Deconstructing the Author Photo

Let's be honest. Writers used to be a homely lot and most of them still are. The general unattractiveness that spurs them to write in the first place (versus, say, leaving the house) is compounded by a characteristic, bloodshot squint earned through hours of deciphering Canada Council grant applications and the night before's Molson marinade, downed to obliterate the rejection-letter blues. Lighting and soft lenses can only hide so much. Yet publishers insist on including the author's photo on the book jacket, their unsightly portraits like roadside accidents from which you can't turn away. Trolls belong under the bridge, not on the bridge's architectural brochure.

Boucher, Lorie. Writer's Block (2002). Articles>Publishing>Marketing

The Deep Niche  

The deep niche--the rolling 'interest tribe' comprised of that day's enthusiastic, new audience--is something that publishers must acknowledge, and accommodate in our business plans, if we are to sustain ourselves. The Web is not merely a threat to publishers--it can also be the means to connect to the people we most want to reach: the interested reader.

Jensen, Michael. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2007). Articles>Publishing>Research>Online

Design, Technology, and Collaboration: A Case Study in Internet Publishing  

This case study presents the process and procedures involved in migrating print documents (technical documentation, newsletters, brochures, white papers, etc.) to the Internet. Included is a discussion of how print prototypes were developed, the online 'translation' of information structures ,as well as the selection and training of the business unit’s web team, and the role of the project leader. Issues like 'designing for maintenance,' management support, and technological benefits and constraints are highlighted.

Eiler, Mary Ann. STC Proceedings (2001). Articles>Publishing>Online

Designing an Effective Review Process  

Review processes can easily become frustrating and complicated. Hart shows how to create and revive a review process that can be tailored to the needs of your situation.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2006). Articles>Publishing>Editing>Workflow

Designing Information for the 21st Century  

In the past, documentation meant printed books. Then along came online help. Online books soon followed. Now we have the Internet and web pages. Developing a documentation plan today means more than planning how books are going to be structured, reviewed, and printed. It needs to take into account the possibilities that these new media have to offer. Achieve the most effective results by making delivery in these media part of your documentation planning.

Radecki, Steven Lewis. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

Digital Facsimiles on CD-ROM: A Potential Solution to the Interlibrary Loan of Rare Books  

Despite the approval, nearly ten years ago, of the ACRL Guidelines for the Loan of Rare Materials, few special collections departments regularly loan materials to other universities. For the researcher, obtaining rare books and manuscripts (or copies of the same) via interlibrary loan continues to be difficult if not impossible. The last ten years have shown a phenomenal growth in the production and marketing of digital facsimiles of rare books. This article examines research on digital facsimile CD-ROM collection patterns and presents the results of a survey on interlibrary loan lending practices in an effort to understand the impact that CD-ROMs may have on interlibrary loan and access to rare materials.

Visser, Michelle. Journal of Interlibrary Loan (2004). Articles>Information Design>Publishing

Digital Libraries and the Need for a Universal Digital Publication Format  

Reports have revealed low uses of e-books and other lengthy texts held in digital libraries. In this article we claim that one of the main reasons for the lack of interest is the current multitude of end-user text formats, some oriented towards print, others proprietary, and few optimized for sustained reading of text-intensive publications. We note IDPF's reluctance to develop a common digital publication format, discuss requirements for a universal, open-standard end-user format, and present the effort to establish such a format by the OpenReader Consortium. The main objective of the article is to examine the pros and cons of a universal, reader-oriented text format for different types of critical text editions and digital libraries.

Hillesund, Terje and Jon E. Noring. Journal of Electronic Publishing (2006). Articles>Publishing>Standards>Online

Digital Libraries, Knowledge Networks, and Human-Centered Information Systems

One of the most dramatic changes in the ongoing information revolution is the rapid convergence of computing, communications and content industries. Digital content, especially in the form of large, distributed, heterogeneous collections of electronic objects - text, voice, images, graphics, video, and others - is fueling the growth of the computing and communications in each other. This paper discusses the role of digital libraries, and knowledge networks in general, in this process, in the context of human-centered information systems.

