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Sometimes when a public figure dies, you suddenly realize what a big part they played in your life and your personal or intellectual development. More than maybe a favored high-school teacher or beloved uncle, it was the literary critic Michaël Zeeman who always inspired my love for books. My parents had a subscription to the dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, for which he wrote, and the part I always read was the book section entitled Cicero. After a quick glimpse at the front page I always went straight on to Cicero, which, if I remember correctly, always appeared on Friday, so I mostly read it over the weekend. Later on I would snatch it from restaurants and bars where I used to work to read it during my break. Zeeman’s reviews were a kind of ‘filter’ for me, he was a trusted connoisseur who introduced writers and books to me, and more importantly, taught me which ones to read and which ones to discard. He was also the presenter of a famous Dutch television show called ‘Zeeman met boeken’ (Zeeman with books), but I can’t really remember watching that regularly, it was mostly his writings that compelled me.
Michaël Zeeman died yesterday of a brain tumor and after reading the numerous obituaries on the web I learned many things I never knew about him. Basically I found out I knew absolutely nothing about him, which I now feel is kind of strange. For one he used to work at De Tille, the bookshop in Leeuwarden (where I was born and where I grew up) and the only place we (being my family) ever bought books. So the chance is very big I might even have met him at one time or another…
That was of course long before I started reading his reviews and essays on literature, art, philosophy and what have you. The strange thing though is that over the years this trusted authority, who used to be my ‘old-medium-newspaper’ filter, kind of in the way radio used to be my music filter, has now been replaced by the manifold cultural reviewers, literary critics, bloggers and essayists of the online environment. Now my selection mechanism has broadened to an international conspiracy of old and new media experts, available with their views and opinions on demand at the touch of a single button. So it kind of felt, with the death of Zeeman, that part of me has disappeared too, also due to the fact that since a couple of years I rarely read print newspapers anymore.
But I will definitely miss him and his reviews and in a way I will regret never having to wait until Friday anymore to find out what to read…
The first publication of the OAPEN project has recently come to light, a collection of essays by Johan Huizinga entitled De hand van Huizinga, collected and with an introduction by Willem Otterspeer; the essays are in Dutch, via Amsterdam University Press, but will also be translated into several other languages via the other OAPEN partners, in French by Presses Universitaires de Lyon and in English by Manchester University Press.
Who would have known that the works of such a, as some characterize him, posh and studious historian, would be at the forefront of these kind of digital experiments? For as I wrote before, one of Huizinga’s other great works, Homo Ludens, was part of an AUP/Athenaeum Bookstore POD series which is doing very well in the Netherlands at the moment (strange thing being that I have been seeing these editions pop up everywhere now – makes you wonder whether a secret small print run hasn’t replaced the ‘handicraft’ disguise of the ‘genuine POD edition’). Next to that Huizinga’s works can also be found on the Project Gutenberg Website, amongst others The Waning of the Middle ages (in Dutch), his most famous work, and Erasmus and the Age of Reformation
Of course Huizinga’s international renownedness, the accessibility of his work, covering a wide range of topics, and the beautiful and playful character of his language will be appealing to both an academic public as well as a more broader public interested in general cultural topics and literature. These considerations must have been influential when it comes to the choice of such an author and scholar for these kinds of new projects; not only to give the projects themselves a little more flair and esteem, but foremost to revive interest in one of Holland’s most gifted scholarly writers.
On a more personal level I am also very proud and glad this selection of essays has been picked to be the first OAPEN publication, as I am originally a (cultural) historian by education and Huizinga has always been my favorite historical thinker – well to be honest it is a tie between him and Walter Benjamin, although the latter can’t technically be called a historian as he is such an inherent cross- and interdisciplinary thinker.
