Digital Content, Disappearing Archives

Transferring content to digital formats has its advantages. For example, think of thousands of songs you can store on an palm-sized iPod or the hundreds of books you can store on a single Kindle, which is thinner than a book.

But archival purposes isn’t one of those advantages. As University of Maryland Information Studies and English professor Kari Kraus reports in When Data Disappears (published in the New York Times, August 6, 2011), digital media like hard disks, thumb drives, DVDs and CDs, are “inherently unstable.” Most of these media start to degrade with time. Even if the media survives, the formats do not. (Don’t believe me? Try to open a Word 95 file with MS Word 2010.)

We may be producing more content in a week than all of civilization produced for centuries, but if we don’t find a way to preserve it so it’s accessible to future generations, all of that great content could disappear from our historical consciousness.

Learn more about the issue at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/opinion/sunday/when-data-disappears.html?ref=opinion.

An Infant with Great Potential

Yesterday's post explored that, despite the hype, e-books are still in their infancy.

But everyone has high hopes for them.  Some of those hopes are admittedly hype.  But some are based on actual data and experience. Here are three cases:

• A partner approach to online and print
• Signs of life in the nonfiction market for e-books
• New online course packs

Case 1. A Partner Approach to Online and Print

Some publishers are discovering that the path to e-books takes a journey through hybrid approaches, much like the route to e-learning involved a journey through blended learning.

The conversion of much workplace and university learning programs to electronic formats ended up involving blended formats, in which parts of programs were presented online and other parts remained in the classroom. This allowed all stakeholders to become comfortable with learning online. It reduced (but did not eliminate) instructor and learner resistance, and provided skeptical executives with an opportunity to try e-learning before making a full-fledged commitment to it.

Some evidence is arising that print media might be re-thinking their options along the same lines. The New York Times recently published a profile of the re-worked Hollywood Reporter. Until recently, the Reporter published a daily newspaper. Much of its news became redundant with the increasing myriad of Hollywood news sites. And it lost its focus on its core readers--Hollywood insiders--rather than Hollywood obsessed fans (OK, me).

To shift the focus back--while acknowledging the current realities of the entertainment news industry--new editor Janice Min reconceived the Hollywood Reporter as a combination of online and print contents:

• Online news outlet, where breaking news was published on an ongoing basis
• Glossy, weekly print publication, which publishes feature articles of interst to the traditional core audience of the Hollywood Reporter

The initial results after a year or so of publication suggest the transition has succeeded. Ad revenues--a key metric of performance in publishing--and which had fallen prior to the makeover, have--is up by 50 percent over the old daily version.

Min believes that only an outsider could have remade this publication (she came from US Weekly). Perhaps insiders could not have conceived of it; perhaps entrenched interests would have prevented an insider from implementing this vision.

So many visions of online publications approach them as clones of their print versions. Perhaps more publications will explore this partner approach.

Case 2. Signs of Life in the Nonfiction Market for e-Books

Industry figures suggest that early adopters of e-books primarily use them to read fiction.

But I always though that the real benefit would be in non-fiction.

Update-ability. Non-fiction titles feature time-sensitive information and electronic formats allow for easier updating of content.

• 
  Quantity. To keep up, many professionals and academics need to read many books and, ideally, have access to many of them simultaneously. e-Book devices provide readers with relatively easy access to several books on a single device.
• Price. Because non-fiction titles are often highly specialized and intended for small slices of business and academic markets, the market potential for these books is limited, print runs are limited and--most significantly for consumers--prices are high. (An early article about e-books mentioned that one medical book that costs $US 3,600).

Now comes the first evidence that, perhaps, my hunch has some steam. e-Books seem to be waking the sleepy academic publishing market. Academic publishers specialize in research-based books that receive reviews similar to those of peer-review journals. Most of these books have small market potential, although a few become hits--at least, wihtin the disciplines they represent.

For the most part, print runs of these books are small and, once they're sold out, the books become rare books, difficult to find through book sellers and, sometimes, libraries.

Well, in a report on recent sales figures in the academic publishing industry (mostly represented by university presses) for the website Inside Higher Ed, Steve Kolowich reported that, although sales of print books are down, sales of electronic books have substantially risen since the first of the year.

For some presses, the rise has been as high as 1000 percent (from about 1.6 to nearly 11 percent of sales). Others have seen more modest gains.

The growth in e-book sales has two unqiue characteristics:

• 
  Most of the sales are for back-titles. Backtitles are books that are no longer available in print.
  
• 
  Most of the sales have occurred despite next to no marketing. In other words, readers are finding these books on their own.
  

Kolowich speculates that these results have implications for the marketing of e-books, which probably involve substantially different marketing schemes that used for printed books. As Kolowich notes, big displays of cardboard cut-out characters probably have no place in the marketing of e-books.

Case 3: New Online Course Packs

Two University of Chicago students realized that they were paying for something they had already bought--the readings in their course packs.

