Documenting the Book at the Turn of the 21st Century
NBThis site serves several purposes one of which is to house and present audio interviews. An early objective was to "attempt to document what’s going on with the book, as art (content) and object, at the turn of the 21st century by capturing and presenting the ideas of passionate, talented authors, publishers, booksellers, collectors, conservators, illustrators, printers, digitizers, librarians – with the goal of creating a place where interested parties can/could visit to get a comprehensive, entertaining, informative overview of what’s happening, real time, at this crucial stage in the book’s development."
To date I’ve conducted several hundred interviews, roughly half of them with authors, the rest with consumers, packagers and sellers of content. I plan to continue to talk to people currently involved with book production – every aspect of it – from the lone artisan to the corporate honcho. I will shortly post interviews conducted with book artists, letterpress printers, fine press owners and expert bookbinders: those who specialize in traditional production practices. Over the coming year I hope to meet with people working in the large scale industrial book manufacturing business.
I’ll try to get in to talk to someone at R.R. Donnelly or Quebecor, the world’s largest book manufacturers; Lehigh Phoenix or Coral Graphics , the largest dust jacket printers in America; and Glatfelter, established in 1864, now the largest supplier of book paper in the world. Stay tuned. Hopefully by the end of it all, we’ll have a bit better idea of where ‘the book’ is headed as we move on into the 21 century.