July 30 OCLC Seminar: Jason Epstein, The Digital Future

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

A fascinating announcement from our NINCH colleagues...

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 26 Jul 2002 09:53:33 -0400
From: NINCH-ANNOUNCE <david@ninch.org>
To: Multiple recipients of list <ninch-announce@ninch.org>
Subject: July 30 OCLC Seminar (Dublin, Ohio): Jason Epstein, The Digital Future

NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
News on Networking Cultural Heritage Resources
from across the Community
July 26, 2002

OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.

OCLC Distinguished Seminar Series

July 30, 2002 Reading: The Digital Future
By Jason Epstein and Michael Smolens

9:00-9:30 am - Coffee and Doughnuts
9:30-11:00 am - Presentation

OCLC Auditorium
6565 Frantz Road
Dublin, OH 43017-3395

You are welcome to attend this presentation.

Registering in advance allows us to plan sufficient refreshments and to
alert you if for any reason the lecture needs to be rescheduled. To RSVP,
please email bakerk@oclc.org or call the OCLC Office of Research at (614)
764-6073 indicating your name, affiliation, and telephone number by July
26, 2002.

Advance registration is encouraged, but not required.

On July 30, Jason Epstein and Michael Smolens will address the publishing
industry's prospects in the digital era, in their lecture entitled,
"Reading: The Digital Future."

There has been much publicity about the publishing industry's current
crisis. The aggregation of businesses within the book publishing industry
has increased the cost of production, impacted the economics of
bookmanship, and deteriorated the quality and availability of monographic
content.

Epstein has adeptly chronicled this crisis in his recent book, Book
Business.  Epstein believes the cure to publishing's ills lies in a
"uniform, universal book catalog" connected to a network of low-overhead
print on demand machines. These machines will produce books in minutes at
point of need around the globe. This service will bypass the present book
manufacturing and distribution chain, thereby allowing publishers to focus
on their core competencies of talent identification and editing.
Availability of quality books to the literate reading public will expand.
Epstein and his business partner, Michael Smolens, have been working to
achieve this goal through their business, 3BillionBooks.

Epstein is renowned as a publishing innovator. In the 1950s he created
Anchor Books, the first American series of quality paperbacks. In the
1960s he helped found The New York Review of Books. In the 1980s he
created the Library of America and the Reader's Catalog, the precursor to
on-line retailing. He is the first recipient of the National Book Award
for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters and also received the
Curtis Benjamin Award of the American Association of Publishers for
inventing new kinds of editing and publishing. Jason Epstein's lecture
will focus on the publishing industry, the need for and characteristics of
the universal book catalog, and the remaining challenges to be addressed.

Background information:

New York Review of Books article: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14318

Jason Epstein's bibliography: http://www.nybooks.com/authors/86

Amazon.com listing for Book Business:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393322343/qid=1025179066/sr=2-1/ref=
sr_2_1/002-4431609-8628863

This document is available on line at:
http://www.oclc.org/research/dss/epstein.pdf

Ginny Browne
Program Chair
COASIS&T
Register for the ASIST Annual Meeting:
http://www.asis.org/Conferences/AM02/index.html
_______

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