, under certain conditions. Currently, delivery of electronic copies to users is permitted only within the library or archive’s physical premises. Amendments proposed under the Copies for Users Exceptions heading would address the question of whether to lift this restriction to permit the delivery of electronic copies to users off-premises. This was one of the most complicated and difficult questions the Study Group faced, due to the conflicting interests of libraries and archives to provide services to patrons via the internet as weighed against rights-holders’ concerns about the potential for unauthorized and unregulated distribution. The group recommend that “the single-copy restriction on copying … should be replaced with a flexible standard more appropriate to the nature of digital materials,” adding that digital copies must carry adequate protections against unauthorized use.
Section 108 permits libraries and archives to copy television news programs off the air and lend the copies to users, but at present there are no guidelines as to whether this exception permits them to provide access by means other than the lending of physical copies. The group recommended an amendment that would permit electronic distribution of view-only copies of television news programs, provided that a reasonable amount of time has passed since the original broadcast and that the material was not made available for download.
As has already been mentioned, the Study Group has recommended reorganizing Section 108’s provisions to make them more easily understood. Other recommendations for the Miscellaneous Issues category include an exception from liability for a patron’s use of reproducing equipment such as handheld scanners or cameras, providing that the library or archive posts a visible notice that such copies are subject to copyright law.
The group also discussed a variety of other issues. On some of them the group decided changes to the law might be necessary and came to certain conclusions, but made no recommendation. On others, the group was either unable to reach a consensus, or agreed that no legislative action was appropriate at this time.
It should certainly come as no surprise that the road to reconciling the interests of rights holders and libraries has its share of potholes and speedbumps, and even a few dead ends. What is much more important, I think, is that with patience and persistence the road does go through. It took us almost three years to get here, but in the end this group of nineteen people with very diverse interests did agree upon several significant enhancements to the library and archives privileges under Section 108.
By Brenna McLaughlin
Electronic & Strategic Initiatives Director, AAUP
The first O’Reilly Tools of Change (TOC) Conference, held in June 2007, generated a huge buzz in the book publishing industry. Focused on the emergence of new publishing models from innovative technologies, the TOC conference brought together the visionaries of tech and of publishing. Manolis Kelaidis’s (Royal College of Art) demonstration of his synthesis of analog and digital—a paper book printed with conductive ink and bound with circuitry to allow for hyperlinked text—was certainly the high-water mark of excitement and energy.
In February 2008, O’Reilly hosted a second TOC Conference, one that generated far less buzz. One thing that became clear is that the publishing industry is moving on from visionary statements to the decidedly less sexy and more productive work of integrating new technologies and models into the cycle of scholarly communications. To some degree, not all the panels had yet caught up to this spirit of how-to (rather than what-if, how-cool, and try-me!), although there was interesting information to be gleaned from every panel.
Presentation slides from many sessions can be downloaded via the TOC web site (http://en.oreilly.com/toc2008/public/schedule/proceedings). Panels included an overview of the DRM mistakes of the music industry and discussion of how the publishing world might avoid the same; several looks at new digital marketing and distribution strategies, such as widgets and content designed for mobile devices; and examinations of how blogs and books are being integrated across authoring, reviewing, and marketing spheres.
One interesting tension was between the continued pressure to deliver free digital content (Tim O’Reilly’s keynote, “Free is More Complicated Than You Think”), and the suggested strategy of producing high-value, high-priced digital content (Scott Gray, O’Reilly School of Technology, “Adding Enough Value to Digital Content to Actually Make Money”). Obviously, the balance that can and will be struck between these two poles of digital content delivery will be different for various publishing sectors and content groups—it will be no news flash to AAUP members that infotainment and scholarly communications will always have different drivers. It is clear that how to best serve the authors and readers in each sector is still the most pressing challenge for publishers, one that will not be solved by the emergence of any one single technology or model.
Related upcoming conferences include the STM Book 2.02 Seminar (“Now it Gets Real: Making, Selling, Distributing, Discovering and Using E-Books”) and, for the eyes-on-the-horizon vision to the hands-on-the-day-to-day ideas, the AAUP Annual Meeting (“Preserving the Future”).