Chien, Y.T. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online>User Centered Design

Digital Object Identifiers for Scientific Data    

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a system for identifying content objects in the digital environment. DOIs are names assigned to any entity for use on Internet digital networks. Scientific data sets may be identified by DOIs, and several efforts are now underway in this area. This paper outlines the underlying architecture of the DOI system, and two such efforts which are applying DOIs to content objects of scientific data.

Paskin, Norman. Data Science Journal (2005). Articles>Publishing>Standards>Online

Digital Plagiarism: The Role of Society and Technology

Examines the application of the World Wide Web in class education and research and the ways in which the Internet has enabled cheating and given educators ways to fight plagiarism.

Kennedy, Ryan. Orange Journal, The (2005). Articles>Publishing>Ethics>Plagiarism

Digital Print Production and Distribution  

A presentation about aspects of digital prepress every technical communicator should know.

Flaman, Tim and John Givens. STC Region 7 Proceedings (2002). Articles>Publishing>Prepress

Directions for Online Publishing

Online publishing of newspapers, magazines, and books is really a meaningless concept. We have to leave the legacy publications behind as we invent the world of online publishing.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1995). Articles>Publishing>Online>Web Design

Dissemination of Japanese Academic Journals over the Internet

NACSIS started an Internet-based document delivery service called NACSIS-ELS in April 1997. As of September 1997, 25 Japanese academic societies are participating in this service and 48 scientific journal pages will be captured and made available on NACSIS-ELS. The history for the development of NACSIS-ELS is described and the copyright charging strategy is discussed for two models, i.e., an individual user model and an institutional use model. Other issues related to electronic journals are also mentioned such as security protection measures, academic society activities over the Internet, and the issues for the establishment of globally distributed digital libraries.

Adachi, Jun. ISRDP in Digital Libraries (1997). Articles>Publishing>Online

Distortion and the Politics of Pain Relief: A Habermasian Analysis of Medicine in the Media    

This article invokes Habermas's ideal speech situation to analyze the controversy surrounding a recent study of pain relief for women in labor. Using Habermas's concepts, the authors argue that distortion of scientific and medical information originated in the New England Journal of Medicine article that first reported the study's results. Thus, their analysis aims to complicate the assumption that such distortion starts only with public reporting and to expose the ways that scientific or medical research from the beginning can be reported to either facilitate or preclude public debate and understanding of complex issues.

Koerber, Amy, E. Jonathan Arnett and Tamra Cumbie. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Publishing>Biomedical>Ethics

Down By Law

A library's core mission is to provide free and full access to a world of ideas. The most exciting thing to happen in libraries in the last decade has been to see that mission extended to include access to the Internet. New library services, funded by generous federal support, have made more Internet access available to more and more people. Now, those same sources may force public libraries to censor Internet access.

Bickner, Carrie. List Apart, A (2001). Articles>Publishing>Online

E-Books

E-books are a cost-saving technology for students. Imagine while reading your expensive paper textbook that it suddenly displayed a video that taught you the technique you just read about. Imagine searching through your textbook with the click of a button. Imagine your textbook costing about half of what you used to pay. That’s right—you didn’t read the last line wrong. It was half the amount you used to pay. Imagine all this and more, with e-books. E-books have many advantages over paper textbooks. The best advantage for students would have to be the cost. E-books are sold at very low prices because the whole printing process is out of the picture. This saves money for the publishers and in turn saves money for students.

Nelson, Daniel. Techniques (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

E-Books: Are We Going Paperless?

Will electronic books (e-books) change the experience of reading? Will students soon carry a mobile device in their backpacks instead of a ton of textbooks? Some major university projects at the University of Michigan and at Columbia have already created and distributed electronic versions of textbooks (Epstein, 1999). In addition, Microsoft joined publishing firms and electronic manufacturers to set open technical standards for the electronic book format (Wired News, 1999). So what advantages do e-books offer? Some advantages include convenience and reduced storage space. Anywhere from 10 to 250 textbooks or novels can be held on the device, depending on the e-book model, so you can have a portion of your library with you. In addition, users can annotate, highlight, bookmark, and publish their own content on the e-book. By removing the need for paper, the cost of books should decrease and also decrease environmental damage. Another advantage of the e-book is accessibility. Those with visual impairments can increase the font size to improve readability.

