“The lack of video, the lack of audio,” writes Richard Nash in What is the Business of Literature?, “is a feature of literature, not a bug.” This is exactly how we look at the book business at Thought Catalog. Books aren’t an antiquated technology. Books are cutting-edge technology. In fact, books are the greatest virtual reality machines on the market. While virtual reality gear like Oculus engulfs the brain to present a different reality, books engage the brain and present a different reality through a more creative exchange between medium and self.
The 2016 Open Source Yearbook Now Available For Download
In 2015, Opensource.com published the first Open Source Yearbook, a collaboration with open source communities to collect a diverse range of stories from the year.
Thanks to contributions from more than 25 writers, the 2016 edition is even bigger and highlights more than 100 organizations, projects, technologies, and events.
Get your free PDF download of the 2016 Open Source Yearbook.
Source: Announcing the 2016 Open Source Yearbook: Download now
The second edition of this book hits the high spots of the Open Source ecosystem. From the Raspberry Pi to OpenStack, from sysadmin tools to games, from public policy to hot careers, it’s all in here. The book is available on the web as a linked set of articles and as a nicely designed 94 page PDF. Be sure to check it out.
Today’s New Book Releases on Law
Today’s New Book Releases on Law Today’s New Book Releases on Law
A Book Is A Book And Other Thoughts On Our Webby Future
In February I wrote that every book is a website and we need to embrace the webiness of books. This led to some good discussion about the nature of books generally and casebooks in particular and about the nature of websites. The discussion helped clarify a couple of things in my mind.
First, though every book is a website not every website is a book. As I mentioned in the previous article, once a book is in an electronic form such as EPUB the process to make the book into a website is straight forward. That is not to say that it is easy, but that the path from EPUB to website is clearly marked. The reverse is not true. Moving a website to a book format such as EPUB is not straight forward and may even be impossible.
A website is a often a complex and carefully organized store of information. It may be fairly static, with a single information store arranged and hyperlinked for readers to discover. It may be interactive, drawing the the reader/visitor deeper into the site primarily through the use of hyperlinks to reveal or explain things. It may not even contain any text at all. The design of a website holds clues as to whether or not it can survive the transformation into a book.
Simple static websites are the best candidates for books. Information, often mostly text, is arranged in some sort of linear fashion. Links to outside sites are minimal. A single author or a small group of collaborators gives the site a particular voice. A blog is a good example of the sort of site that lends itself to being bookified.
Contrast this to a more complex and interactive site where the community contributes to the site or games are played or movies are watched. Information is arranged in a non-linear fashion. Links, both internal and external, abound. A multitude of authors, editors, and contributors all bring their voices to the site. Wrangling this into a book could not be done without destroying the value of the site.
This brings me to my second point, a book is a book. It does not matter if the medium is paper or bits, the form and structure of a book is still the same. Books have covers, title pages, tables of contents, chapters, notes (foot or end). The structure of a book is a known thing and the structure carries through all mediums. This is something that makes books unique. A book is a book in hard cover, paperback, on the Kindle, Nook and iPad, in the PDF file on your PC, and ultimately on the web.
Moving a book from print to electronic is not magic and it does not make the book better. The change in format just changes how readers access the book. If you want to make a “better” book, then build a website. Adding interaction and multimedia to a book are often valuable ways to enhance the information that is provided, but adding these enhancements are better done as website than a book.
Transforming a book into a website is the way to make a better book and destroy the book at the same time. Rather than spending time trying to shoehorn elements of a website into a book, we should let go of the book and embrace the web as the book of the future.
New Form Carolina Academic Press: Teaching Law by Design
Professors Michael Hunter Schwartz, Sophie Sparrow and Gerry Hess, three leaders in the teaching and learning movement in legal education, have collaborated to offer a new book designed to synthesize the latest research on teaching and learning for new and experienced law teachers. The book begins with basic principles of teaching and learning theory, provides insights into how law students experience traditional law teaching, and then guides law teachers through the entire process of teaching a course. The topics addressed include: how to plan a course; how to design a syllabus and select a text; how to plan individual class sessions; how to engage and motivate students, even those tough-to-crack second- and third-year students; how to use a wide variety of teaching techniques; how to evaluate student learning, both for the purposes of assigning grades and of improving student learning; and how to be a lifelong learner as a teacher.
via Carolina Academic Press: Teaching Law by Design.
Form the introductory materials online it looks like a pretty good book.