Academic Print in Digital Formats

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• Academic Print in Digital Formats
• Bruce Ingraham
• University of Teesside

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Introduction

• There is prima facie case for a digital future
  for academic print
• but it is problematic.
• The role of Learning Technologists
• What is Digital Academic Print?

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Digital Academic Print

• Complex subject
• academic journals and reference books
• Print on demand (PoD)
• e-Print/open archiving initiatives
• The potential of academic eBooks (textbooks,
  monographs and primary sources).
• Digital Academic Print gt eBook

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What is an eBook?

• Electronic books (eBooks) can be understood to
  be software objects that serve essentially the
  same purpose as a conventional printed book.
  They may derive from pre-existing printed books
  or originate as electronic text and may also
  share some of the look and feel of a printed book.

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What is an eBook?

• The design metaphor
• Codex
• Scroll
• Not website
• Quality Assurance
• Peer Assessment
• Not Hardware

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Why use eBooks?

• Positive Reasons
• Negative Pressures
• Obstacles

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Positive Reasons

• For reading
• Accessibility
• Flexibility
• Annotation/Quotation/Citation
• Production Cost
• Weight
• For publishing
• Hypertext
• Facilitate Publication
• Restore academic publishing to its original
  purposes
• Restore academic publishing to the control of
  academics

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Negative Pressures

• Economic pressures
• The death of the monograph
• A need for new economic models
• For journals
• For monographs

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Obstacles

• Lack of Familiarity
• Lack of well-designed eText
• Reading an armchair or desk-based activity
• Availability
• Readability
• The publishers response
• i.e. preserving the codex

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Role of Learning Technologists

• To overcome obstacles make familiar
• Demonstrate availability
• Electronic Editions
• To buy with librarians
• To create with academics
• Insure Readability
• Of all learning and teaching eText
• For online assessment

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Conclusion

• Learning Technologists have a role to play in
  ensuring that all the texts in use in education
  by students, by staff, by publishers are
  comfortably usable on screens desk top, laptop,
  palm top and elsewhere if education is to
  maximise the potential of digitally mediated
  scholarly print.

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Questions for Discussion

• What electronically disseminated text do you use?
• Which do you read on screen?
• Which do you print off?
• Why?
• How do you see digital print evolving?