[Asis-l] FW: Jason Epstein to Speak on the Digital Future of Reading - fre e seminar at OCLC

[Browne,Ginny]

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 at 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
renown 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