week 8 blogging question: content and containers

In last week's class and readings we considered how the relationship between e-books as content and their containers, in the form of various ebook file formats such as EPUB, the Kindle formats, and PDF. This week's blogging question asks you to share a specifically digital example of a case where the line between content and container has become blurred. It could be from an ebook of some sort, but there are lots of other ways to play with the content/container distinction in digital form.

Here's one exercise to test the supposed fluidity of digital content that you can try at home -- though be warned: if you appreciate elegant XML code, this experiment isn't pretty. Start with a short paragraph written in an MS Word document, ideally with a few formatting elements like italics, bold, coloured text, and accented characters. Then  copy and paste your paragraph into the text field of, say, the wysiwyg editor that your group's blogging platform uses (Blogspot works nicely) -- or, for that matter, one of the similar text-entry boxes on Blackboard. You may want to create a temporary draft of a post to your blog or the BB discussion list, which you then delete -- the point is to be able to past your copied Word text into a wysiwyg editor that also lets you view the HTML.

On the surface, your copied text probably pastes fairly seamlessly with formatting mostly intact. But under the surface, pure horror awaits. If you view the HTML code after pasting the Word text, you'll see some of the most tortuous and misbegotten XML ever created by human or machine: unnecessary tags, unreadable attribute names, proprietary extentions, bloated code -- it's all there, lurking under the surface of the text like some horrible nightmare on the edge of rationality. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit -- just a bit -- but we can learn something from the tension between the supposedly fluid and transferable content on the surface and the madness-inducing, gibbering tentacled code that serves as its container. [Note: parts of the preceding paragraph were written with the help of the H.P. Lovecraft Description Engine. I also resisted a strong temptation to put scare-quotation marks around content and container, but you get the idea.]

Here's another example of a digital container showing up where it shouldn't in printed content. This comes from the 1990 New Canadian Library edition of Ethel Wilson's novel Swamp Angel, published by McClelland & Stewart. If you look closely, with the help of the person who annotated this page, you'll see the thing I mean. (Click to enlarge.)

 

Actually there are a couple of interesting annotations on these pages, and the one on the verso hints at the novel's complex textual and publishing history. (Like many Canadian novels, it was printed in rather different British and American editions.) But on the recto, we can see something that brings us back to our theme for this post: what is "<ed space>" doing there? Having recently done some research on this small textual mystery, I can give a fairly thorough explanation of what it is and how it got there. (I may touch upon it in Monday's class if there's interest, but I'm also planning to use it as an extended example in my upcoming Toronto Centre for the Book talk on March 24th at 4:00 in BL 728: "Bibliography for a Used Future: Finding the Human Presence in E-Books and Other Digital Artifacts.") For bibliographers and ordinary readers alike, moments such as this when content and container become blurred are like glitches in the matrix, or glimpses behind the curtain as the stage hands set the next scene, or as D.F. McKenzie put it, instances of the "human presence" discernible in "any recorded text" (p. 29).

What examples can you think of that show the supposedly seamless world of content being disrupted or otherwise affected by that which contains it? What insights into the nature of digital textual production can you draw from it? Remember, your example doesn't have to be from a book or even textual, but it should be somehow digital.

<ed space>

follow up to our first e-books class

Frontispiece to Andreas Vesalius's
De humanis corpora fabrica (1543)

Hope everyone enjoyed our dissection of an EPUB file in our Monday class. Looking at unfamiliar lines of code can be daunting, but your experience with TEI in the encoding challenge should make it easier to make sense of the relatively simple markup that's usually found in ebooks. As Andreas Vesalius knew, sometimes you can only understand how something works by taking it apart, and thankfully e-books are rather easier to anatomize than some other objects of study.

If you'd like to download some public-domain EPUB files that are free of DRM, there are lots of places to find them on the web, but Project Gutenberg is a good place to start. (And that's probably the only time I'll recommend Project Gutenberg for anything in this course.) For example, you can download a DRM-free version of the 1611 King James Bible, which we've examined in class, from this link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10 .