But Huizinga can’t be called an ‘ordinary’ historian either! His orations, books and essays cover a huge array of subjects and his style is –although of course a little outdated- very lively, fresh and passionate. I absolutely love the little review Carel Peeters wrote about the essay collection for the Dutch magazine Vrij Nederland. Here is an excerpt (my translation):
“Although he [Huizinga] developed from an esthete who believed art to be far superior to the natural sciences, into a moralistic cultural critic, Otterspeer sees the ‘larger unity’ of his work in the logical ‘metamorphoses’ he went through. Out of the philologist developed the historian, out of the historian came the cultural critic and from there developed the cultural-anthropologist. The connection between everything being the Burckhardtian idea that history is ‘poetry in its highest sense’. For Huizinga it eventually all comes down to literature.”
This excerpt is a direct reference to Otterspeer’s introduction to the essay collection, where Otterspeer furthermore states that ‘according to Huizinga language originated like poetry originated: from a lyrical merging of sensory impressions. Synesthesia was the cradle of language’ (my translation). Otterspeer’s introduction tries to give an insight in the development of both Huizinga’s character and his work and is a must-read if you are interested in Huizinga’s works and thoughts. You can read or download De hand van Huizinga here in Dutch or wait a little longer for the French and English translations.
At the moment I am busy researching Open Access Week 2009, which will be from October 19th until the 23rd. It will be an international event, which aims to:
“(…) broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public. The now-annual event has been expanded from a single day to accommodate widespread global interest in the movement toward open, public access to scholarly research results.”
Last years Open Access Day thus got expanded into a genuine week and now it seems the Dutch Libraries and Institutions of Higher Education are actually organizing stuff (last year was rather disappointing in this respect, where it was a big success in the US). It seems we have the efforts of SURF to thank for this, as they are at the moment aggregating information about the events that are being organized by the different organizations during Open Access week. SURF also issued the special promotional Open Access Year movie which I posted before here. Anyway, our library is organizing some nice Open Access get-togethers and promotional events, and as I was asked to do some brainstorming for them I came across some nice copyright movies made by non-professional organizations. And I can tell you, they are way better than most of the professional clips – maybe less informative (I hate the word ‘educational’) but certainly funnier (and less boring).
Ok, maybe rather corny, but I for instance do prefer the sock-puppet version of explaining authors copyrights to the ‘funny’ actor video. See for yourself underneath. (oh and thanks to www.canus.nl for directing me to the sock-puppet movie!). By the way, I love publishers and would never compare them to rats of course…
I found other nice user generated copyright movies on copyright through a contest hosted by the Center for the Study of Public Domain at Duke Law School, set up amongst others by James Boyle, the author of the great book The Public Domain, which is available as a free download. According to the website, the contest:
“(…) asked entrants to create short films demonstrating some of the tensions between art and intellectual property law, and the intellectual property issues artists face, focusing on either music or documentary film.”
I especially liked the People’s Favorite Stealing Home, by Terry Tucker and Andrew Fazekas, which you can see here. You can find the other winners here.
Stay tuned for future info on the 2009 Open Access weeks events!
Kevin Kelly reports on his blog about an experimental book publishing model. In this model you first sell a required amount of (hard cover) books (in this specific case 200), enough to cover for the costs of the print run, after which the book is made available online for free as a downloadable PDF. Actually this is just a variant of the delayed Open Access model, in which after a certain embargo time the books or journals are made Open Access. What I like however about the example Kelly mentions of the New Liberal Arts book, a Snarkmarket/Revelator Press collaboration, is how they combine this delayed Open Access model with a community support or maecenas model. Stressing the importance of patronage they state on their website:
“We’ll post a PDF online, free for everyone—but only after we sell this run of 200 real, physical objects. So think of it this way: You’re not just buying a thought-provoking, take-it-to-the-coffee-shop book for yourself. You’re buying access for everybody. You’re a patron of the new liberal arts!”
Of course, as Kelly also says, you need an audience big enough to be able to offer both a print run and on online edition. And here’s where word of mouth marketing comes in handy. And it definitely worked in this case where the print edition sold out in less than eight hours, as the website again states:
“New Liberal Arts, a Snarkmarket/Revelator Press collaboration, is the beginning of an attempt to describe topics, disciplines, and methods of inquiry essential to any 21st century education. Ranging from “attention economics” to “video literacy,” New Liberal Arts is a glimpse into the course catalog of an idiosyncratic new school—a liberal arts college 2.0 New Liberal Arts went on sale on July 7 in a limited edition of 200 copies at Snarkmarket. The initial print run sold out in less than 8 hours.”
