The Future of the Book in the Digital Age

Citation

Hannabuss, S. (2007), "The Future of the Book in the Digital Age", Library Review, Vol. 56 No. 8, pp. 727-728. https://doi.org/10.1108/00242530710818054

This was clearly an enjoyable conference (held in Oxford in September 2005). The structure of the papers published in this book is convincing as a tour d’horizon of issues on the minds of the many people – authors and publishers, printers and internet wonks, sociologists and book trade students and historians – who interest themselves in the past, present and future facts and destinies of the book. The argument is the familiar one that the digital age is a revolution like that of Gutenberg, changing the paradigm of creation, production and consumption. Technology‐driven, the digital revolution also has a cultural logic (because of the migration of consumers online).

This leads pessimists to fear for the future of the book (just as they feared for it when television came along) and optimists to embrace new patterns of production and consumption. So it comes as no surprise to find papers/chapters here on the ways in which book consumption in Sweden have changed because of the internet, the ways in which library development and provision have changed because of online and consortial and Open Archive resources, and the ways in which publishing has changed because value‐added and competitive advantage can be found by going online and providing on‐demand materials. The structure of the book – picking up on authors, publishers and printers in this new setting, and then moving on to bookselling, readers and patterns of consumption – allows these themes to emerge clearly.

On a critical level, these issues are dealt with at three levels of sophistication. The highest (which is also the most perceptive and useful) comes in pieces on new revenue sources from on‐demand (Phillips), the contributing editors’ own introduction and late chapter where the over‐arching issues are summarized (technology, cultural logic, economies of scale, customization, language translation software and metadata provision), a comparative study of reading in Europe (Kovac and Sebart), and a sensible review of the strengths and weaknesses of audio‐books (Cavender and Stuchell). Here and there, facts and figures – on financials and consumption – add to the value of this book.

The second level of sophistication comes in pieces or chapters that make a sound point but do not do it particularly well, like the growth of self‐publishing in the digital age (a good point but unevenly argued by Kular), an oblique think‐piece on concentration and commodification (by David Lynn, editor of The Kenyon Review), an off‐the‐peg article (by Feather) not inside the skin of the book at all (had it concentrated on Open Archive and institutional repository issues, it would have been completely relevant here), and a thorough academic chapter by Nossek and Adoni about reading in Israel that almost seems to have strayed into the book from an academic journal. The third level of sophistication comes in pieces or chapters that make a sound enough point but are so obvious as to make one wonder whether they are fillers – an opener on how students think information does not exist unless it is on the internet, a tail‐piece on authenticity, and an inconclusive study of new roles for chain booksellers (are they coffee shops? fifty per cent say yes, fifty per cent say no).

Chandos Publishing have succeeded in recent years in producing a distinctive, relevant and practical list for people in the information and library world, as scanning their catalogue confirms. This conference is probably like all, a curate's egg, and the decision to buy will be shaped by any felt need to get another general overview and/or to get particular contributions. Cope (University of Illinois) and Phillips (Oxford Brookes University) have done a competent job here in a crowded field, although, as the Howarth Information Press have found from time to time with their own conference publications, such things are often ephemeral. For any library seriously collecting everything on the future of the book.