By Shaun Manning
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
Now entering its second year, the Caravan Project (http://www.caravanbooks.org/) has refined its methods and goals to help scholarly publishers deliver books in non-standard formats. Developed by Peter Osnos as a way to navigate the emerging digital culture, Caravan has made 62 titles from eleven presses available as downloadable ebooks and audio books, and also created large-print editions through print-on-demand. Recently, Caravan was awarded a $25,000 grant by the National Association of College Stores (NACS), which will allow for increased exposure in university bookstores.
Osnos describes Caravan as a “system of research and development” aimed at increasing serious non-fiction publishers’ options for producing and distributing content. AAUP members participating in the Caravan Project include Beacon Press, University of California Press, University of North Carolina Press, Yale University Press, and more. “Caravan is an effort to enable publishers to do books in all the ways that technology now permits and to support distribution of those books through all the available channels.” The goals, Osnos said, are twofold: “We want to help publishers to know how to do electronic books, and distributors to know how to sell them.” He acknowledged that while many university presses operate their own digital initiatives, Caravan provides the option of offering multiple electronic formats, including PDF, Microsoft Reader, and audio files that can play on any portable music player. Though the POD aspect of Caravan may seem out of place—a physical product in an otherwise digital operation—the experiment is paying off. Recently, one vendor ordered three hundred copies of a large print book through Caravan’s print-on-demand service, an order that might not have been possible to fill through traditional publishing systems.
With Caravan established as a service for university presses and other scholarly publishers, it is perhaps not surprising that it was awarded a grant from the National Association of College Stores (NAS) to promote its products in the academic environment. The groundwork for the grant was set when Osnos gave a presentation on Caravan at an NACS convention, and the association saw the potential benefits of this publishing program for its members. The NACS grant will allow college stores to sell Caravan’s digital products, thereby giving the stores a model on which to base other sales of digital content in the future.
The distribution piece of the Caravan Project has already undergone notable changes since its inception, based on early results. Caravan has moved toward a more comprehensive system of digital distribution by taking advantage of recently-launched initiatives from Ingram’s Digital Ventures, booksense.com, and Overdrive’s Content Reserves, which offers e-books and audio books to libraries and can be adapted for use at retail stores. “The most effective way we can sell these books, once we’ve created them, is through the growing universe of digital delivery systems,” Osnos said. In addition to taking advantage of these larger-scale distribution systems for booksellers, a partnership with Emusic.com, one of the largest vendors of digital music, will soon make Caravan titles available for download at the site’s recently-launched audio books section.
As patterns of user preference emerged, there were also some changes in the available formats. Caravan had been offering its audio books on CDs in addition to the downloadable mp3s. But Osnos said that audio books on CD were less popular than digital files. “What we’ve found is, for people who do want the CD, we can distribute an audio book as a download and allow the listener to create one CD, and that way you don’t have to ship a CD.” The digital rights management (DRM) code of the audio book digital files allows customers to produce a single disc for personal use.
According to Osnos, the possibilities created by Caravan represent a substantial shift in publishing, as new technologies will allow publishers to operate on a more “made to order” system. If books are printed on demand, or serially available in digital formats, the problem of excess inventory will be greatly reduced. The flexibility of digital media also allows Caravan to make participating publishers’ books available by chapter or section, an option that will prove useful to students and researchers. Though some of this may have been possible in the recent past, only in the last few years has research been available that has indicated the most effective methods of producing and distributing digital content. In addition, consumer interest in e-books is currently in an upward swing with the advent of Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s E-Reader devices, and the popularity of audio books has soared with the ubiquitous use of mp3 players such as the Apple’s ipod. “In time digital books will become increasingly significant sources of revenue, as the public become more familiar with digital formats,” Osnos said.
Because Caravan is not itself a publisher or vendor, it does not set or suggest prices for the digital and POD books created through the initiative. But Osnos hopes that as publishers gain greater familiarity with these formats this will lead to audio and e-books bearing prices that are competitive with the standard editions. Currently, he noted, audio books can be fifty percent more expensive than a new release hardcover.