One you've saved one of the EPUB files to a local folder, you can rename the file suffix from .epub to .zip and decompress it. (In OSX I find StuffIt Expander works better than the other utilities for some reason.) Decompressing the file should create a new folder that will look a lot like the one we examined in class, and you can poke around using a web browser and text editor. (A good reference to the parts of an EPUB file can be found here: http://epubsecrets.com/where-do-you-start-an-epub-and-what-is-the-guide-section-of-the-opf-file.php.) As an alternative to looking at the various EPUB sub-files directly, you can also open the .epub file itself (not the .zip file you created) in an EPUB editor such as Sigil or Calibre. Sigil is the one we looked at in class, which is a bit simpler to use.

On other fronts, in our last class we got onto a tangent (unheard of in my classes, I know...) about the genre of the "wordless novel." The work that introduced me to this genre, and which has been one of my favorite books to discover this past year, is Laurence Hyde's 1951 masterpiece, Southern Cross: a Novel of the South Seas, Told in Wood Engravings, which tells the story (wordlessly) of a nuclear test in the South Pacific. If you're looking for an excuse for a quiet hour in the Fisher reading room, you can call up their copy here: http://go.utlib.ca/cat/1567780 . It's one of the most moving books I've read in a long time, and it's inspiring to know that Hyde was from our neighbourhood (literally; he went to Central Technical High School a few blocks down Harbourd Street).

Finally, I also mentioned in class that the Centre for Reformation and Renaissnace Studies here at U of T is looking for an iSchool student to do a summer practicum with them. Details are posted in the discussion section of Blackboard.

Happy dissecting!

Update: I neglected to mention that the lecture slides are now posted to BB. Also, here is the link to the iSchool ebooks symposium even I mentioned: http://ischool.utoronto.ca/content/ebook-symposium-current-state-art-libraries

Post-update update: At the beginning of class I also mentioned a New York Times article from last Fall that reported a recent slowing of e-book sales in relation to print. There were plenty of responses to this article, but one worth reading in particular is a piece in Fortune that disagrees with the NY Times article's interpretation of the sales data taken from the Association of American Publishers. Anyway, interesting times for our course, that's for sure.

week 7 blogging question: how we read, and why

Next week we'll be turning to e-books, which raises the interesting question of our own reading practices. Some of my blogging questions have been fairly rambling recently, so I'll keep this one concise: what do you choose to read on screen versus on paper, and mostly importantly, why? And when I say "on screen," that could mean a range of screens and formats, from dedicated e-reading devices like Kindles, to phones, to tablet computers and laptops. It could also mean different file formats, from EPUB (and other ebook formats) to .pdf to good old fashioned .txt files.

For example, when I got my first iPad a few years ago, I found it completely replaced my reading of articles and other PDF-type files in print. When I download a journal article to read it now, or when I receive a student essay, I no longer print it, but read and annotate it on the iPad. (The only exception is when I'm proofreading something like publication proofs; those things get printed, read very slowly at the kitchen table while leaning forward, and marked up in pencil or pen.) Yet oddly enough I almost never read e-books, and still buy printed books that I annotate yet can't search, the way I can search my digital annotations. Admittedly it's not the most rational system, but I think I stick to printed books because their physical inconvenience forces me to finish the ones I purchase, and not to purchase books unless I really mean to read them. Pleasure reading, usually before going to sleep, is always in print so that the light of the screen doesn't throw off my circadian rhythms and keep me from sleeping. (For what it's worth, here's my current fun reading: bit.ly/1S4RITH . It probably wasn't Antonin Scalia's favorite book...)

One consequence of this combination of habits, however, is that my reading results in a bifurcation of genre and platform, with articles and student writing being entirely screen-based, and long-form books being print-based. Format and genre have a long and complex relationship, of course, but in this case it's my own reading habits that have introduced a new pattern.