Students essentially pay three times for those readings. They pay twice for the readings in the course pack:

• A per-page royalty for each reading, which goes to the publisher (at my university, they cited $C .21 per page)
  
• A copying fee of about $C .05 pe page
  (plus Markup)
  

In addition, the student fees that students pay with their tuition also entitles them to an online copy of the same content through their university libraries.

Put in practical terms, students might spend as much as $C 6.00 for a 20-page article in print through a coursepack, when they could download it themselves from their university library (no additional cost) and print it on their own printers (let's say it's $.03/page) for a total cost of $C .60 for the same 20-page article (a savings of 90 percent).

That's one of the reasons I no longer provide course packs and just indicate to students that the article is available in the library and point them in the right direction. The other reason I do that is to help students become familiar and comfortable with the online library resources. Most of the students in one of my courses are first-time graduate students and, by directing them to the library weekly, I hope that the online journals become their first source of content and that the students become equally comfortable with peer-reviewed journals as a key, trusted source of information.

But I digress. The two University of Chicago students came to the same realization. But they also recognized that many students like the conveninece of a course pack.

So they devised an alternative--an online course pack, which Ben Weider describes in a recent posting on the Wired Campus blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education online.
The two students compile the readings for a course into a single online source.

And, in an innovation that could have positive impacts on education, the students who run the service also let professors who teach similar courses see one anothers' course packs so they can compare readings and, ideally, share the ideas.

The two students wondered whether their idea was legal and consulted a number of attorneys. The attorneys seem to believe that the students have not broken any laws.

Right now, the idea has received some funding and its business potential is being explored. Assuming that it succeeds, the coursepack could be reinvented for the electronic age.

Some Thoughts on What this Means

As both of these cases suggest, e-books show promise in non-fiction categories, both for periodicals and books.

But both cases also suggest that publishers need to do more work in re-conceiving of the ways in which people kinteract with print and electronic publications, and the means of marketing to potential readers.

These human processes take time--perhaps more time than was needed to develop the e-book readers.

And these are just two cases. I believe they signal something, but time might suggest otherwise.

e-Books: The Hottest Infant on the Market?

e-Books grows in interest among professional communicators and instructional designers.

• Several sessions at the most recent Society for Technical Communication Summit addressed the topic.  
• Furthermore, the most recent Horizon Report from EduCause and the New Media Consortium names e-Books as a trend that is likely to affect education in the next 12 months.  

But several pieces of evidence suggest that e-books is still in its infancy.

One has to do with hardware and software formats.  They still proliferate. Two broad categories exist and, even within them,  standards compete for supremacy.

Purpose-built e-book readers, such as the Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Sony e-Reader. Each has its own market.  For example, according to the New York Times (published May 22, 2011 at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/business/media/23nook.html?src=recg&pagewanted=all), the Barnes & Noble Nook has a strong appeal to women.

Although many believe that EPUB is the file format used on all e-reader devices, it is not.  In fact, the Kindle does not support it.

Tablets, such as the iPad and Playbook. The iPad has its own proprietary bookstore with iBooks, but the makers of other devices make compatible software for it.  For example, Kindle has an app that works on the iPad, so people can read Kindle books on an iPad.   Similar apps are available for tablets running under Android and Windows.

Another has to do with the definition of an e-book. Some people see the future of electronic books as interactive, multimedia experiences like the demonstration version of Sports Illustrated prepared by Wonderfactory.  Yet despite those images and claims like those by a recent tweeter at the STC Summit that “PDF is not an e-book,” many of the magazines for the Nook are PDF files.  And readers do not appear to be complaining about them.

Perhaps that gap between the potential and what readers are willing to accept can be explained by acceptance issues.  Several research studies suggest that, despite the acknowledged benefits of e-book readers—portability and lower cost of books—readers are still having difficult y giving up printed books.  That includes young readers.

A recent study noted that students believe that tablets will transform college—but most down own one.  And when they have used them, the study found that students had some practical problems, like writing notes in books.  (Chronicle of Higher Education online,  http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/students-say-tablets-will-transform-college-though-most-dont-own-them/31465 ).

Furthermore, business models for e-books are still being defined—and publishers of books have different allegiances than those of magazines.  Publishers of books embraced the iPad and iBooks because Apple was going to charge more for e-books than Amazon, which had insisted on $9.99 for popular titles.

In contrast, magazine  publishers are as frustrated with Apple as book publishers were with Amazon.  Until earlier this year, Apple would not let publishers offer subscriptions.  Even when they do, Apple won’t provide magazines with information on subscribers, which is essential for advertiser-sponsored publications as advertisers demand demographics of the audience to verify that the magazine is helping advertisers reach their intended customers.  In contrast, Barnes & Noble has partnered with magazines in offering subscriptions and provides magazines with data on their subscribers.

The last piece of evidence that, despite the increasing interest in them, e-books remain  in their infancy is the lack of empirical research on them.  Few studies exist and, of those that do, most explore attitudes towards e-books.

Will e-Books Change Higher Education?

Many people--like DIY U author Anya Kamenetz and the 2010 Horizon report--believe that e-books will have a significant effect on higher education.

