Housekeeping:

• Next week, please review the new websites listed on the schedule in preparation for our class visit with Dr. Froelich. She will join us from 7pm:7:50pm

• Today we are briefly going over Scalar, the platform we will use for the final project. Please request a registration key so that you can create an account.

Scalar Overview

User Guide

Scalar content comes in two flavors: pages (i.e. text, specifically HTML text) and media. Anything in a Scalar book by necessity falls into one of these two categories.

When you begin adding things to Scalar, you will need to upload all your images first before you can add them to a page.

Paths and Tags

https://scalar.usc.edu/works/a-case-of-hysteria/index

As you begin to storyboard your project, consider what kinds of media you will want to include, how you will frame it, and what paths you want users to take as they explore the contents.

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Discussion: Interfaces

1. “Given that anyone can become an author thanks to Amazon, it bears considering how we might differentiate between a digital file on a home computer and a “book.” (Borsuk 59) Question- How has the democratization of publishing through platforms like Amazon affected the traditional publishing industry, and what challenges and opportunities has it created for authors and readers?
2. “While Google cited its digitization as fair use because it transforms its sources, offering readers the ability to search within texts but not read them in their entirety, the situation is complicated because this transformation happens not at the level of the text, like an author quoting a source or a DJ building a track out of samples but at the level of the book.”(Borsuk 56)
   • Question- What level of implications does Google’s digitization of books have for fair use?

• “Book historian Gérard Genette coined the term “paratexts” to refer to these framing devices, including the title page, index, running heads, covers, and other features outside the text that influence the ways we interface with it.” (Borsuk 59)
  • Question- What are some indications of paratexts for how we interact with and interpret textual content?

• “Book artists and their predecessors have used the codex and any number of inventive book-like forms to draw our attention to the assumptions we make about the book’s fixity, authority, materiality, and permanence.” (Borsuk 51)

Question- Are e-books and artists’ books comparable in their provocative and propagandistic potential? (Artists books such as zines)

• ” As Peter Stallybrass has noted, it allows both sequential reading and random access, much like the computer.2 It can be indexed and cross-referenced in a way that directs us outward to other sources, though following the trail is slightly more time-consuming than clicking a hyperlink. The book is a model, as scholar Matthew Kirschenbaum points out, for the way we think about reading in electronic space.”(Borsuk 51)

Question- Do you think that the concept of authorship and ownership of books change with the rise of digital publishing and distribution?

• “Public domain works account for only around 7 percent of available books, with the emphasis on copyright-protected works, available in small samples, whose accessibility is dictated by publishers through the so-called Partner Program. The Google Books interface lets readers save books to a virtual ‘bookshelf,’ share excerpts, and download EPUB and PDF files of public domain works.” (Borsuk 55)

Question-To what extent does the digitization of books contribute to the erosion of privacy and surveillance of readers, and what measures can be taken to protect individual rights in digital reading spaces?

• “Though Google Books launched in 2004, the corporation’s self-narrative places digital books at the company’s inception. Back in 1996, while still in graduate school at Stanford, co-founders Page and Sergey Brin developed a web crawler called BackRub intended to analyze connections between books and help readers find the most relevant materials for their research. Part of the Stanford Digital Library Technologies Project, this crawler would provide the foundation for Google’s PageRank algorithm, pricking out the page for the Alphabet of Google initiatives to come.” (Borsuk 56)

Question-How will the development of Google’s PageRank algorithm affect how people search and access digital information?

Other sources :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZIwq5db_lc  art books vs e-books

https://blog.library.si.edu/blog/2012/06/01/what-is-an-artists-book/#.ZEAkr-zMJsM

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Intro Scalar: Making a Broadside Ballad

Each of us will now take one different part of the website to explore:

1. Sharwane and Diamond: explore the website’s interface. How is information organized and presented? How easy/difficult is it to navigate between pages and topics? Is it easy to go back to previous pages, including the home page? Knowing what you now know about Scalar’s affordances, what might you change about the layout and structure for this site?
2. Kehinde, Dan and Allison: explore the website’s choices for when to use videos, images, and essays. How does this project deliver information? What kinds of information does it deliver? What do you think is the target audience for this project? Knowing that Scalar allows for multiple paths and tags to be created connecting the content, how else might you organize the information in this site?