Revelator press, which publishes e-chapbooks for the masses, maintains another business model, where they put their books online for free, hoping they will gather enough response and attention to be able to sell print editions. Probably a saver model to use where there is a lack of an audience from the start, and even a small print run of 200 copies can already be a huge financial failure. Maybe POD, as its quality is improving enormously at the moment, could offer some more possibilities for similar presses. Revelator Press has an excellent Q& A section where they explain their choice for a free model. I love it so I have added it underneath. Also be sure to take a look at there beautiful designed e-chapbooks consisting of poetry, drama and short stories. I for example loved this one: Nine Poems by Gavin Graig.
Q: What is Revelator?
A: e-chapbooks for the masses.
Q: What the hell does that mean?
A: I’ll level with you. We know some people. These people write. Good stuff. It’s really hard to get things published (yeah, I know, cry me a river), so we’re going to put some of this stuff out there. Free.
Q: Free?
A: Sure, the first one is always free.
Q: What’s the catch?
A: No catch. We’re betting that you’ll like it, and you’ll come back to read more.
Q: So this is like one of those record club things, where you’ll start mailing me stuff I don’t want, and charge me if I don’t return it?
A: Nope. We’re not in it for the money. We want to get people talking, and maybe if enough people get talking, or the right people in the right places, then maybe you’ll see some of these people in Poetry, or The New Yorker, or on the new release table in your local bookstore. You can buy stuff then.
Q: Real publication? You think these people are that good?
A: Who am I, Harold Bloom? These people are good writers. Read them. Tell them what you like and don’t like.
Q: Tell them? This thing is interactive?
A: This is a blog, isn’t it? Join the 21st century.
Q: How do I keep up?
A: Subscribe to our rss feed (http://revelatorpress.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default). You can keep an eye on the discussion there, and we’ll post original work, in PDF form, every four to six weeks or so.
Q: Anything else?
A: Yeah. Tell your friends.
This month it’s again time for the World Ebook fair! The fourth annual World Ebook Fair, this year from 7/04/09 to 8/04/09 will offer Open Access to their sponsors ebook collections consisting of more than 2 million books. During this month these ebooks will be online available for free (otherwise a membership of $8.95 per year to the World Public Library will get you free access to more than half a million ebooks). Aggregating content from amongst others Project Gutenberg, the World Public Library and the Internet Archive, the World Ebook Fair sets as its goal ‘to provide Free public access for a month to 2 Million eBooks.’ Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg (the first and largest single collection of free electronic books) and the inventor of ebooks way back in 1971, states on the project website: ‘Today There Are 2 Million Free Electronic Books On The Internet. Download Your Selections From 2 Million eBooks for the Month of July’. And they are adding more than a 1000 ebooks every day.
The fair is already a big success. As Book Publishing News states:
“The first day of the Fair saw over 1 million downloads, including popular titles such as Jane Austen’s “Emma,” Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women,” and Joseph Conrad’s “Nostromo.”
New high speed Internet connections and Web servers are in place to handle the vast reponse expected from the public, seeking free access to much of the world’s great literature. This year, many readers will use their iPhones, Sony Readers, Kindles, MP3 players and a host of other devices, in addition to desktop and notebook computers.”
So with almost four more weeks to go, get your share whilst you can. There is an advanced search option for language, title, author etc. and you can also browse the collections. Once in the search mode you can also select different categories (literature, philosophy, poetry etc.). The books are mostly PDF’s and don’t have the nicest lay outs but hey, their free! You can also find many mp3 audio files (which is of course very nice, you can listen to your favorite book on your iPod!).
