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The experimentation and development in the evolutionary trends mentioned above are laudable. The intense focus on a combination of the possible and the sustainable evident in Rotunda’s first decade and early-stage products is evidence of the yin and yang aspects of exploitation of the Web environment. If one substitutes the terms “supply” and “demand” for” yin” and “yang,” a quandary surfaces. The demands of a few scholars who recognized the possibilities of the web for expression and the expansion of features useful for scholarly pursuits, which were exerted on a few publishers, produced a supply of new e-genres. It remains to be seen whether the supply of e-genres results in demands for more “publications” and more experimentation. A better marker of the success of the Rotunda editions will be the use and citations of use in new monographs, rather than library subscriptions committed. Another key marker will be the appearance of similar or even more avant-garde publications brought out by other publishers. The same equation could be applied to projects and publications mentioned in the list of e-genres above.

These efforts and evolutions are not alone in the universe occupied by the participants in this conference. Jason Epstein’s opening sentences in “Publishing: the revolutionary future” in the 11 March 2010 issue of the NYRB are apropos: Epstein, Jacob, “Publishing: the Revolutionary Future” in The New York Review of Books , v. 57, n. 4, 11 March 2010.

The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible. This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends.

The iPad announcement a few weeks ago presages a series of new attempts by trade and textbook publishers to retain control of publications, exploit some of the expressive possibilities of the Web, and distribute new e-genres to the reading public. The relative success of earlier e-book readers (e.g., the Sony e-book reader, Kindle) suggests that at least for some readers, convenience of selection and acquisition, reduced purchase prices of e-books, and relatively limited e-features are plenty enough reasons to use these appliances to read. It is not yet apparent that there has been or will be a transfer of readers of passive-page images of mysteries and histories on a Kindle to consumers of the seven e-genres listed above. We might want to study that conversion, if there is any evidence that it is occurring.

Another horse straining at the starting gate is wearing the colors of textbook publishers, the big five of which have been preparing e-textbooks for release for some time. Rumors have been circulating about the features of this new e-genre: lively texts and images; easily changed texts to suit the political convenience of statewide boards of education and schools affiliated with religious movements; on-line review mechanisms and e-tests; take-away outlines of main points; leasing rather than purchase of e-textbooks in order to avoid the secondary sales market now plaguing publishers; constantly changing editions and versions. That these e-textbooks are about to appear is sure. Whether K-12 students who have used them in the course of the next decade will influence scholarly e-expression in decades following is, of course, an open question.

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Source:  OpenStax, Online humanities scholarship: the shape of things to come. OpenStax CNX. May 08, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col11199/1.1
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