The Caravan Project is set to conclude in mid-2009, at which time the findings of the program’s research will be published in a final report, possibly as a multi-platform book. But the life of Caravan will continue in the implementation of its research into digital publishing and distribution systems. “By all means, we hope and expect publishers to use what we’ve all learned in their own multi-platform programs,” Osnos said.
Omnibus spending bill H.R. 2764, which includes a passage requiring that research funded by the National Institutes of Health be made available on an open-access basis, has been signed into law. The legislation mandates that “peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication [are] to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law.” The manuscripts will then be posted electronically on the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central.
The NIH policy has been previously covered in the Fall 2004 issue of the Exchange, available as a pdf: http://aaupnet.org/programs/publications/exchange/2004_fall.pdf
Resources relating to Open Access, including AAUP’s statement on OA, can be found at http://aaupnet.org/aboutup/issues/oa/index.html
The Washington Post’s coverage of the signing can be seen here.
Ithaka, a nonprofit research group affialted wiith JSTor and ARTstor, has released a new report, “University Publishing in a Digital Age,” authored by Laura Brown (formerly of Oxford USA), Rebecca Griffiths, and Matthew Rascoff. Based on extensive surveys of and interviews with press directors, librarians, and university administrators, the report argues that universities must renew their commitment to publishing in order to maintain a strong role in the creation and distribution of scholarship.
Read it: http://www.ithaka.org/strategic-services/university-publishing
Update: The University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office has created an edition of the Ithaka Report in CommentPress, allowing a conversation about the report and its conclusions to take place next to the text itself.
Go to http://scholarlypublishing.org/ithakareport/ to read the report and participate in the discussion.
A Report from Digital Publishing Forums
by Brenna McLaughlin
Unbound: Advancing Book Publishing in a Digital World
What felt at times like a motivational fête for the publishing industry was hosted by Google this January in one of America’s temples to book culture, the New York Public Library. Publishers were addressed by web-savvy authors and gurus such as Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) and Cory Doctorow (Boing Boing) as well as innovative publishers such as Tim O’Reilly and Michael Holdsworth (formerly of Cambridge University Press).
One of the ideas that recurred throughout the day was that trade and scholarly/professional publishing are perhaps two different businesses—”entertainment vs. information —that would diverge even further in the digital world. Interestingly, the authors who presented were mostly trade (fiction and nonfiction) writers, whereas most publishers presented from the scholarly, professional, and education sectors.
The authors provided fascinating case studies of how they and their publishers had put the web and networked communities to work for their books. Several of the authors admitted that they had little concern for any sales revenue that might be lost by free online dissemination of their published book. The speaking and consulting fees they can command are only going to be enhanced by a higher public profile. Several publishers presented valuable details on how large-scale digitization projects and business models, rather than individualized web-based marketing plans, had enhanced sales.
HarperCollins Senior Vice President Carolyn Pittis spoke about their “Digital Warehouse,” whose functions are conceived as comparable to a bricks-and-mortar warehouse: the storage, management, and distribution of content. On top of their digital warehouse, HarperCollins has developed its own “Search Inside” functionality and recently introduced a widget for syndicating searchable book content to users’ web sites. Holdsworth provided a glimpse of how improvements to digital channels—from print-on-demand (POD) programs to Google Book Search—have increased sales of what Cambridge University Press had once called the “Comet’s Tail,” the books that sell less than 50 copies a year. One eye-catching statistic involved more than 1000 POD-available titles that sold not a single copy in 2005, but represented more than $1 million in sales in 2006—sales that would have been lost if those titles had gone out of print in the interim.
Most presenters seemed to agree that giving some kind of content away for free was a no-brainer for selling more content in various formats. What that meant to different folks—be it entire digital copies of a book under loose Creative Commons licenses, free sample chapters, free audio downloads or other ‘extras,’ or free search accessibility and text browsing—was not explicitly debated. The underlying consensus was, unsurprisingly, that publishers by this point need to be digitizing their content and should be able to control that content, but that indexing and search should be widely available through not just Google and Amazon, but through other search engines, libraries, and so on.
