Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President

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• Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President
• Electronic Publication changing the way your
  work is disseminated and read
• University of California, San Diego
• February 22nd, 2006

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Overview

• Who am I and whos Alexander Street Press?
• Depressing news about the state of scholarly
  publishing
• Existing technologies provide the means for
  salvation
• Towards wholly more effective scholarly
  communication

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Alexander Street Press Mission

• To craft electronic products of exceptional
  utility and quality, using the skills of
  librarianship and traditional publishingTo
  give voice to those who would otherwise be silent

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Disciplines
North American History
Latino / L.A. Studies
Music
Drama, Theatre, and Film
Religion Social Thought
Black History and Literature
Womens History and Literature
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2. The State of Scholarly Communication

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The State of Scholarly Communication

• At some point in the 1990s the UK academy
  ceased to be a self sustaining monographic
  community
• Scholarly monograph sales declined dramatically
  from 1,500 copies in the 1960s to as low as
  250 or 300 copies in some areas of the Social
  Sciences and Humanities British Academy, May
  2005 Report
• The scholarly monograph is a symbol of tenure
  rather than a medium for access to and
  distribution of individual and collective
  scholarship Colin Steele, Book to the
  Future, Presentation at
  Charleston Conference, Nov. 2005

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Google

Google's mission is to organize the world's
information and make it universally accessible
and useful. (Google Corporate Information Web
page February, 2005)
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How to view Google?

those who succumb to the commercial influence
are building a monster who, like Frankenstein,
will slay his creator
A superman to rescue scholarship and put it
firmly in the public domain
A siren calling usto wreck ourselves on the
rocks of mediocrity
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Objections to Google Print

• OperationalWill they be able to digitize all
  this material?What quality will it have? When
  will it be available?
• Technical / legalWith so many hits wont content
  get lost?OCR will never get beyond 98 or
  so(i.e. several errors per page)Will they allow
  others to index, copy, and crawl the material?
• 3. Philosophical Wont commercial priorities
  conflict with scholarly ones?As a de facto
  monopoly theyll become too powerful. What
  happens to quality when search supplants
  content?Secrecy and commercialism will hurt
  scholarship
• Experiential What about NlightN, Knowledge
  Network, Questia, NetLibrary?

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But

If it works, Google will deliver 30 times the
content delivered by EEBO, ECO, Evans,
Shaw-Shoemaker and similar initiatives at no
charge to end-users
Rather than trying to work out why it wont
worklets assume that it (or something like it)
will work out and see what the world looks like
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3. Existing technologies provide the means of
salvationbut first - lets understand the
medium

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Understanding the medium

• Steel High cost to create, strong, easy to
  stamp shapes, medium weight
• Wood Low cost to create, moderately strong,
  needs to be crafted, light weight
• Glass Medium cost to create, weak, easy to
  craft, transparent
• The Web - ?

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The nature of virtual space

• You must consult the laws of natureyou say
  What do you want brick? and the brick says to
  you I like an arch and you say to brick Look,
  I want one too, but arches are expensive Brick
  says I like an arch
• Honor the material
  you use
• 
  Louis Kahn (1979)

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Nature of electronic publications
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page

• Pliable
• Constantly evolving
• Practically unlimited in size

• Atomic
• Interconnected
• Interdependent
• Interactive

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Nature of the network
Free Page
Free Page
Free Page
Free Page
Free Page
For fee Page
Free Page
Free Page
Free Page

• Pliable
• Constantly evolving
• Practically unlimited in size

• Atomic
• Interconnected
• Interdependent
• Value of the Connection Value of the object

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Paper vs. Electronic

• Electronic infrastructure improvements since
  2000
• Wireless LANs
• Laptops 50 smaller, 3 times more powerful
• Standard hard disk size has grown from 20 GB to
  100 GB
• Google Print, Google Scholar,
• Flickr, Del.icio.us, Technorati
• Web 2.0 - Wikis, Blogs, Podcasting, etc
• Societal factors
• E-filing
• Corporate Wikis
• Legal case submission
• Online bill payment
• Electronic patient records

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Size of the electronic world

• By 2010, the web will contain
• 90 of published works prior to 1923
• Majority of works published to 2010
• gt 20 billion pages of e-mail, phone logs,
  databases, blogs, and Web sites (currently
  8 billion)
• gt 1 billion photographs
• gt 20 million facsimile pages of manuscripts
• gt 10 million audio files
• gt 1 million video files

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Where were headed
Why?
Therefore
Who, What, When, Where?
After Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom,
Gene Bellinger, Durval Castro, Anthony Mills.
http//www.systems-thinking.org/
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Evolution of publisher tasks
Process integration
Workflow tools
Semantic indexing
Linking
Community Building
Asset Management
Free materials
Rare and unpublished material
Licensing
Unified Search software
Simple, One database Search
Public Domain Reprints
Warehousing
Print Directory
Print Monograph
Printing
Typesetting
Growing
Fading
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Evolution of publisher tasks
Process integration
Workflow tools
Semantic indexing
Commissioning?
Linking
Community building
Asset management
Free materials
Rare and unpublished material
Editorial?
Licensing
Unified search software
Simple, one database search
Public domain reprints
Warehousing
Quality?
Print directory
Selection?
Print monograph
Printing
Typesetting
Fading
Growing
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3. Towards wholly more effective scholarly
communication

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Australian National University Press

• Still early days, but 2005 figures are impressive
  for downloads from 15 academic titles, largely
  reprints
• PDF book and chapter downloads - 55,000 to May
  2005 excludes mobile device downloads, etc
• September 2005 whole-book down loads
• The Spanish Lake 1905
• Asian Socialism and Legal Change 379
• Ethics and Auditing 424
• Humanities Research Centre History 554

Source Colin Steele, Book to the Future,
Presentation at Charleston Conference,
Nov. 2005
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Digital Repositories

• Berkeley Electronic Press eScholarship
  Repository
• 20,000 downloads a week
• 838,000 downloads
• 150 departments participating
• More than 200 major university based
  repositories are now in place
• Proquest/UMI Dissertation Program is no longer
  the sole source for dissertations.

