Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President,

“Where are we?  Where are we going?  A survey of the electronic publishing landscape” SSP

November, 2007

1. About us

2. Aggregation and discovery

3. Adding value

4. Web 2.0

Overview

About us

• Founded in July 2000• Scholarly, electronic publisher in the Humanities• Based in Alexandria, Virginia• 70 employees• 1000+ licensing partners, including Warner Bros.,

Penguin Putnam, Faber & Faber, Macmillan, University Presses, etc…

• Special collection partners include AAS, Library of Congress, NYPL, Wisconsin State Historical Society, South Hadley Historical Society, and many more.

• Sell to libraries around the world

About Alexander Street Press

The Portfolio

Performing Arts, Drama, and Film

World Literature

Women’s History

Religion

PsychotherapyMusic

Social and Cultural History

Sociology

Black Studies

American Civil War

To craft electronic products of exceptional utility and quality,

using the skills of librarianship

and traditional publishing

“To give voice to those who would otherwise be silent”

Our Mission

• Surrendering control• Loss of proprietary gateways to content• Expensive, new technologies• Most content not created by publishers• Large new players with enormous network advantages• Mission statements that are the same as publishers/librarians

Aggregation and Discovery

What stage is the web at?

1913

1985 1995

1931 1954

2018

?

Car in 1904

• ‘Quadricycles’, ‘Phaetons’, ‘Horseless Carriages’, ‘Autocars’, ‘Motor cars’ ?

• Horsepower to weight ratio - Electric, Hydrogen or Gasoline ?• Materials – Wood, Steel, or combination ?• Production line – Custom or mass produced ? • Starting Systems – Manual or electric ?• Legal – UK law restricting speed to 5 mph• Education – Would population be able to master the machines ?• Costs – Typically in excess of $2,000

(Source: Various Articles in The Living Age, 1904)

Car in 1920

• Motor cars• Horsepower to weight ratio - Gasoline and clearly going to

improve in future• Materials – Steel• Production line – Mass produced• Starting Systems – Electric • Legal– Building of highways• Education – No longer an issue• Costs – Model T cost $400

Electronic Journals vs. books…Electronic Journals

Books E-Books

Cost/item/person > 0.002 ¢ > $20 -

Size Unlimited 100-1000 Pages

-

Accessibility Site Person at a time

(+)

Organization Integrated Isolated (+)

Searchability 20 entry points 2 entry points (+)

Division Atomic + Linear Linear -

Currency Daily updates > Quarterly -

Delivery speed Instant > Day ? Instant

Interaction ? None -

Process integration

? None -

Portals make most use of the medium...

Electronic Journals Portals

Cost/item/person 0.002 ¢ Free

Size Unlimited Unlimited

Accessibility Site Universal

Organization Integrated Integrated

Searchability 20 entry points Multiple entry points

Division Atomic + Linear Atomic

Currency Daily updates Daily updates

Delivery speed Instant Instant

Interaction ? Multiple

Process integration

? Multiple

Value in the electronic world is about...

Understanding electronic products

“The manner in which or the efficiency with which something reacts or fulfills its intended purpose”

Webster’s Unabridged

Aggregation and Discovery

Remixability

•No one site will contain all information

•Effective publication is a function of delivering the right content, in the right way to the right people.

•To do this we will need high quality access to content across different publishers, libraries and websites.

Discoverability – Aggregation – Value added

Nature of electronic publications

• Atomic• Interconnected • Interdependent• Connection vs. the object

• Pliable• Constantly evolving• Without place • Practically unlimited in size

Page Page Page

Page

Page Page Page

Page Page

It’s about the links…

•Links document intellectual pathways through data

•Indexing links adds value substantially

•Links

• Prevent duplication of indexing, content and commentary

• Links are expensive to create and maintain

• Versioning is critical to scholarship.

• Some links confer authority

• ‘Links are intrinsically bidirectional’ (Ted Nelson)

Option A: Link to resource

- Low cost- Lower utility- Changing URLs

prevents access.

Loss of control issues

Option B: License resource

- High cost (royalties)- Loading cost- High functionality- Permanence in

collection

“We won’t license…it’s on our site already and we don’t want to lose the usage…”

Integration is unavoidable

Loosely Held Tightly Held

Free Websites

Loosely integrated

Tightlyintegrated

Refuse to License

License widely

License widelyand be a Licensor

Building the network…

Unhelpful

•Legal warnings not to link

•Changing links constantly

•Disabling links

•No permanent URLs

•No crawling

•Randomly changing URLs

•Insisting on one interface and one access point

•Unattached pages

Helpful

•Citations visible to the outside world

•Permanent URLs

•RSS feeds

•OpenURL

•Design for multiple interfaces

•Open to crawling

•Published APIs

•Welcome linking

•Ask others to do the same

No silos!

Search via ASP interface

Search via library catalog(direct or federated)

OpenURL links

directly to ASP

content

OpenURL links

directly toother

databasesSearch the web

Search the library catalog

e.g. RILM,Grove Music

Online

Result of an external search

Unlock the value…

Books

Search Tool

Discipline Tool

Personal Work Bench

Music

Newspapers

Films

Images

Grant’s Memoirs

Place:Alexandria,

Virginia

www.inthefirstperson.com

• Free index to first-person narratives

• The most comprehensive archive of social history yet created

• Perform in-depth field and keyword searches across scholarly materials that are freely available on the Web

• Also indexes for fee letters, diaries, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies within Alexander Street Press databases

• Access thousands of personal narratives from the English-speaking world, in a single search