Google produced a short video of highlights from the event, which you can view here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsCkAeZaxi8
STM Book 2.01: The e-Book Journey: Current Paths and Future Roads
The STM (International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers) e-book seminar was billed as appropriate for any segment of scholarly publishing—including the humanities and social sciences. The day provided a thorough overview of where e-books now stand in the publishing industry, and the road ahead as perceived by both publishers and librarians.
To get us to today’s leading edge of electronic book publishing, James Gray of the Ingram Digital Group spoke about the massive advances in print-on-demand (POD) technologies and applications by traditional and non-traditional publishers. As well, he indicated the experiments that Lightening Source has been undertaking in producing books in a wide array of POD formats such as large print and other language editions. Such advances in POD capability continue to transform the book production and distribution systems. Michael Holdsworth presented here, as well, focusing on the role that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft LiveSearch may play in the e-book market.
Preparing the book production workflow to take greatest advantage of new technologies and content channels was addressed by Helen Bailey, VP & Pub Director for Content Management at John Wiley & Sons. Bailey spoke about how Wiley has transformed their workflow to create XML digital content that can serve the many new (and potential future) publishing and distribution channels. While post-press XML coding had the initial appeal of speed, Bailey saw that in the long run it would not serve their business needs. From a print-focused process, Wiley is now moving steadily to a digital-first workflow.
By far some of the most interesting information presented was market research on how libraries use and what they want from e-books. Elsevier (Science Direct) shared data from their pilot e-book project, which experimented with various subscription and sales models. A science librarian, while recognizing that a print book would always be needed for the library’s core collection, looked forward to a day when they would be able to collect e-books broadly. From his perspective, this would be feasible when publishers made e-book versions available with no time lag, with greater functionality (more than just a copy of the print book), with flexibility of use, and when e-books can be integrated into the catalogue (through MARC records).
Linda Bennett, of Gold Leaf Consulting, had earlier confirmed many of these recommendations. Bennett recently conducted a survey of librarians on use of e-books and opinions of publishers’ business models. Some of the problems that librarians see with current e-book options are rigid usage restrictions, the wide variety of platforms, the lack of MARC records, lack of searchability, and price. After reviewing several publishers’ e-book models, Bennett noted that librarians were split on preferred models themselves. Fifty percent of surveyed librarians preferred to directly purchase content, and fifty percent preferred a license arrangement. An AAUP member got top marks in that survey—the librarians interviewed appreciated the Oxford Scholarship Online model, and, perhaps just as importantly, recognized the brand with approval.
For more detailed information, several presentations from this seminar are available online: http://www.stm-assoc.org/presentations/2007-presentations-book-201london/
As another useful reference on this topic, Springer has publicly released a study of their e-books’ usage in libraries: http://www.springer.com/ebooks
Digital Asset Distribution for Book Publishers: An Emerging Infrastructure
One of the newest acronyms in electronic publishing is DAD, for digital asset distribution—a new name for the electronic storage and distribution infrastructure that’s been developing in the industry over recent years. Klopotek brought together presenters from a number of DADs, including codeMantra, BiblioVault, Value Chain, HarperCollins, and Ingram Digital Ventures, to give publishers a crash course on DAD.
Each DAD representative took 15 minutes to present their services and opinions about what publishers could and should expect from a digital asset distribution partner. The vendors ranged from LibreDigital, a book-focused division of NewsStand, which manages electronic newspaper content for media companies around the globe; HarperCollins, which is now offering their digital warehousing services (described at the Books Unbound seminar, see above) to other publishers; to the familiar nonprofit BiblioVault, which is evolving into a full-service DAD.
Many presenters also had general advice for publishers, regardless of what service provider one might choose. Kate Davies of BiblioVault reminded the audience that working with a DAD can’t mean walking away from digital content distribution tasks entirely—strategic publishing decisions remain with the publisher. Choosing a vendor you can build a relationship with is vital. LibreDigital’s Craig Miller’s mantra was “convert once, publish many”—publishers should aim for a solution which ensures that content need be digitized only once for all of the many new content distribution channels available.