With a quick search I found Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico−Philosophicus, Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo and some Dutch literature classics, Multatuli’s Max Havelaar, Lodewijk van Deyssel’s Een liefde and Jacob van Lennep’s Ferdinand Huyck (with illustrations!). And there is much much more. What a resource… I absolutely love ebooks!
Another thing I would like to draw your attention to is an excellent speech given by Michael Jensen at the Association of American University Presses’ (AAUP) annual meeting last June. Michael Jensen is the Director of Strategic Web Communications at the National Academies Press, one of the oldest Open Access publishers. As Wikipedia states: ‘The National Academy Press (as it was known in 1993) was the first self-sustaining publisher to make its material available on the Web, for free, in an open access model’. Jensen combined in his plenary presentation the urge for an Open Access business model with the need for environmental changes in publishing. I met Michael Jensen last June as part of the external stakeholder group meeting of the OAPEN project, for which I am doing research, and found him a very passionate Open Access believer though at the same time a very pragmatic person, where he stated, amongst others, that our project should not try to solve all the problems facing Open Access at once but should rather focus on its main goal, on what it set out to achieve in the beginning and work from there. And this shows in my opinion how Jensen is at the same time a man who is not afraid to be both a practical problem solving guy as well as a man who reflects on broad strategic future visions, as set out for instance in his AAUP presentation. The Open Access movement should be proud to have him on its side. I also like the way he says in his presentation that he is not an Open Access zealot but a firm believer in Open Access as the only sustainable publishing model for academic publishing in the years to come:
“I believe that we must shift our business models — publicly, transparently, intentionally, thoughtfully, but radically — to a digital one, with open access as the backbone of scholarly publishing. We must do this to survive a tremendously turbulent next decade, and to ensure that our mission, and its survival, continues to be fulfilled.”
His plea goes out to a model in which print is no longer the main course but rather a side-product of publishing, reducing the environmental strain that comes with the physical dissemination of books and journals:
“Scholarly publishing is a vital part of a larger scholarly communications system, and must be preserved. University Presses also recognize that we have a societal responsibility. We recognize that the lifecycle energy and CO2 costs of printing, shipping, storing, and distributing physical books must be radically curtailed. […]Scholarly publishing’s role in the world must be de-linked from print publication. The print book must become the exception, not the rule, as soon as possible.”
Underneath you will find his speech as given. You can find the full text here. Underneath the You Tube movies you can find some more inspiring lines from Jensen’s speech.
“To retain the qualities of scholarly communication, we’ll radically shift, if you’ll step up to the plate.
Does that mean giving up some control? Yes.
Does that mean collaborating more? Yes.
Does that mean innovating our way out of a failed system? Yes.
Does that mean embracing various forms of open access in exchange for institutional support? Yes.
Does that mean rethinking the economics, and the cost recovery systems, and the sustainability models of scholarly publishing, based on a collapsing physical world? Yes.
Within the context of a world in crisis, we *must* demonstrate that we’re radically rethinking our relationship to the future. We must demonstrate that we are part of the solution, not part of the problem. We must seize initiative now, and start making changes as fast as we can.
Open access + digital publishing will help get us to a sustainable world, and keep us in the mix.”
Some small stuff from around the world or the web or the world that is the web that deserves some attention here in this and future posts to be. First of all the oldest bible (ok maybe no small stuff), the Codex Sinaiticus, has been digitized and has concurrently been made accessible online. As the project website states ‘Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament’. I attended a lecture by David Parker, one of the project members, last year as part of a symposium on Text comparison and digital creativity, at which Parker presented the project as it was enfolding and discussed the difficulties and challenges the online presentation of a document that has been scattered around different institutions, presents, making it truly a ‘virtual’ Codex Sinaiticus. Collected once more into one online object, now you can actually browse through the quires and folio’s of the manuscript and zoom into details that fancy your interest. And you can even adjust the lighting and surely do many more interesting things that I have not as of yet explored.