OPAC or Google

Students of the Sixties

Hogan Jazz Archive

Free: Public Web collections, semantically indexed by Alexander

Street($) Alexander Street collections

containing first-person materials

Free: Materials submitted by the user community

www.inthefirstperson.com

Context and selection

Search Power

Organized Results

Adding value

• Not just reproducing paper…

• Electronic versions are often deliberately changed to improve performance

• Reduced color and clarity for faster display

• Change size for improved screen display

• Transcriptions for increased searchability

• Citations for improved searching

• Mark-up interspersed with text itself

• The connection is more important than the object

Electronic publishing…

Digital Surrogates…

Black & White

Grayscale

24 bit color

48 bit color

100 dpi

600 dpi

JPG

TIFF

Citation

MARC Record

Dirty OCR

99.995% rekeying

Semantic Indexing

Thumbnails

100 dpi

Page

Collection

Letter

Facsimiles

Transcriptions

EAD Finding Aid

Repository

Mobile Web

TCP-IP

Printed Reference:Xitztum JL, Galinski W: Are microbiological mechanismsrelevant for the development of atherosclerosis?Clin Immunol 90 153-156, 1999

Example 1:<reference_data id=“r0173159” rnum=“159”>Xitztum JL, Galinski W: Are microbiological mechanisms relevantfor the development of atherosclerosis?<emph type=“ital”> Clin Immunol </emph><emph type=“bold”> 90 </emph>:153&ndash;156, 1999</refdata>

Example 2:<artref id=“i0012” anum=“159”><authors><author><surname>Xitztum</surname><finitials> JL</finitials></auther><author><surname>Galinski</surname><finitials>W</finitials></author></authors><title>Are microbiological mechanisms relevant for the development of atherosclerosis?</title><journal>Clin Immunol</journal><volume>90</volume><pagerange><spage>153</spage><epage>156</epage></pagerange><pubyear>1999</pubyear></artref>

Mixing text and mark-up…

Evaluating different formats

0

Native Format

2 - 6 per page

2 – 8per page

2 - 5 per page

.50 - 3 per

page

.25 - .75 per

page

Relative Cost

Interchange

Enforce Standards

Component Reuse

Searching

Re-purposing

Distributing Page Images

XMLSGMLHTMLPDFTIFFUseFormat

ExcellentVery GoodGoodLimitedNone

Source: Don Bridges, 48th Annual STC Conference, Presentation, May 2002. www.dclabs.com

Functionality vs. Preservation

Low High

TIFF

VRML

Flash

JPG

High

Functionalit

y

Level of Mark-up

ASCII

XML

8 cents/page

$1.50/page

$10/image

‘Semantic’ Indexing

Collection

Series

Book or Volume

Chapter

Page

Word

Where ?

When ?

What ?

Who ?Traditio

nal indexing >

‘Semantic’ indexing >

The ‘real’ world

Play

Author

Production Stills

Playbills

ProductionVenueDirector

Lighting Set Designers

Theater

PerformanceLocation

Production Company

Producer

Texts

Criticism

Cast List

Performers

Posters

Ephemera

Scenes

ActsCharacters

Dramatis Personae

The virtual world…

Author

Birth dateDeath dateBirth PlaceDeath PlaceNationalityOccupationAwards(38 fields)

Theater

DistrictLocationCapacityStyleEtc…(18 fields)

Company

NameProductionsPerformersEtc…(14 fields)

Production

DirectorTheaterCast# of Perfs.LightingCostumesEtc…(47 fields)

Characters

PlaysAgeAuthorPerformerEtc…(30 fields)

Scenes

WhereWhenSettingSubjectEtc…(41 fields)

Resources

PlayDirectorTheaterProduction Co.CharacterSceneEtc…(45 fields)

Texts

KeywordAuthorDate WrittenDate PublishedProduction(67 fields)

The virtual world…

Author

Birth dateDeath dateBirth PlaceDeath PlaceNationalityOccupationAwards(38 fields)

Theater

DistrictLocationCapacityStyleEtc…(18 fields)

Company

NameProductionsPerformersEtc…(14 fields)

Production

DirectorTheaterCast# of Perfs.LightingCostumesEtc…(47 fields)

Characters

PlaysAgeAuthorPerformerEtc…(30 fields)

Scenes

WhereWhenSettingSubjectEtc…(41 fields)

Resources

PlayDirectorTheaterProduction Co.CharacterSceneEtc…(45 fields)

Texts

KeywordAuthorDate WrittenDate PublishedProduction(67 fields)

Traditional vs. Semantic Indexing

 Traditional Indexing Semantic Indexing

  General  History Drama Religion

What? Article, Book Event Scene Passage

Who? Author ParticipantsCharacte

rs Author

Where?

Where published

Where occurred

Where set -

When?

When published

When it happened

When set

When written• Give me articles from journal xxx prior to 1990

• Give me documents that discuss battles where more than 100 people were killed?

• Give me all scenes set before 1850 that portray lynching?

• Which authors cite Genesis most frequently?

• Identify and divide texts into content elements (e.g. letter, diary entry…)

• Identify key concepts for these elements(e.g. authors, sources, battles, encounters…)

• Index both elements and associated concepts• Integrate to form a cohesive whole

• Unique ways of browsing through concepts • Unique ways to ask questions

‘Semantic’ Indexing

Tables of Contents

Search functionality

Web 2.0 – what relevance?

Participation

•Playlists on ASP’s music products – 19,000 users

•Over 100,000 playlists created so far

• 800 created by ASP

• 38,000 user created

• 70,000 derivative playlists

Playlists

Playlists

Fading Growing

Typesetting Printing

Print monograph Print directory

Public domain reprintsSimple, one database search

Rare and unpublished material

Linking

Licensing

Free materials

Semantic indexing

Process integration

Unified search software

Workflow tools

Warehousing

Community buildingAsset management

Commissioning?

Editorial?

Quality?Selection?

Interactions?

Never ending value…

www.alexanderstreet.com