I'm currently reading The Case for Books (2009) by Robert Darnton, University Librarian at Harvard. Darnton is also a distinguished historian, with expertise in the history of books. This volume collects 11 of his essays. I had set aside today to finish the introduction for my own book, but am finding Darnton's perspective so valuable that instead I'm plowing through his text and making copious notes.
Although Darnton loves and values printed books, he is also aware of and appreciative of the possibilities of e-scholarship. He's published many books of history, which follow the linear format of one chapter after another. But he would like to write an ebook arranged like a pyramid, with a concise description of the book's argument at the beginning and hyperlinks that readers can follow to dive deeper into any topic of interest. Digitally we don't need a beginning and ending, because there are no artificial page constraints as with printing. But even though we no longer need start and end points online, do we want them anyway because this is how our minds work?
Perhaps so. Or perhaps we like printed books because so many other parts of the academy depend on them. In 1997-1998, as the president of the American Historical Association, Darnton conceived an experiment in electronic publishing that helped better define these questions. In The Case for Books he reports back.
"Gutenberg-e" incentivized budding historians to publish their PhD dissertations online as ebooks. No need to query university presses, which can only produce so many print books a year; no need to confine one's mode of presentation to the rules of print. The project had several aims: to legitimize electronic publishing in history; to develop and test models for electronic publishing; to offer access to scholarly works in fields of history that were not profitable for the presses; and to give young scholars a new way to enter the conversation.
As Darnton humbly and candidly admits, Gutenberg-e attempted to solve too many problems at once. He saw all the interlocking pieces of this puzzle--the technological opportunity; the need for new distribution channels for scholars; the dire economics of the presses. So he attemped to cut through the Gordion knot by incentivizing a behavior change that would positively impact all the spokes in this wheel.
It was more than one project could achieve. The young scholars it aimed to help were simultaneously moving for work and starting their families, without the bandwidth to also reinvent the scholarly monograph. Their elders advised against doing so anyway, as an e-book might not impress the tenure committee. Despite those barriers, many ebooks emerged that are still accessible online.
Although Gutenberg-e did not achieve its stated aims, was it a failure? Absolutely not. Somebody always has to tiptoe into the water while everyone else stays safely on shore. Those brave souls are always worthy of admiration. Whatever we take for granted now--like printed books--was a scary idea once upon a time.
The lesson for me from Gutenberg-e: know all the interlocking parts of the complex challenge you are trying to solve. But only try to improve one part at a time, letting the ripple effects happen organically rather than in some pre-determined way you can't control anyway. It's always tempting to devise a total solution when you understand the total problem. But the likelihood then is of greater and sometimes overwhelming resistance, because you're challenging too many parts of a system at once. Think big but act small, and never give up.
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