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Improving scholarship

• Inject editorial expertise in selection, quality
  and context
• Be truly comprehensive (link to/include all
  materials relevant to the subject), in
  multiple formats if necessary.
• Allow new questions to be answered
• Provide unique ways of searching, viewing,
  exploring and analyzing the material.
• Facilitate and document contributions
• Vastly increase readership

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Lessons from the publisher front line..

• Discipline specificity
• Librarianship and indexing is key
• There is so much waiting to be done
• You have to have a substantial free offering
• Free and For-Fee go together
• Go outside the paper paradigm
• Other industries are leading the way

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Indexing is key
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page
Page
If it isnt indexed you cant get to it
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Semantic indexing

• Tim Berners-Lee and James Hendler in Scientific
  American, May 2001
• an extension of the current web in which
  information is given well-defined meaning, better
  enabling computers and people to work in
  cooperation.
• Represents a quantum shift in the functionality
  of the web

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The strain on keyword search

• Question Martin Luther King
• Google 8.3m hits
• Google Scholar 7.8k
• First hit Development of a research strategy for
  assessing the ecological risk of endocrine
  disruptors. GT Ankley, RD Johnson, G Toth, LC
  Folmar, NE US Environmental Protection Agency,
  Research Division 26 W Martin Luther King Dr
  Cincinnati, OH 45288.
• Yahoo 7.4m hits
• Alta Vista 7.3m hits

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Semantic indexing
Word
Page
Chapter
Book or Volume
Traditional indexing gt
Semantic indexing gt
Series
Who ?
What ?
Collection
When ?
Where ?
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Increases in utility

Semantic Search
Keyword Search
Fielded Search
Access
Do youhave the book titled
All mentions of Star Wars
All mentions of Star Wars by Reagan in
speeches he delivered in 1985
All mentions of Star Wars in texts about Reagan
published in 1985
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North American Theatre Online

• 40,000 pages of reference works for American and
  Canadian Theatre
• Detailed information and links on
• 25,000 plays and screenplays
• 20,000 authors
• 15,000 productions
• 2,500 production companies
• 2,800 theatres
• Over 5,000 resources (playbills, posters,
  ephemera)
• 15,000 characters within plays
• Integrates all ASP databases and material freely
  available on the Web

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The real world
Venue
Director
Production
Author
Theater
Dramatis Personae
Producer
Location
Performance
Play
Lighting
Set Designers
Production Company
Performers
Texts
Ephemera
Production Stills
Criticism
Scenes
Characters
Playbills
Cast List
Acts
Posters
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The virtual world
Resources Play Director Theater Production
Co. Character Scene Etc (45 fields)
Author Birth date Death date Birth Place Death
Place Nationality Occupation Awards (38 fields)
Company Name Productions Performers Etc (14
fields)
Production Director Theater Cast of
Perfs.LightingCostumes Etc (47 fields)
Theater District Location Capacity Style Etc (18
fields)
Texts KeywordAuthor Date WrittenDate
Published Production (67 fields)
Characters Plays Age Author Performer Etc (30
fields)
Scenes Where When Setting Subject Etc (41
fields)
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All scenes performed in South Africa discussing
AIDS from 1980 to 1990
Resources Play Director Theater Production
Co. Character Scene Etc (45 fields)
Author Birth date Death date Birth Place Death
Place Nationality Occupation Awards (38 fields)
Company Name Productions Performers Etc (14
fields)
Production Director Theater Cast of
Perfs.LightingCostumes Etc (47 fields)
Theater District Location Capacity Style Etc (18
fields)
Texts KeywordAuthor Date WrittenDate
Published Production (67 fields)
Characters Plays Age Author Performer Etc (30
fields)
Scenes Where When Setting Subject Etc (41
fields)
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Semantic Indexing
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Semantic Indexing
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New kinds of research
3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
Honour
1
Honor
0.5
1750-74
1775-99
1800-24
1825-49
1850-74
1875-99
Word Frequency per ten thousand words
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Indexing can answer new questions
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Custom Playlists

• Music and video can be integrated into papers and
  coursework
• Can be combined to make new works
• Permanent per second URLs allow the
  identification of elements within audio and video

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Blog and Wiki software

• Have substantive benefits over paper
• Ability to see when someone has read something
• Provides an audit trial for comments
• Speed
• Low cost
• Instant citations

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Wiki submission criteria

• Personal narratives only i.e. texts, audio,
  video prepared reflecting personal views and
  experiences
• Prior to 1995
• Primary materials only
• Letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs,
  autobiographies
• Must contain sufficient bibliographic information
  to confirm authenticity
• Ideally materials verified by museums, archives,
  librarians and educational institutions

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How will it work?

• Submissions may only be made by registered
  participants
• Submissions will be immediately available for
  keyword search and integrated with search results
• Will be clearly identified as unverified
• Editors will review submissions daily and remove
  items that dont fit editorial criteria.
• With each update materials will be semantically
  indexed, tagged as verified and added to the
  main database.

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Library and publisher opportunity

• Understand View conceptual relationships
  (mapping terms to concepts)
• Explore Move from one concept to another with
  ease (browse tables of contents)
• Discover Answer questions youve never been
  able to (never before published content
  Semantic indexing)
• Learn Test hypotheses and see if theyre correct

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www.alexanderstreet.com