Digital AND Physical: Contemporary Issues in Collections Management
Today I had the joy of having several of my worlds and nerddoms collide – bookbinding, the book as object, libraries, library friends, possibly some future book arts. It was also the unexpected culmination of a project that began back in the fall of 2022 as a class assignment. Introducing the latest iteration of Contemporary Issues in Collections Management, a born-digital Open Educational Resource or OER that now also exists in physical form.
The completed stack of our run of 18 limited editions of Contemporary Issues in Collections Management, Second Edition, in print form.
Starting out Digital…
This project began as the final project for LIS 531 Collection Management, taught by Dr. Michael McNally at the University of Alberta School of Library & Information Studies. Rather than assigning a traditional final paper, Michael instead offered the class the option to write a chapter for an OER on collection management. The chapter I co-wrote with Julia Sieben – “Physical or Digital: The Fundamental Challenge of Modern Collection Development” – ended up becoming the opening chapter of Contemporary Issues in Collections Management.
The course ended in December of 2022 and it took another eight months to edit, upload, and launch the original digital edition. It went live on August 8, 2023, as a Pressbooks OER available through Open Education Alberta and the University of Alberta Library.
Then not even a month later it was being used as the textbook for the Fall 2023 offering of LIS 531 Collection Management. And during that class, students again had the option of submitting a chapter as their final project, resulting in the publishing of the second edition on November 14, 2024, adding several new chapters to the original suite.
As of the time of this post, Contemporary Issues in Collections Management, Second Edition, continues to be freely available as an OER textbook under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
… but we wanted it Physical
Around the same time as the digital second edition was coming together, two of my fellow first edition student authors and now fellow graduates of the program, Amy Nowakowsky and Kat Voy – whom I would like to take this opportunity to shout out publicly for being the core of our virtual study/accountability group that was possibly the biggest reason any of us managed to graduate with our degrees! And get these books out! – the three of us were once again hanging out online when we started discussing some new bookmaking workshops being offered by the Edmonton Public Library.
Back when the first edition had gone live, we’d done a bit of research into the possibility of getting some printed copies made but costs would have been prohibitive going the traditional printing route. But with the buzz about the second edition coinciding with these new bookmaking workshops, we once again thought maybe our digital OER project could find its way to a physical form. We immediately contacted Michael.
Two and a half months of emails and planning later, plus some very intense days of last minute formatting and extending the cover design from front-only to a full-wrap – it was a full on flashback to being in class together and trying to get our assignments done and submitted! – Kat, Amy, and I got the files in to Michael and through him to the Makerspace team at the EPL’s Stanley A. Milner branch so that today could happen.
The Workshop!
And here we are today! Bright and early this morning, right when the Milner opened at 9 am, Amy, Kat, and I were joined by another 1st edition author and library school friend, Chelsea Chiovelli, as well as our prof and book editor Michael, for a bookbinding workshop to assemble our books.
We arrived to find the pages and covers of our book preprinted and in loose stacks of sheets, already more real than we would ever have imagined when we first wrote our chapters. Huge shout out to our two EPL staff, Rochelle and Germaine, for the great workshop and guidance!
After a quick intro, we were introduced to the three machines we would be using to assemble these materials into their final form.
First was the simplest of the machines, a scorer to prepare the covers to take their final shape.
With a small push of the handle, we added creases into the covers for where the spine and covers would then fold. Sorry, not the greatest photo – I was already beyond excited and quite distracted – but on the left is the original printed cover and sitting on top of it on the right is a second cover with its newly-added and just barely visible score marks.
Next came this much more complicated machine of levers and slides and glue that gripped the loose block of sheets with the cover, prepped the text block, applied hot glue, then pressed together the block and cover into a single unit.
After first trimming off the top edge of the cover, we lined up the book block and the cover inside the center cradle that’s open on both sides – top and bottom – and flips the entire assembly upside down for gluing. Visible here is the outside edge of the book block sitting inside of the still-oversized cover, the back cover sticking up the back and the front cover open and underneath the crossbeam of the machine. The clear plastic doohickey on the left helps line everything up nice and straight.
Then with the pull of a handle, the whole thing flips over to allow you to pull the front cover fully back and expose the spine edge of the text block…
A slide-mounted unit on the left side runs over the exposed spine edge and roughens up the pages so that the glue can really stick. It goes from a smooth flat surface to this…
Next you pull the slide-mounted applicator from the right to spread hot glue along the roughened edge – one, two, three, four times across – then flip the whole thing back over to press the hot glued edge to the inside of the cover…
In the course of assembling four copies, each of us already got a real feel for this machine and how the pieces all literally come together. My first attempt resulted in some extra “personality” to the finished product… several wrinkles along the spine from not applying enough tension to the cover when flipping everything back around… but despite that – or perhaps because of it – it’s the copy I chose to take home as my own.
And in four attempts, the improvement along the spine is already clearly visible, from attempt one at the bottom to attempts three and four on top, still waiting to be trimmed.
Looking at these now, I realize these photos don’t really do a very good job of telling this part of the story – should have taken some video! – but they will do as a taste of what happens… and maybe convince you to go take the workshop yourself? That said, bottom line is that at the end of this process you end up with this… a single assembled unit with excess cover and glue sticking out all around…
Next and finally comes the scariest step, using the scariest machine – the guillotine! You set the measurements, place the book inside, and SCHOOOMMP – off with its edge!
A long metal blade slides down and off comes the excess cover and a thin slice of every page. This is where the future book art comes in because naturally I had to collect all these bits with the idea to try and do something with them later. But that will be for a post for another day…
For now, it’s enough to have such a wild experience, such a hands-on and visceral process, through the bookbinding itself.
Because suddenly, magically, fantastically, you have in your hand a real live actual physical book.
And then the first time you open it up and see your name in print…
Okay, yes, seeing the book on screen was also pretty cool…
… but I am unabashedly old school about my love of the physical book.
I actually included in my chapter my “XKCD Digital Lifespan Chart in Context, v1.2” diagram, which riffs on Randall Munroe’s original XKCD “Digital Resource Lifespan” comic about just how short-lived so much of our digital book technology has proven to be.
Okay, yes, it is admittedly much harder for me to lend you my one physical copy than to simply have you click and read the digital version here. But you’ll also never see us doing this with our laptops or computer screens…
So everything in its place and with its strengths, I guess?
Only time will tell what ultimately lasts the longest, but I suspect that long after the original digital OER has disappeared off the internet, long after this post that you’re reading has also vanished, at least some of these eighteen paper copies will still be sitting on a shelf somewhere, sharing a snapshot of the state of “contemporary” collections management in 2023-2024 to librarians and scholars of the future.
But until then, whichever way you end up reading this book now, happy reading!
– Winston
