What are dead trees good for?
At least once a week, some young whippersnapper (or a cranky elder statesman) prophesies the doom of all the ancient and venerable independent Mormon publications. I think they are wrong, and I will show you why.
A few days ago, we had a very interesting discussion based on a personal essay about one couple’s experience of loss in fertility treatment. We touched on some of the theological issues surrounding ensoulment, the politics of declaring when life begins, and some of the sociological difficulties around discussions of this topic. All in about a couple thousand words. There’s nothing wrong with that. The discussion was mostly intelligent and constructive, there were useful insights shared. Life is short, we want to communicate efficiently–for many purposes, the executive summary will suffice.
But not for one purpose, which may be the most important one. God commands us to love with all our minds, as well as our hearts. All our minds. To me, that sounds like work. A lot of work, in fact, the kind of work that generates long, footnoted, carefully edited papers like this one. It’s true that we live in an age of multi-tasking, bullet-point lists, attention-grabbing graphics–we are all, whether we want to be or not, masters of the quick, the shallow, the superficial. But our God is not a soundbite God, and he wants our entire, sustained attention. Dead trees, footnotes, and the Chicago Manual of Style are good for learning to slow down and pay attention.
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November 14th, 2008 at 8:39 am
Touché!
November 14th, 2008 at 9:20 am
What a perfect thought.
(And I thought the answer to your question was Lucanus Elephus a Stag Beetle larva which lives in fallen logs.)
November 14th, 2008 at 9:41 am
I fully agree with the value of long-form, footnoted, well-edited papers. In fact, I think the Bloggernacle would do well to engage in (and with) more of that type of activity.
However, I disagree with the dead trees notion. I think that organizations who place most of their emphasis on a print version of their journal are going to find that it is going to become an increasingly difficult model to sustain financially.
I love print. But there seems to be this feeling among the old guard that print is better or more real or more valid than electronic. That’s ridiculous. So long as editing standards are maintained, electronic is just as valid as print. Now of course that “so long as” is very important — there are indeed electronic publications with editing standards that are more lax than print.
And I’d even say that if the correct models are used for peer review, editing, tagging/cataloging, archiving, distribution, etc. electronic publications can be superior to print, aiding in better editing/peer review, better discussion, better institutional memory, etc. This is why I suggested to the AML board last summer that they look in to using Open Journal Systems for Irreantum and the AML Annual (and splitting Irreantum into a bi-yearly magazine of creative work and bi-yearly AML Journl [with one issue being the Annual].
November 14th, 2008 at 10:24 am
William, I believe you are largely correct, and I have no objection to electronic publication per se. My problem is that I am just old enough to really prefer ink and paper to pixels for reading–it may be just something to get over, and I certainly would, if I had to. But, I blush to confess, I tend to print out most longer pieces I’m editing and use a pen, then go back and do the electronic markup.
Still, I can’t imagine that some combination of electronic publishing and maybe some print-on-demand model production of journals is not the way things are going for the future.
Time for someone much smarter than me to re-write Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction”
November 14th, 2008 at 11:01 am
I don’t like MS Word’s markup (track changes) system. I prefer to deal with pdf files and add comments to them in Adobe Acrobat. And I agree that printing out pieces for editing can still be quite useful, depending on the length of the piece and what type of editing one is doing.
I tried using Google docs because the collaborative and wiki-style nature of it appeals to me. I could have an editor go in and make changes and suggestions and then compare that version with a previous version (since Google saves copies of each major set of changes). The only problem with that is when I tried to export it into a format for submission, things got a bit messed up.
But I’m hopeful that such software will improve. And then when we see improvements in display technology (or at least more affordable and flexible appliances like the Kindle that are geared towards crisp readibility), then I think it’ll be more pleasant to work solely electronically.
In terms of print-on-demand, I think that we need to start thinking about premium versions as well. Maybe not fine limited editions runs of every journal, but best-of anthologies and auctioning of original artwork and signed copies, etc. I’ll actually be playing around with some of these concepts after the beginning of the year at A Motley Vision.
November 14th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
I can’t resist mentioning that wiki software also allows a kind of change tracking that can be useful — although the markup language used can cause problems for some users.
The ability to create collaborative documents like this is certainly one of the great (and largely untapped) benefits of the Internet-based community now at our disposal.
November 14th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I for one would breathe a bit of a sigh of relief if Sunstone decided to make the move to the Kindle or something. A great deal of my time is taken up with designing, procuring art for and prettying up the magazine. It I didn’t have to do all that. I could probably put out twice as much writing.
But at the same time, I enjoy the design element. Attempting to unify textual and visual elements can be a lot of fun.
November 15th, 2008 at 9:37 am
It’s a different type of design, but I’d say that good electronic publishing shouldn’t be any less design-oriented than print journals/magazines. So I’m afraid you still wouldn’t be off the hook, Stephen.
November 18th, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Stephen, most ebook readers can handle simple layout and graphics. Certainly, my eBookWise handles png and jpg files just fine, albeit in black and white.
If you get to thinking about this any more seriously, drop me a line.
November 19th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
I agree with a lot of what’s been said here.
I use MS Word’s track changes feature all the time. It’s a requirement for the kind of work I do, collaboratively with people who live halfway across the country. And believe me, it’s an improvement on what I used before that.
At the same time, I also find that for some kind of editing, printing things out is a must. And for some kinds of reading/writing, doing something to get away from my computer screen is highly desirable. I’ll even print out copies and take them outside, just to get outside for a few minutes.
There are also some kinds of writing that I do best on paper. Especially writing that takes place during Sacrament Meeting, which means a lot of my Mormon fiction and personal writing. But that’s another topic.
I also agree with William, however, that electronic publishing could be a godsend for academic publishing. So often, when I look at published research (something I have to do for my work), I find that a lot of the useful background information was excluded–stuff I’m sure the original researchers created, but that was cut for page count reasons. I’d like access to the full version.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Let me chip in and say that my spouse and I recently bought Kindle’s for ourselves. We love them. There are a few downsides to the Kindle, but not enough to make me return mine.
I would love to see all of the current LDS oriented publications put out an ebook/Kindle version. For the Kindle, they are easy to produce, just simple HTML formatting. The biggest drawback is it only has a 4-level grayscale screen, so images don’t look so good.
If anyone has a kindle and wants to see a version of Dialogue formatted for the Kindle, I recently converted the Winter 2007 version for my Kindle. And I am in the process of converting a few of my favorite past issues and articles. Just send me an e-mail: kari at hebers dot us
Like MoJo, I would be willing to help anyone who is interested.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:49 pm
We are also converting my book into an iApp for the iTunes store, so that anyone using the iTouch/iPhone can download it as an application (with the same wireless connectivity that the Kindle uses) instead of an ebook since Apple doesn’t sell “ebooks,” per se. In other words, you can read it without needing to load Stanza on your phone and then downloading the .EPUB format of the book.
This makes the TENTH digital format we publish in. WithOUT DRM (encryption).
The possibilities with digital are almost limitless. I find myself shaking my head at how behind some publishers (mainstream, I mean) are concerning digitization of their inventory. LDS lit in all its forms could be on the cutting edge of this, but it seems everywhere I go in the bloggernacle, almost no one even know ebooks exist.
November 24th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
Oh, I almost forgot. Ebooks can be annotated with hyperlinks to within an inch of their lives.