In January I bought my first ebook (ISBN: B0000E68Z2), which is published by Wiley. I have one copy on my laptop and a backup on my external harddrive. Last week, I downloaded and installed Adobe Professional (writer 6.0) from our company network (Norwegian School of Management, BI) – during the installation some files from the Adobe version that I downloaded and installed when I bought the ebook (from Amazon.com UK) were deleted. Since then, I have not been able to access my ebook – I have tried to get help from our computer staff but they have not been able to help me.
Adobe thinks that I’m using another computer, while I’m not – and it didn’t help to activate the computer through some Adobe DRM Activator stuff. Now I have spent at least 10 hours trying to access my ebook – hope you can help…
Boing Boing points to this story illustrating the fundamental flaws of digital rights management (DRM) – about a Norwegian prof who paid $172 for an ebook on Amazon UK only to have it turn to unreadable code jibberish after updating his Acrobat software. He made several pleas for help – to Acrobat, to Wiley (the publisher), and to Amazon. All were in vain. It turns out that after reading the story in Boing Boing (in the past 24 hours, I guess), Wiley finally sent a replacement copy. But the problem of built-in obsolescence in ebooks goes unaddressed.
I’m convinced that encrypting single “copies” is lunacy. For everything we gain with electronic texts – search, multimedia, connection to the network etc. – we lose much in the way of permanence and tactility. DRM software only makes the loss more painful. Publishers need to get away from the idea of selling “copies” and start experimenting with charging for access to a library of titles. You pay for the service, not for the copy. Digital books are immaterial – so the idea of the “copy” has to be revised.
Another example of old thinking with new media is the New York Public Library’s ebook collection. That “copies” of electronic titles are set to expire after 21 days is not surprising. The “copy” is “returned” automatically and you sweep the expired file like a husk into the trash. What’s incredible is that the library only allows one “copy” to be checked out a time, entirely defeating one of the primary virtues of electronic books: they can always be in circulation. Clearly terrified by the implications of the new medium (or of the retribution of publishers), the NYPL keeps ebooks on an even tighter tether than they do their print books. As a result, they’ve set up a service that’s too frustrating to use. They should rethink this idea of the single “copy” and save everyone the “quote” marks.
What will be the continuing role of print in the context of digital research, especially in instances where the whole text of the print is imaged and available on-line?
As a starting point, why not assume that print will increasingly backup digital delivery? Lack of storage space is an excuse, rather than a rational, for limiting such a continuing role for print. Cooperative storage and shared repositories of paper collections create, rather than consume, storage space. This paradox is realized as last copy registration enables weeding of general collections. Leaf mastering or retention of print for on-demand scanning, elevates, rather than diminishes, the status of print. In addition to last copy registration, increased security and storage environments and trusted retention accord a credible backup role to print.
Do print collections have inherent attributes in the context of digital delivery?
All printed materials are originals and all screen drawings are copies. Print leaf master better controls authentication and augmentation or commercialization of content and it simplifies access rights and privileges when compared with digital surrogates.
Print materials have inherent legibility while screen legibility is impaired by loading delays, browser errors, navigational interruptions, and unwanted pop-ups. Such impediments will be dismissed by on-line reading advocates as temporary deficiencies correctable by the advance of technologies of connectivity. But the reverse appears to be happening. Link rot, application up-grades, email congestion and system cut-overs all load further illegibility to on-screen reading.
Print materials have persistence. Because the burdensome obligation of long term preservation is primarily assigned to research libraries and other intellectual property custodians, print can be given a leaf master status. In the leaf master concept, paper copies are held primarily for on-demand scanning or for backup of image files. This continuing role is already established in ILL service. Also, paper preservation and its retrieval over time are less mediated and less expensive than such requirements for computer media.
Print also provides haptic features that enhance learning and retention as the hands prompt the mind in an ergonomic of comprehension. At first it is odd that concepts should be conveyed by physical objects. Electronic transmission better mimics the neural connectivity of the mind, but the physical book better engages the hands to prompt the mind. We recall read precepts in their physical location on the page of a specific book. Other fingerings of page turning and manipulations of book structure work as prompts to our progression through content.
In contrast to the punctuation of the paper page, the on-line page is manipulated with impaired haptic feedback. The “previous/next” click, the cursor slider and scroll tabs utilize grip and finger motion directed to the mouse and keyboard, but not to the substrate of the text. At least two other layers of interruption intervene. There is the electrified, rather than manual, instigation and an indirect interfacing via the navigational software. With a book, the reader is the interface.
Do print collections have attributes beyond inherent characteristics?
Print collections work well in tandem with digital research. Print materials lack search attributes and screen presented resources lack persistence. Utilized together they each tend to compensate each other’s deficiencies. But, such a hybrid use is not full evolved. Currently the scenarios for digital research involving books (i.e., Google Print) favor screen-to-print, and not print-to-screen routines. Use scenarios that visualize super session of print collections by digital surrogate are not as promising or as well indicated as continuing mutual enhancement.
Another, wider role of print is connected to its physical format and the physical place of the library. The strategic centrality of the library on campus is not distinguished by digital access, but by physical collections and their physical place. Crucial social behaviors, such as student peer learning outside of class, are well accommodated in context with the physical library and its print collections. Literacy instruction is discipline neutral and well situated in the library. The mandate of the library as a museum is not as compelling as the library as a setting for learning. The physical collections and the physical library engender scenarios for the centrality of the library on campus.
Finally, print cultivates a primary reading skill which with other classical reading skills of the verbal and visual domain are required, in their composite, to provide the needed on-line, screen based reading skill.
self-destructing books
[Source: if:book] quoted: Because the burdensome obligation of long term preservation is primarily assigned to research libraries and other intellectual property custodians, print can be given a leaf master status. In the leaf master concept, paper cop…