> > Ashish, unlike most academic authors, has a very keen interest in keeping > his work Open Access and he has retained the rights for free digital > dissemination of the entire book and is hoping to make it Public Access. The > book will soon be available in a .pdf format for anybody to have a free > download and read. In the process of thinking about the digital > dissemination, we have now been having conversations about the form of an > e-book - or in other words, if things published online are not books, then > they should probably not follow the conventions of reading a book, and yet > be able to make a sustained argument and information dissemination using a > different form. Ashish is now suggesting that instead of treating the end > result online as a book, he is more interested in looking at what form can > the material he has (textual, visual, moving images, audio interviews) take > so that it can be most effective online.
Very, very, very involved exercise. What you're talking about is to create an online repository of multimedia content related to his book. While the idea is not new at all, it's something that many publishers tend to avoid doing because of the amount of work involved. It could take anything from a couple of months to a year to put the stuff up the way you're describing it. OTOH, a PDF is a good starting point, but it will do precious little online if the supporting material is not available as well. For a scoping exercise, he is right now searching for 'interesting' forms of > documentation online to see if an existing form appeals to him. I am, on his > behalf, placing a request here... What are your favourite sites for digital > documentation? Do you have any ideas on what form academic work or > scholarship can take if it does not have to simulate the printed book? Have > you come across (and hopefully saved) interesting spaces which you think > helped the argument because of the form of the documentation and its design? > We'd be quite grateful if we could get some links to start with and see if > it might help in thinking about the form of online publishing that might be > most conducive to online dissemination and reading. While not academic, I think the trend followed by various newspapers is a healthy one to consider. When they were forced to move online, they simply posted their articles and were done with it. It was only in the second half of this decade that they realized that interactivity would enhance their online readership, and suddenly one saw slideshows, audio, video, message boards and blogs. It's not exactly what you're looking for, but it's an analogy that transfers well into what you're trying to do. Academic literature could do with some sexing up. :) -- Sumant Srivathsan http://sumants.blogspot.com
