Last week we posted about this book available to download for free from MIT.
This week news of the availability of the first online-only book from MIT Press.
…MIT Press [has] released Learning From YouTube, a free “video book” that was written by Ms. Juhasz and grew out of her class. It’s the first time the press has published an online-only book, and it helped developers build a new platform for authorship that they hope will be used for more such works. It’s also a test of academic waters: Will similar publications, backed by established presses, count toward tenure?
The YouTube book was peer-reviewed and comes with an ISBN number, but beyond that it has little in common with the books we’re used to seeing. Users get to it by visiting a Web site that consists of about 250 “texteos,” pages that combine text and video. The videos, many of them produced by Ms. Juhasz’s students, encourage readers to reflect on YouTube by learning inside it. The closest thing to chapters are “YouTours,” which guide viewers through related pages. That format also makes the book a test of staying power: Since much of the content isn’t owned by Ms. Juhasz, its owners could take it down, leaving holes in her book.
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Learning From YouTube may help simplify things. The work served as the prototype for new software, Scalar, that provides templates to create similar publications. Development of the system, based at the University of Southern California, is part of a growing national effort by scholars, archives, and academic presses to support multimedia scholarship. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has put more than $900,000 into the project, called the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture.
Make Sure to Read the Complete COHE Article (Well Worth Your Time)
Direct to Video Book: Learning From YouTube
A Blog Post About the Video Book from the The Alliance for Networking Visual Culture
About Gary Price
