New Articles and Presentations: Future of the Book, Interactive Science Publishing, and Library Ebooks

A new issue of The Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP) (Volume 18, No. 2; Spring 2015) is now available online and we encourage you to take a look at what’s available in this open access publication edited by Maria Bonn and published by Michigan Publishing.
Today, we want to highlight two articles in this issue.
1. Physics and the Future of Books by Peter Meyers

It’s hard to see the future of the book when our current model is centuries old. To look ahead, we have to look within—at the materials and forms now at our disposal. A review of some key digital media properties suggests how we might design books for the kinds of readers we are all becoming.

2. The Educational Value of Truly Interactive Science Publishing by Michael J. Ackerman

 Interactive Scientific Publishing (ISP) has been developed by the Optical Society of America with support from the National Library of Medicine at NIH. It allows authors to electronically publish papers which are linked to the referenced 2D and 3D original image datasets. These image datasets can then be viewed and analyzed interactively by the reader. ISP provides the software for authors to assemble and link their source data to their publication. But more important is that it provides readers with image viewing and analysis tools. The goal of ISP is to improve learning and understanding of the presented information. This paper describes ISP and its effect on learning and understanding. ISP was shown to have enough educational value that readers were willing to invest in the required set–up and learning phases. The social aspects of data sharing and the enlarged review process may be the hardest obstacles to overcome.

BUT WAIT, WE’VE HAVE MORE TO TELL YOU ABOUT!!!
At the bottom of the JEP table of contents (or here) you’ll also find access to the complete proceedings (slides and video) from the 2014 Books in Browsers (BiB) conference held in San Francisco last October. This was the fifth annual BiB, all of the superbly programmed by Peter Brantley from the New York Public Library.
The 2014 Keynote was presented by Internet Archive Founder, Brewster Kahl
There are A LOT of interesting projects, tools, concepts, and people that library community should know about discussed in the 27 presentation (and editors note) listed. Each entry includes an embed of presentation video and slides of of the  presentation.
Where to begin?
Here are three choices (of many) from the proceedings.

• Library Simplified
  by James English
  New York Public Library

NYPL and partner libraries across the country are testing innovative library policies and practices with funding from IMLS while adopting new technologies in order to create improved user experiences borrowing eBooks from Libraries.

• Project Gutenberg Books Are Real
  by Peter Richardson
  New York Public Library
  Although Project Gutenberg provides a good amount of RDF metadata for each of its publications, the metadata most necessary to grab a modern reader’s attention–a summary and a nice-looking cover–is almost always missing. Without putting restrictions on Project Gutenberg, which is extraordinarily successful at what it does, how can we present its results in a way that appeals to our patrons and customers.

• Making a Library a Digital One
  by Mitar Milutinovic
  PeerLibrary, UC Berkeley

Digital libraries today are in most cases just repositories. What is needed to make a library a really digital one and not bring just books but also communities online? What can we learn from other successful online communities and why is so hard to create a new online community reading books today, while it was relatively easy to create a reading club in the past? Based on this question I will offer few suggestions how publishers can help creating thriving online reading communities and how those communities can help publishers.

Direct to 2014 Book in Browsers Proceedings (via The Journal of Electronic Publishing)

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