OPEN REFLECTIONS

Category: Ebooks

  • Post Literacy

    The concept or theory of post literacy (which I learned about via James Bridle from booktwo.org) is described by Wikipedia as a stage ‘wherein multimedia technology has advanced to the point where literacy, the ability to read written words, is no longer necessary’. However, literacy encompasses much more than just the ability to read (and…

  • Touched by History

    The first publication of the OAPEN project has recently come to light, a collection of essays by Johan Huizinga entitled De hand van Huizinga, collected and with an introduction by Willem Otterspeer; the essays are in Dutch, via Amsterdam University Press, but will also be translated into several other languages via the other OAPEN partners,…

  • Patronage

    Kevin Kelly reports on his blog about an experimental book publishing model. In this model you first sell a required amount of (hard cover) books (in this specific case 200), enough to cover for the costs of the print run, after which the book is made available online for free as a downloadable PDF. Actually…

  • Ebooks Galore!

    This month it’s again time for the World Ebook fair! The fourth annual World Ebook Fair, this year from 7/04/09 to 8/04/09 will offer Open Access to their sponsors ebook collections consisting of more than 2 million books. During this month these ebooks will be online available for free (otherwise a membership of $8.95 per…

  • Academic Publishing must face the Inconvenient Truth

    Another thing I would like to draw your attention to is an excellent speech given by Michael Jensen at the Association of American University Presses’ (AAUP) annual meeting last June. Michael Jensen is the Director of Strategic Web Communications at the National Academies Press, one of the oldest Open Access publishers. As Wikipedia states: ‘The…

  • The Concept of Bible

    Some small stuff from around the world or the web or the world that is the web that deserves some attention here in this and future posts to be. First of all the oldest bible (ok maybe no small stuff), the Codex Sinaiticus, has been digitized and has concurrently been made accessible online. As the…

  • Encore! More Free Playing

    The story around Free continues (talking about a nice marketing strategy). A review from Malcolm Gladwell (yes, the Blink and Tipping Point guy) in The New Yorker elicited a response from Anderson on his blog, causing another Internet aficionado, Seth Godin, to again take sides (Anderson’s side that is). Seems like a dinosaur fight (though…

  • Where Open Philosophy meets Open Music

    Via Transversalinflections I learned about Re.Press, an Australian publisher of Open Access titles in Philosophy. Their business model is based on a free Open Access edition in combination with print sales, the model at the moment many presses are experimenting with (amongst others: Open Humanities Press, Open Book Publishers, National Academies Press, fellow Australians ANU…

  • Digital Scholarship

    Christine Borgman is one of my scholarly heroines; when it comes to her fine nose for current developments in e-scholarship and digital information retrieval and her thorough and concise way of communicating (alas, she is a specialist in scholarly communication) these issues via monographs, articles and lectures, she definitely belongs to my scholarly all-star gallery.…

  • Print will survive

    Charming initiative by Dave Eggers (via De papieren man and Gawker): he send an email to everyone feeling at loss about the possible demise of print and all-round literacy. After an evening organized by the Authors Guild, Eggers promised to brighten up the pessimists. The New Yorker published a few lines from his speech:  “To…

  • If you love literature, help keep it alive!

    Via Tranversalinflections and Loewak I heard about the possible decline and fall of Salt Publishing, the poetry, short story and literary criticism publisher set up by Australian poet John Kinsella (who also launched Salt Magazine) in the 90’s. The financial crisis hit them hard, and they were on the edge off going overboard. In a…

  • Book/Body

    Anne Frances Wysocki already created the webtext or new media piece A Bookling Monument in 2002. Still, it amazed me. The manner in which Wysocki tries to grapple the similarities between the way we view and envision the body and the book, combining this with a visual presentation of her text (which is an exploration…