Case-hardened books

Certainly there is a change happening in the book world - from self-publishing http://www.lulu.com/ to wikipedia and blogs. Sure there are times when 'hard' copy is useful, structure & sequence, expert review and editorial skills do add value and a tangible asset just makes sense.

When I think about the affordances of the digital world (RSS, collaborative writing, facile annotation, networking, hyperlinking, multimedia) the increasing need to remain updated and aware, the ability to connect, converse and learn separated from time and distance - I'm starting to look at the book as being 'case-hardened' , frozen in place, immutable. When I consider the long editorial and publication cycles, I'm thinking out-moded, plodding, slow and being left behind.

The e-movement is certainly changing things. You may enjoy this new book / pdf / wiki / flick'r group / .... that looks at how knowledge itself is changing.

http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/KnowingKnowledge/index.php/Main_Page - the wiki form

Comments

[David Locke]

Librarians have to deal with the transitory nature of web content. No solution really exists for dead links, or changes to links due to the reorganization of content. Web farms and archivists are having to capture webpages, because longevity has value.

It's all good and fine to enable self-publishing, but the stuff is useless unless you want to capture it and store it on your own machine. All this does is push more hardware.

When you cite, the cited text should be there, but there is no certainty about that. Of course, who wants to cite in a world built of cheap talk.

[joitske]

I wonder if the shift is from books to blogs (which are like personal columns in a newspaper somehow). I think the shift if more from information via intermediaries (journalists, reporters, publishers) to self-publication, self-generation of content by anyone...