How do you read, and why?

follow-up to our Fisher field trip

Hope you all enjoyed our field trip to the Fisher earlier this week. As promised, here's a post with some follow-up information for those who'd like a closer look at the books we viewed.

The books in the Shakespeare exhibition will be behind glass and unavailable for calling up for the next few months, but you can find a complete listing and several detailed chapters about them in the exhibition's catalogue, copies of which are held at the Fisher: http://go.utlib.ca/cat/10282659 . Part of the exhibition includes work by three living bookmakers, whose websites are worth checking out. The book Illustrations from Macbeth (with the black binding and diagonal slashes) was made by Toronto bookbinder Don Taylor (http://www.dontaylorbookbinder.com/), who can sometimes be found in the bibliography room at Massey College. The tiny dos-a-dos-a-dos book Storming Shakespeare was made by Jan Kellett, who specializes in miniature books (http://www.dewaldenpress.net/). Finally, one book I didn't discuss but which some of you may have noticed in one of the downstairs display cases was the edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream that was rebound by Toronto's Robert Wu (http://www.studiorobertwu.com/), pictured below. As I mentioned during the tour, it was important that the exhibition include work by bookmakers who are alive and well and actively pursuing their craft, which is very much a living tradition. That's especially so in Toronto, where we have a thriving book arts community, thanks in part to the Canadian Book Artists and Bookbinders Guild (or CBBAG, pronounced "cabbage"), who offer workshops on various aspects of book production.

 

Downstairs, Sarah took us through several examples of Thomas Hardy's works in various formats, from serials to rebound magazine publications to triple-deckers to that wonderful 1970's faux-luxe edition. (I imagine the latter sitting on Ron Burgundy's bookshelf, mostly unread.) As Sarah mentioned, the those Hardy books are still uncatalogued, but if you ask Alexandra at the Fisher's reference desk about them, she may be able to help.

Here are the catalogue links for the other books we examined:

• Serialized versions of several Dickens novels, from the Toronto Weekly Mail: go.utlib.ca/cat/7313478 
• the 1611 King James Bible: go.utlib.ca/cat/1135318
• the Kelmscott Chaucer: go.utlib.ca/cat/9973472
• Euclid's Elements, 1570: go.utlib.ca/cat/3883868
• Euclid's Elements, 1847: go.utlib.ca/cat/3752805

Note that the catalogue entry for the 1847 Euclid -- the one with the multi-colour pages -- includes a print-on-demand link that gives you the option of downloading a full PDF of the book, or having it printed at the U of T bookstore. If anyone decides to get their own copy printed, please bring it to class to show us!
 

week 6 blogging question: the reinvented page

To pick up some of the threads from our readings on the history of the page, and to get us thinking about e-books for the next few weeks, this week's question asks you to find an example of a digital text, e-book, app, or other form that reinvents the page in an interesting way. Your example might be an innovative example of page design, or it might be a more radical example of an experiment that completely challenges our idea of what a page is. Remember that the kind of design that leads to a well-made page, digital or otherwise, is often subtle, and works best when it doesn't call attention to itself. Or it might be some crazy experiment that unabashedly calls attention to itself. You decide what counts as interesting, innovative, elegant, or worthwhile in this context -- but tell us why it counts.

You might wish to refer back to last week's readings from Piper and Stoicheff & Taylor, or perhaps the recommended readings, to consider some of the themes that connect the history of page design with future possibilities. Given that e-books -- especially EPUB-style ebooks for reading devices, as opposed to apps -- are still evolving, we'll have lots of opportunities to consider how ebooks don't hold up well next to their print counterparts. (As John Maxwell rightly says in the title of the article we'll be reading soon, when it comes to e-book design we can do better.) Let's try to balance that with some examples of how digital page design has succeeded -- remembering, too, that success sometimes takes the form of an experiment that fails, but fails well.





