This is a comprehensive source of information on many aspects of online publishing. The guide was designed to be a book that “grows with you,” and can be accessed through multiple entry points; there are heterogeneous, but intersecting, subjects forming the focus of each chapter. The book was prepared by academics, consultants, publishers, and technologists, and is one of the few books of this nature that lives up to the promises made in its introduction. Readers, whether they are students, professional publishers, or Web designers, and whether they read the whole book or just a few chapters, will take away an excellent overview that can be immediately put to practical use.
Fifteen chapters comprise the book. Each chapter can be used as an independent and comprehensive source of information. All 15 chapters together represent a coherent picture of digital publishing that will support many uses of the book, ranging from a textbook for students to a handbook for practitioners.
Chapter 1, “Introduction to Digital Publishing,” by W.E. Kasdorf, describes some products of e-publishing: e-journals, e-books, reference sources, and newspapers. The author highlights their specific characteristics, state of development, and some relevant technologies. No aspect of electronic publishing, from economics to file formats, is left out. An interesting section touches on possible future developments in this area, mentioning emerging shared semantics approaches, such as the semantic Web, new delivery technologies, and new devices.
Chapter 2, “The Technical Infrastructure,” by C. Biemesderfer, discusses the nuts and bolts of digital publishing: hardware and software. Computer architectures, display properties, software design, basic networking, and storage means and technologies are explained in a way that is easy to understand for non-technical readers, yet detailed enough to provide a useful refresher to computer professionals.
Chapter 3, by W. E. Kasdorf, focuses on markup and Extensible Markup Language (XML). It explains the essence of markup languages, and the fundamentals of presentation technologies for Web publishing. Starting from a general, nontechnical review of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and XML, the chapter moves into more technical examples. Readers will learn not only about the organizations charged with developing XML and related standards, but also about XML schema format and maintenance, scripting tools, the uses of Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT), and various types of metadata.
Chapter 4, “Organizing, Linking, and Editing Content,” by J. Strange, highlights the emergence of the new paradigm, whereby digital publishers become responsible for production and distribution of digital content. The chapter covers some of the traditional uses of XML, and describes some approaches to metadata, as well as several ways to link portions of documents and external content. This is one of the least forward-looking chapters of the book; it already needs some updating.
Chapter 5, “Data Capture and Conversion,” by M. Gross, focuses on the actions required to convert documents, frequently acquired from nonelectronic originals, into structured formats, such as XML or SGML. The chapter provides practical business recommendations for those who face large-scale digitization projects, but lacks material on forward-looking techniques. It will need to be supplemented with more recent information for those who will use it as a practical guide.
Chapter 6, “Composition, Design, and Graphics,” by T. McIlroy, describes the essential components of publishing. Since many publications are still designed primarily for print, this chapter, covering all the essentials from font management to color and special typographic situations, is a very useful resource for those professionals who are familiar only with digital publishing. The information in this chapter is supplemented by that in chapter 8, “Digital Printing,” by G. Alexander, which covers multiple aspects and methods of digital printing. Chapter 9, “Multimedia Publishing,” by F. Brody, expands into multimedia publishing, highlighting design principles and technologies necessary to achieve true interactivity.
Chapter 7, “Accessibility,” by F. Bowes, covers many topics that digital publishers working for organizations subject to regulatory rules need to know in detail. The author analyzes the legal and political context that has led to much greater emphasis on accessibility, and describes currently-available technology options, from text-to-speech browsers, to the use of alternative file formats. This chapter is one of the best overviews I have read on the complex multi-disciplinary subject of digital content accessibility.
Chapter 10, “Content Management and Web Publishing,” by M. Walter, addresses the intricacies of producing content for the Web, and the essence of content management technologies. The overview of technology is practical, but simplistic, and is directed more at novice Web content producers than at managers dealing with real projects.
In chapter 11, “Electronic Books,” A. Renear and D. Salo, who believe that e-books will soon become a major part of digital publishing, provide an excellent summary of many topics relating to this still academic subject. The open e-book publication structure (OEBPS), Open E-book Forum (OEBF), and format of electronic books, and the advantages and pitfalls of e-book publishing, are described in detail. Readers in 2003 may be skeptical about the future of e-books, but they will benefit from learning more about related standards and technologies.
Chapter 12, “Archiving,” by H. Molloy, concentrates on general issues of process and infrastructure necessary to create electronic archives. While the topic is too large to be addressed in great detail in one chapter, readers will learn about issues in digital preservation, storage media, various file formats, and potentially applicable metadata sets, like Dublin Core.
The final three chapters outline legal issues in digital publishing, and technologies that may help in solving them. “The Legal Framework: Copyright and Trademark,” by W. S. Strong, explains the essence of copyright law, licensing, fair use, and trademark law, without a very strong focus on digital copyright. “International Issues,” by R. Baensch, highlights the applications of this law internationally. And “Digital Rights Management,” by P. Hilts, explains the technologies behind digital rights management (DRM), potential implementation architectures, the ramifications for access to digital content, and DRM support for new business models. Hilt’s chapter also lists major vendors in the area of DRM.
Overall, this book is highly recommended to those beginning to study digital publishing, and to teachers of courses on this subject in information science programs. It will be also useful as a reference for publishing professionals. Although the text needs to be supplemented with information about current technologies, it provides an excellent entry point to the area of e-publishing.