The goals of the project revolved around the historical research, conservation, digitization, transcription and dissemination of the manuscript. The study of the production of Codex Sinaiticus has proved invaluable for the study of book or manuscript history and production. The history of Codex Sinaiticus has also been very important for the development of the idea and the creation of the concept we nowadays refer to as ‘bible’ as a collection of canonical books:
‘The ability to place these ‘canonical books’ in a single codex itself influenced the way Christians thought about their books, and this is directly dependent upon the technological advances seen in Codex Sinaiticus. The quality of its parchment and the advanced binding structure that would have been needed to support over 730 large-format leaves, which make Codex Sinaiticus such an outstanding example of book manufacture, also made possible the concept of a ‘Bible’. The careful planning, skilful writing and editorial control needed for such an ambitious project gives us an invaluable insight into early Christian book production.’
The presentation of the manuscript on the website is marvelous. And what a chance to brush up your Ancient Greek! You can check it out for yourself here.
The story around Free continues (talking about a nice marketing strategy). A review from Malcolm Gladwell (yes, the Blink and Tipping Point guy) in The New Yorker elicited a response from Anderson on his blog, causing another Internet aficionado, Seth Godin, to again take sides (Anderson’s side that is). Seems like a dinosaur fight (though very gentlemanlike of course). Gladwell’s argument revolves around the notion that the money, or better said, the payment for services provided, has to come from and end up somewhere. As Gladwell states: ‘It would be nice to know, as well, just how a business goes about reorganizing itself around getting people to work for “non-monetary rewards.”’ He thus states that ‘free is just another price’ and information can’t actually want to be free, as it can’t really ‘want’ anything; the actors in the system want it to be free in order to make some money around free (‘free represents an enormous business opportunity’). Next to that Gladwell argues that whereas the costs of the digital product might be nearing zero, the costs to produce the product or content still make up a large amount of the price, as John Naughton also elaborates on in his review in The Observer.
Anderson responds by stating that the circular reasoning of which Gladwell accuses him does no longer pertain in a gift economy in which content is truly being produced without the aim of creating money. The circle ends when it concerns money and expands into the realm of the nonmonetary. In Andersons words: ‘Somewhere down the chain, the incentives go from monetary to nonmonetary (attention, reputation, expression, etc).’ Godin takes this argument even further stating that ‘In a world of free, everyone can play’, meaning that in an abundance and attention economy as the world wide web is, many people are willing to write for free. This does not mean everybody will write for free and no one will pay for online content anymore.
As Drake Bennett writes in his review for The Boston Globe, this idea of a minority of fee-payers for the deluxe services in a freemium model, is one Anderson sees as highly probable. From the review: ‘The advantage of freemium, Anderson argues, is that in a digital world, the cost of widely disseminating the free stuff is low enough that you don’t actually need that large a percentage of premium clients to make it work. Indeed, in general, Anderson sees the mind-boggling scale of the Internet as central to its ability to sustain free institutions, especially totally free ones like Wikipedia, which survives on the altruistic efforts of a minuscule proportion of its planet-wide set of users.’ Selection might also become more valuable in an attention economy, becoming another basis of potential revenue, picking the pearls from the heaps of free. As Godin writes: ‘The reason that we needed paid contributors before was that there was only economic room for a few magazines, a few TV channels, a few pottery stores, a few of everything. In world where there is room for anyone to present their work, anyone will present their work. Editors become ever more powerful and valued, while the need for attention grows so acute that free may even be considered expensive.’
Meanwhile, Chris Anderson had been busy thinking about ways to offer Free for free, whilst of course creating the necessary viral buzz around that at the same time. Latest news is the free availability of the MP3 audio book download, either as a free download via Wired or via the online radio community Spotify. Next to that Anderson thought of an elaborate scheme to offer not only the e-book as a free download but also to distribute free paper-back and price-reduced hard-back copies via Random House and BrandRepublic.com, sponsored by Adobe. Although a little UK centered, I am already very glad with my audio download and will await the e-book. I will keep you posted when it goes live.
And here it is, from Scribd. Not sure if I can lawfully embed this though, since it has a traditional copyright notice (why no CC license Chris?). But hey, then don’t offer the embed option I would say 
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