Certainly that's the hope in the province of Alberta. "E-books may cut fees for Alberta students" explains how the Advanced Education Minister in Alberta is actually trying to bring e-books to university students. Check out the details at http://www2.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=da46bdc1-c803-49f3-8152-c9f8c7e6ec07.

Copyright expert and University of Ottawa professor puts Alberta's project into a broader perspective in his article, "Canadian education faces technology tipping point." He suggests why excessive cost and duplication in print of resources that are already available to the university community online will drive demand for electronic course materials. Check out his article at http://www.thestar.com/business/article/908924--geist-canadian-education-faces-technology-tipping-point.

But maybe it's holiday gifts that will really drive demand. "Christmas Gifts May Help E-Books Take Root," published in the New York Times, explains how e-book readers being given for the holidays could drive e-book sales as early as this month. Check out the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/24/books/24publishing.html.

Battle of the e-Book Readers

In the past few weeks, the Toronto Star ran a pair of articles on e-readers.

Consumer columnist Ellen Roseman sings the virtues of her iPad in  “An eReader is good, but an iPad is better” (http://www.moneyville.ca/article/897311--roseman-an-ereader-is-good-but-an-ipad-is-better).

In response, Star editor Sarah Millar’s wrote “iPad vs. Kindle, which would you prefer?” (http://www.moneyville.ca/article/899858--ipad-vs-kindle-which-would-you-prefer). Despite its non-commital title, Millar decidedly chooses the single-purpose e-book reader in general, and the Kindle in particular. 

For what it’s worth, in my opinion, Millar makes the stronger case.  She points out that the Kindle costs about one-third the price of an iPad, and is lighter and its battery lasts longer.  I’m not sure that the additional features that Roseman highlights are really worth all the extra money. 

That said, I own an iPad and love it.   

Life and Death of e-Mail and e-Books: Roundup of Recent News on Media and e-Books

The next few posts take a brief pause from the account of my sabbatical over the past year to report on some of the news that caught my eye over the past few weeks about:

• Media (general)
• e-Books

Then

• Research
• Schools
• Higher education

Next, workplace learning
And

• Nonprofits
• And a different perspective

News about media (general)
The blogosphere is chockablock with predictions of various technologies.

For example, a couple of months ago, Tim Young declared the death of e-mail on the Knowledge is Social blog (http://blog.socialcast.com/social-networks-spur-the-demise-of-email-in-the-workplace/).   On the one hand, he was accurately reading surveys saying that use of e-mail was declining, especially among younger people, who prefer instant messaging, texting, and social networks for communicating.

Over time, however, we in the media tend to love hyperbole about media.  The typical story goes like this: a new medium is going to “kill” an existing one.  Television was going to replace radio and movies.  Cable would kill broadcast television.  Computers will replace the classroom.

But as sociologist Neil Selwyn observed at the recent ED-MEDIA conference in Toronto, such hyperbole can, at times, sound “ridiculous” (he was specifically referring to a comment that social media will replace schools).

Steve Lohr puts the situation into a broader perspective in a recent analysis in the New York Times, observing that—in the long-run—media adapt.  Radio lost its primacy as an entertainment medium, but found new lives—first as background music, news and talk (which has taken a primary role in shaping political debate (my addition))—and later, through satellite radio with a  wide range of music and conversation.  Lohr even identifies podcast as a reinvention of the radio show.

Similarly, rather than lose to television, movies reinvented themselves, first with gimmicks like 3D (geez—and now television is trying the same thing) and, later, with a richer viewing experience not feasible through television.

E-mail?  That’s not dead either.  It’s just morphing in use as are telephone calls.  People may be calling less, but some evidence suggests that some of all of all that increased texting is used to schedule phone conversations.  Merely calling people to say hi unannounced is increasingly seen as an intrusion.

Check out Lohr’s analysis, Now Playing: Night of the Living Tech, at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/weekinreview/22lohr.html?ref=weekinreview.

News about e-books

• Michael Wolf declares that "e-Books Won the War." I didn't realize we were at war (at least, not over books).  From my perspective, the conversion from print to e-books is part of a larger, systemic conversion from print to online information, and the conversion is very much in process and likely to continue for the foreseeable future.  But, like most industry pundits, hyperbole is intended to drum up attention and, perhaps, business.  Read his comments at http://gigaom.com/2010/08/06/how-e-books-won-the-war/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OmMalik+%28GigaOM%29&utm_content=Twitter.
• For a more fact-based account of the situation with e-books, check out the current issue of Spectrum, IEEE's magazine.  After providing a current assessment of the brutal market conditions for manufacturers of e-book readers, Spectrum's  editors report the results of their testing and ranking of all the e-readers out there, including obscure ones that no one ever hears about, like the Bookeen Cybook Opus and the Hanvon WISEreader.  Among the useful information in the reviews are the strengths and drawbacks to each reader, and a list of formats that the readers can display.  No format is universal (a problem), but the ePub and PDF formats seem extremely popular.  Read the article at http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/tools-toys/the-ipad-the-kindle-and-the-immutable-laws-of-the-marketplace/0