Print & Digital Publishing: Long Lost Lovers

Many publishing theorists say that print is a dying medium. Ebooks and digital publishing technologies are the way of the future and the future’s here now (so watch your back, print!). I have a different take on traditional versus digital publishing, which is to say that they are meant to be together.

In my scope of work, I teach students traditional publishing means, including printing technology and preparing files for printed output. As a graduate student, I opt for the ePub version of course textbooks whenever I have a choice and I spend the majority of my time expressing my views in pixels, not on paper.

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Furthermore, I love nothing more than the tactility of fine paper and the authentic smell of an old book that ties the present to the past; but I equally love dynamic search capabilities, hyperlinking and the ability to choose my typeface available with a digital book, tying the present to the future.

You may call me a walking contradiction, but I believe that there are times when printed mediums work better and there are times when digital platforms simply work better. This long lost love affair between print and digital publishing extends much further than their nostalgia and functionality. I don’t think they simply want each other, so much as they sometimes need each other too. Here is an excerpt from an article I wrote for Graphic Arts Magazine about the new frontiers of digital archiving and preserving important printed matter, entitled Print Through the Ages:

“Entire new disciplines of study have been established from the convergence of literature, printing and digitization: Digital Humanists. In an age where the disciplines of technology and humanity have come face to face, Digital Humanists are creating new possibilities for archiving printed matter and enabling accessibility to more people than ever before.

I had the pleasure of listening to Cara Leitch and Julie Meloni discuss “The Future of the History of the Book” at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Cara is a Researcher who works in UVic’s Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL), a facility in which data-harvesting, textual content analysis and document encoding takes place. Cara’s focus is on digitizing 19th Century texts and social networking. Julie has also worked in the ETCL with a focus on Information Management. They are both book lovers and consider themselves “Digital Humanists”. Through their work, they rediscover the meaning of texts by using technology, comparing with other texts and annotating. Through using OCR software, as well as crowdsourcing, Digital Humanists preserve texts of the past for future generations to enjoy.

During their session, we also had the unique opportunity of viewing a scan of a 19th century document and we then worked to index the document by deciphering handwriting that was over 100 years old. After indexing was complete, this document was searchable and made available on the Internet.

It is important to understand how printed documents and books of the past will be preserved for future generations. Environmental conditions, such as temperature, relative humidity and light all play a role in the deterioration of paper and printed matter. Digitizing is the answer for increasing longevity, accessibility, and broader use of a given document. Print advocates and old book lovers the world over have always faced the challenge of preserving books but now have a viable resource to preserve information long into the foreseeable future. Even our national memory institution, Library and Archives Canada, understands the importance of the momentous shift in archiving processes and keeping up with technology to stay relevant. Digitization of old printed matter has created new jobs and research opportunities, as Digital Humanists use technology to learn about printed documents in whole new ways.

Crowdsourcing and collaboration projects, such as the World Archives Project, enable global collaboration thereby increasing our understanding of the connection between historical texts. Additionally, by working with governments, archives and content owners, sites like Ancestry.ca create accessibility for increased learning and understanding of years past.

Although digital technology is an excellent solution for preserving printed pieces of the past, forward thinking digital asset managers must always understand changing technology and manage their databases as not to become obsolete. From analog to digital and from paper to computer screen, historical documents are moving full speed ahead in the 21st Century."

Traditional and digital publishing both have their places in this world and work pretty well together, if I do say so myself. That’s what makes them the perfect couple.