| Tjebbe van Tijen via Chello on Tue, 6 Oct 2009 19:24:55 +0200 (CEST) |
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| [Nettime-nl] ePublications versus PDF & on-line access for priviliged academics versus 'free learners' |
October 6, 2009 by Tjebbe van Tijen read the full text with the direct links on:http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/scribd-org-my-own- others-libraries-of-textsstudies-in-epublication-format-tested/ A good format for recycling older texts and illustrated studies seems to be there almost. After the PDF format navigation and presentation enhancements, there are now on-line readers which offer the same and more functionality. A disadvantage of the PDF format is that when it is not just a few pages, but many, or even hundreds or a thousand pages or more, one has to wait till the downloading of the remotely stored PDF file has finished before reading is possible. One is often not sure if a chosen PDF file is really interesting enough and the browsability of web pages, the option to quickly scan an information object for it;s possible interest, is not there. I have tested now two systems that offer free posting of documents scribd.org and issuu.com and though the interface of issuu.com is more elegant, its lack of being able to add metadata (bibliographical information is the old term) to an ePublication (the term SCRIBD is using = iPaper) made me choose for scribd.org. The latest text I posted is a study from 2001 on literary psycho-geography of Edo/Tokyoâ
I have implemented here a special embedded link to the software of my blog (WordPress) that âstreamsâ the rendered (scaled) pages directly into a WordPress blog. To see the full functionality it is better and click the link button to the SCRIBD site itself.
[live rendering window with ePublications]To my great surprise I discovered on scribd.org one of my favorite books on the enlightenment by Jonathan Israel âEnlightenment Contested- Philosophy, Modernity and the Emancipation of Man 1670-1752â, a full thousand or so pagesâ which may be on the limits of what this ePublication service is intended for. Nevertheless the uploader states his postings of books âare intended for educational and familiarization purposes onlyâ and calls people to buy the book when they really intend to use it (the selling price is between 55 and 70 dollars at the moment) and what we have here is a fully searchable version of the book; just try out the right hand corner search box of the neat and very fast scribd.org web interface and you can hop through the thousand pages guided by a simple search term; like I did with the name âvan den endenâ (Franciscus van den Enden 1602-1674, one of the inspirational masters for Spinoza who started his liofe in Antwerp and was hung for conspiracy against the French state in 1672 in Paris a very much undervalued radical thinker with his free comonwealth as described in âVrye Politieke Stellingenâ 1665 and similar proposals to establish a free community in what was than called âNieuw Nederlantsâ in 1665). Have a try on it as long as this fabulous historical text can be searched at will and with such neatly contextual display of search results, something far beyond the old book and its paper index is on show. It is an interesting question whether authorship rights and copyright property of a publisher may be called in question by such free internet availability. In this case the content of the book frequently speaks about ways of common property, natural rights and equalitarian practices. Our new technologies of reproduction and distribution â as is shown concretely with the link below â do make it possible to freely share that what has only to be produced once (scientific and technological knowledge); it breaks down the barriers between a privileged academic class with its members only access to information and âfree learnersâ â like myself â that claim equal chances of being informed. For as long as it lasts, enjoy the book-link below hereâ and also you can even in this small format nicely do a search, that options is somewhat hidden so I add here a screendump with an explanation how to do all that..
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