The day was extremely informative, presenting a wide array of options to consider as publishers search for the right—scalable, flexible yet stable—infrastructure for new electronic publishing models. Most usefully, however, the presentations from each DAD are now freely available online for publishers’ review. A white paper on the topic, prepared by Kloptek for Mike Shatzkin of Idea Logical and Mark Bide of Rightscom is also available for purchase.
Presentations and white paper are available here: http://www.klopotek.de/en52235.htm
by Robert B. Townsend American Council of Learned Societies. “Our Cultural Commonwealth: The final report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities & Social Sciences” (2006); available online at http://www.acls.org/cyberinfrastructure/. This report poses an important challenge to the non-profit publishing community, forcing us to consider and explain our role in an increasingly digital culture. The report is nominally a survey of the changing information landscape in the humanities and social sciences, and a proposal for building a new technological infrastructure. But for anyone trying to negotiate between the worlds of print and digital culture, the report’s pastiche of techno-optimism, open-access rhetoric, and general indifference to the interests of non-profit publishers will be a bitter pill.
Assistant Director for Research and Publications, American Historical Association
In broad terms, the report offers a “vision” that connects the best developments of the past to the brightest opportunities for the future; a list of “constraints” impeding progress; and a set of recommendations to advance toward that goal. At the level of vision, the report lays out a compelling argument for a vast digital warehouse of information, freely searchable by the public and open to a plethora of new tools for scholars. Unfortunately, the commission goes on to develop its analysis by flattening qualitative distinctions in the “digital information” being produced (as “quantity can become quality”), and erasing the contribution of non-profit publishers to the system of scholarly communication.
To make its case, the commission simply ignores skeptics who ask whether the rush to mass digitization could hurt reading and scholarship, and whether there might be other casualties on this road to progress. This offers a rather narrow view of the “grand challenges” facing the humanities and social sciences, and limits the array of problems that might be remedied by a developed cyberinfrastructure. This seems part of a larger rhetorical strategy in the report, however, which positions potential problems and the costs of digitization as external to its vision of technological progress—limiting them to social, political, or financial failures that can be assigned to publishers and “conservative” academics.
I was particularly troubled at the way the report touches only superficially on the mundane costs arising from the ephemeral nature of the technology, and then largely ignores them when it comes time to offer solutions. Almost every digital project I have been involved with over the past ten years seemed to require starting back at the beginning of a new learning curve, and struggling to see all the necessary choices and consequences. Even after the learning phase was over, these projects never seem to reach closure. Like Jacob Marley’s chains, link-by-link we forge these digital burdens that we can never seem to lay down. The information has to be updated, links fixed, and the technological containers for the data regularly refreshed. The commission never really explores how this makes our choices in this arena more costly, more transitory, and the price of failure higher.
To the contrary, the report offers a rather fanciful lesson in the economics of scholarly publishing that makes first-copy costs and sustainability disappear into a fog of “public goods” and “collective action.” The resulting picture should really trouble non-profit publishers, as the commission rather blithely erases our role in the system of scholarly communication along with the costs we have to recover. As a result, we seem to be re-cast as an unnecessary impediment to the development of a cyberinfrastructure. When the commission then calls on us to engage with other parties (librarians and university administrators) about these issues, it just seem to be inviting us into a dialogue about the arrangements for our own funerals.
While scholarly communication could undoubtedly be improved by an infusion of funds from the federal government and others, the report undercuts that possibility by being so vague about the actual costs and leaves little room for more modest, incremental alternatives. After framing the issues in terms of large needs and expensive remedies, the commission’s only alternative to federal support is to encourage “experimentation with new forms of cooperation between the private sector and cultural institutions.” So much for the public good, apparently.
Naïvely perhaps, I continue to think the non-profit publishing community can play a vital and positive role in building up the cyberinfrastructure. We can still stand for a position of cautious optimism that upholds standards of scholarship and quality, explores and adapts to new technologies, and maintains a realistic view of the costs and the benefits of the technology. Hopefully, when the public money fails to arrive and the commission members discover the strings attached by their private benefactors, the non-profit publishers will still be here to muddle along, doing the best we can with what we have.