Ending the Year with Beautiful Books
We’re off through the New Year. Here are some beautiful books to tide you over….
Books Are For Use and What That Means
We don’t talk very much about physical production values for books. What message does that send to readers of scholarly titles?
Standards for Road Signs and Why Signs in the US Are So Different from the Rest of the World
Why do US road signs look different from those seen in the rest of the world?
Making Hard Candy: Non-Newtonian Fluids
How do you make a candy cane and how does candy behave as a non-Newtonian fluid?
Design Matters: Why Are Company Logos Simplifying?
A look at recent trends in brand logo design, and why things are becoming simpler.
#ProTip for Authors: There’s More to Writing Your Manuscript Than Just the Text
Authors need to understand more about producing web documents, particularly accessibility, if they want to forgo traditional publishing.
Marketing to the New Generation of Academic Influencers: Mobile First, SEO, Values-led Content and Initiatives
How can publishers ensure that our content and services are found and used by the growing number of Millennials and Generation Z researchers in academia?
The End of the iPod
This week marks the end of an era, as the iPod is officially discontinued.
Iterative Development, User-centered Design, and the Fear of Getting it Wrong in Publishing
User-centered design provides a model for improving services, but is the history of print holding publishers back?
Revisiting: The Multifarious Book
Revisiting a 2017 post: The book is asked to perform many tasks, some of which are not necessarily the best use of the book format, whether in print or electronically. The long-form text, which may be print or digital, is a different matter, and is likely to remain with us and be called “a book” for some time to come.
Guest Post — Can Technology in the Post-cookie World be Designed to Respect User Privacy?
Minhaj Rais looks at possible solutions for beneficial data mining activities that don’t infringe on user privacy.
Hypnotic Highlighters and Crayons
Some Friday Zen as Highlighter markers are made, and a classic trip to the crayon factory is revisited.
The Physics of the Milk Crate Challenge (and Why You Will Fall)
Why is the latest internet craze so difficult? An engineer explains…
The Experience of Good Metadata: Linking Metadata to Research Impacts
What do we really know about the linkages between good metadata and positive, productive user experiences with scholarly journals?
Revisiting: Theory of the E-book
Joe Esposito revisits his 2012 post on the unstated theory of the e-book, which assumes that a book consists only of its text and can be manipulated without regard to the nature and circumstances of its creation. This is only one theory of many, but it is now the prevailing one.