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

The XML Book Business

After spending a week of toil and labor in the Semantic Web mines, I've returned to the surface, to the sweetness and light of the XML developer community. And what do I find but a crisis about the XML part of the technical book publishing industry, as well as a monster thread about character entity names.

Clark, Kendall Grant. XML.com (2003). Articles>Publishing>Information Design>XML

What Do Movable Type and XML Have in Common?    

Compares Gutenberg's invention of the movable type to the creation of XML. But where movable type changed the “economics of a mechanical process,” XML changed the “economics of content authoring, formatting, and customization.”

O'Keefe, Sarah S. Intercom (2008). Articles>Information Design>Publishing>XML

Information Overload

Almost 2 million book titles were published in the US alone, compared to more than the 1.3 million books published in the preceding 100 years. This change in the amount of information available for consumption is starting to change the way people read. How do we address the problem of information overload? Through good writing, and good information architecture.

Self, Tony. HyperWrite (2001). Articles>Information Design>User Centered Design>Publishing