If you can, please include a photo or screenshot so that we can see what you're writing about. If you're unfamiliar with taking screenshots of windows on your computer screen, this is a good chance to learn! Luckily there's an entire organization dedicated solely to educating people on how to take screenshots on different platforms: www.take-a-screenshot.org. (Speaking of screenshots, one of the very first things I did after buying an iPad, which happened to be on the weekend of its first release in the US, was to place it on a photocopier to see if I could take a screenshot that way. It didn't work. But I did learn how to replace a toner cartridge on the iSchool's photocopier! ;-)

reading week intermezzo

No class this week requiring a follow-up post, but I'm on a book-history related visit to Yale for the next several days and thought I'd post something from the road. Thanks to Abby's tip, I took some extra time in New York this afternoon before catching my train at Grand Central to check out an exhibition at the NYPL's central building, just a couple of blocks away. Printing Women: Three Centuries of Female Printmakers 1570-1900 showcases graphic works made by women using traditionally male techniques such as woodcuts, wood engravings, etching, and lithography (some of which are techniques we'll see in our field trip to the Fisher Library next week). Though I've been studying print culture for years, I had no idea there were this many women engravers, illustrators, and printmakers during the early modern period and 18th century. It was something to see two full gallery spaces of their work, stretching nearly the width of the building. Sometimes an exhibition can do far more than an article or book to call attention to people and work that's been sidelined in the standard historical narratives. The idea that technologies may be gendered (and re-gendered differently, for different reasons) is also something to think about as we consider the production of ebooks, video games, and other artifacts built out of code.

Another aspect of this exhibition that might be of interest to the class is the set of blog posts that the curators have been doing for it: http://www.nypl.org/blog/exhibitions/316642 . The library-based blog, curated by library staff themselves, has become an important form of outreach and also, in the right hands, an engaging form of scholarly writing that didn't really exist prior to the rise of the blog itself. (Maybe in exhibition catalogues, but those obviously aren't as accessible if they're only in print.) The NYPL has particularly strong digital outreach, and if you look closely at how they construct their posts, you may see one of the reasons that I set the blogging assignment for this course. It's a genre that's worth adding to one's communication skillset, and I've been enjoying reading the blog posts from this class so far.

Anyway, it's a given that anyone in this class who visits New York City should make time for the NYPL building at 42nd and 5th. Aside from the Ghostbusters connection, it's remarkable that one can just walk in off the streets of one of the world's biggest, most expensive cities and -- after a quick security check -- look at the Gutenberg bible on display or call up some books in one of the world's most iconic reading rooms, all without paying a cent (well, you need a library card to call up books) and while remaining in a public space.

I'll be posting next week's blogging question before the usual Friday deadline, so keep an eye on this space.

week 5 follow-up

Lecture slides are now posted for this week in the usual place and formats, and embedded below:


I've also added an entry under this week's "recommended reading" for those who are interested in the King James Bible and its typography. David Norton's 3rd chapter from his book on the printing of the 1611 KJB goes into greater detail about many of the typographical features we discussed in class, and he explains what those mysterious paragraph marks were!

Next week is reading week, during which I hope you'll be able to do some actual reading. I'll be travelling for much of the latter half of the week, but will hold extra office hours next Tuesday from 10:30 to noon. There won't be a blogging question posted this week, but keep an eye out for one to be posted by next Friday. I'll also send out a note via BB with details for our field trip to the Fisher Library in our first class after reading week.

Finally, some sad news. This week one of the founding figures of book history as an academic discipline passed away. Elizabeth Eisenstein probably did more than any other individual scholar in the last 30 years to establish the history of books as an important field of historical inquiry. Although her historical methods and conclusions have been much debated since she first published her magisterial 2-volume The Printing Press as an Agent of Change in 1979, there's a good chance we wouldn't have a course like "Future of the Book" or a Book History and Print Culture program if it wasn't for her. (Even the term "print culture" itself owes much of its currency to Eisenstein.) Her Wikipedia entry is a good starting place to learn more about her work.