Précis Volume 19 Issue 1
Précis of current issue
Tim Coates reports on the status of what he sees as the scandalous decline in British public libraries. Whether he is right or not one has to admire his courage. He has no vested interest in the cause he is espousing and no funding other than his personal savings. Blowing a trumpet outside unresponsive walls is a lonely business.
Joost Kist, one of the philosophers of the book business, has devoted much meditative time to pondering the inner changes wrought in the publishing business by the computer. In this issue under the rubric "Paradigm lost", he reflects, under the innocuous heading "the value of information", on the question of what will replace the trusted formula of manufacture/pricing/sale. This is the underlying question that troubles many publishers: How will they make money in a digital world?
When China became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2002, the Chinese government trod warily around the question of WTO's implications for the publishing business. In fact, at first, publishing was reserved as a qualified exception to free trade, but during the first five years of membership—a transitional period for new WTO members that are developing countries—China undertook major revisions of its copyright laws and in how printing, publishing, and distribution are carried out. This is explained to LOGOS readers by two authorities, Xu Lifang and Fang Qing, both of the Information Management School of Wuhan University, P.R. China.
The LOGOS series on "How famous names originated" continues with an extract from Jeremy Lewis's new book, Penguin Special. It is hard to think of the name of an imprint which has become more famous. Lewis explains graphically how this name was chosen.
Sometimes a casual remark by one individual reveals attitudes held by many. Gordon Graham picked one to spark this issue's Media File. A London house agent told a house seller that books reduced the value of a house, by making it look old fashioned—an assertion sure to make publishers bristle. The remark nevertheless has some confirmation if one examines pictures of the interior decoration of new houses: they contain no bookshelves, nor any provision for bookshelves. Like some of those directing Britain's public libraries, do architects see a bookless future?
And, are booksellers ready to sell e-books and e-book readers to these new bookless house-owners? See the review of the British Booksellers Association’s report on "Embracing the Digital Future: An Opportunity for Booksellers and the Book Trade" by Adriaan Langendonk of the Dutch Booksellers Association.
There have been hundreds of books, articles and speeches over the last fifty years about the future of the book. Enough time has passed to prove most prophecies wrong, but “the future of the book” remains a favourite topic for academics. Few are better qualified to reflect on it than Angus Phillips, director of the Oxford Brookes Centre for Publishing Studies, which incidentally houses two great LOGOS collections—"Books That Shaped the Century" and "The Literature of the Book".
Perhaps the future of the journal is the blog? Editorial board member Joseph Esposito raised some thoughts about this in an email letter to three of his LOGOS associates, and a lively interchange followed. Where better to air this internal debate than in the columns of LOGOS (see "Point Counterpoint: Should LOGOS become BLOGOS?"), whose role for book professionals as a bridge between print and digital has been continuous and deliberate since its foundation.
Dutch publishing, for reasons which are not quite clear, has produced some strong and contrasting figures. Joost Kist (see above) is one example. Another is Pierre Vinken, lately chief executive of Elsevier, whose standpoint is clearly stated in the title of his biography, Against Idealism. It is reviewed in this issue by Laurens van Krevelen. Many pages of this work are devoted to the unhappy Reed-Elsevier marriage, which quickly resulted in the departure of Reed CEO Sir Peter Davis.
In LOGOS's eighteen years of publication, much has been written about libraries and their relationship with the other book professions. Surprisingly, more has been written by members of these other professions than by librarians, who seem to keep their worries to themselves, with a few distinguished exceptions like Michael Gorman and Maurice Line. Librarians seem to be accustomed to being praised as selfless custodians of literary treasure houses. But what libraries contain and how they are used are also important social indicators, as Gordon Graham points out in his Last Word column in this issue.
The following articles from recent and current issues are available in full text:
'Open
Access' 
by
Sally Morris
'The
Editor's Place'
'Should
LOGOS become BLOGOS?'
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