Selvidge, Paula and C. Phillips. Usability News (2000). Articles>Usability>Publishing>eBooks

E-Books: It's About Evolution, Not Revolution

This article is a general update about the state of the art and business of e-books. With the dampening of some of the dot.com hype the e-book picture is actually becoming more sensible. There is still a lot of change happening and no one knows where we might end up, but some solid work is being done both on the technology and on the business side. What isn't quite happening yet, and what I look forward to, is a re-definition of "book" to include things that didn't really fit into the hard copy world, such as the publication of individual essays (of any length), stories, poems, novellas, etc., and even possibly a return to serialized works. Put your thinking caps on, folks, there are great possibilities!

Coyle, Karen. Library Journal (2003). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

E-Journal Subscription Consortia    

The advent of e-publishing has brought a revolution in journal publication, subscription, access, and delivery. Print journals' publishing costs include high article processing costs, and high production and marketing costs. E-journal production and access costs are increasing due to the rising cost of infrastructure, customer support, IT savvy human resources, etc. While these costs form the base, other pricing factors include the number of nodes, multiple campuses, an access mode, training, perpetual access, etc. Dwindling library budgets and the growing number of journals force libraries to form consortia for accessing e-journals. The old concept of 'consortium' is a strategic alliance of institutions having common interests.

B.A., Rajeev and Jayaprakash S. International Journal for Technical Communication (2007). Articles>Publishing>Collaboration

The eBook Advantage: Writing and Publishing Electronic Books  

Hall, the author of three eBooks, explains how technical writers can earn extra income by writing and publishing their own electronic books.

Hall, Ceil W. Intercom (2002). Articles>Publishing>Online>eBooks

eBook Italia Dossier: Il Libro Elettronico e L'editoria Digitale Umanistica in Italia

Il primo dossier italiano sul libro elettronico, annualmente aggiornato (versione 3, 1 settembre 2003). In parallelo, eBook Italia Forum, convegno virtuale sull'editoria elettronica, in collaborazione con 365 Giorni in Fiera (Fiera Internazionale del Libro di Torino).

Reale, Luigi M. Italianistica Online (2001). (Italian) Articles>Publishing>eBooks>Italy

The ebXML Messaging Service

The ebXML Messaging Service specification (ebMS) extends the SOAP specification to provide the security and reliability features required by many production enterprise and e-business applications.

van der Eijk, Pim. XML.com (2003). Articles>Publishing>XML>SOAP

Economics of Scientific and Biomedical Journals: Where Do Scholars Stand in the Debate of Online Journal Pricing and Site License Ownership Between Libraries and Publishers?  

The emergence of e–journals brought a great change in scholarly communication and in the behavior of scholars. However, the importance of scholars’ behavior in the pricing of scientific journal has been largely ignored in the recent debate between libraries and publishers over site license practices and pricing schemes. Stanford’s survey results indicate that sharply increasing costs are the main reason for individual subscription cancellation, driving users to rely on library or other institutional subscriptions. Libraries continue to be a vital information provider in the electronic era and their bargaining power in the market and the importance of roles in scholarly communication will be increased by branding and a strong relationship with users. Publishers’ strategy for thriving in the electronic era is not to lose personal subscribers. Cooperation among the three sectors — scholars, libraries, and publishers — promises optimal results for each sector more than ever.

Jeon-Slaughter, Haekyung, Andrew C. Herkovic and Michael A. Keller. First Monday (2005). Articles>Publishing>Intellectual Property

The Effect of Changes in Publishing Technologies on Labor and Documentation

Online publishing technologies is an ever-changing, morphing animal that cannot necessarily be predicted, but perhaps we can work to harness it. As publishing technologies change, so too will the style in which the readability of those documents change as they are shaped and designed to meet new formulas and needs. Likewise, as the readability and accessibility of documents change, so too must the interaction and intervention of the technical communicator change to ensure readable, articulate, navigable documentation, as well as preserve an author-reader relationship and also to preserve the role of the technical communicator.

Comstock, Jeanie. Orange Journal, The (2004). Articles>TC>Publishing>History