{"id":2932,"date":"2010-10-27T10:06:28","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T09:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookleteer.com\/blog\/?p=2932"},"modified":"2010-10-27T10:06:30","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T09:06:30","slug":"ebook-observer-%e2%80%93-diffusion-categories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/2010\/10\/ebook-observer-%e2%80%93-diffusion-categories\/","title":{"rendered":"eBook Observer \u2013 Diffusion categories"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now that I\u2019ve had the chance to examine some of the eBook projects in greater detail, I thought I\u2019d turn to an examination of the Diffusion website. To do this, I could provide you with a summary what is available on the Diffusion website and its history. Instead, I\u2019ve found that the group of Proboscis related websites that include http:\/\/proboscis.org.uk<\/a> , http:\/\/diffusion.org.uk<\/a> , and http:\/\/bookleteer.com<\/a> already have a good deal of information about these things already tucked away in all sorts of different sections of these websites.\u00a0 For example, as I tried to get an idea of Diffusion as both a project and a website, I began searching through the various pages where information about Diffusion was available, here\u2019s what material I found:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/proboscis.org.uk\/projects\/<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/proboscis.org.uk\/projects\/diffusion\/<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/?page_id=2 <\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/?p=2152 <\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/diffusion.org.uk\/?p=202<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Proboscis contributors like Karen Martin and Hazem Tagiuri also occasionally revisit Diffusion as an archive of previous projects:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/bookleteer.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/diffusion-archive-review-perception-peterborough\/<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/bookleteer.com\/blog\/2010\/10\/diffusion-archive-review-the-collected-tweets-of-brandon-cummerbund\/<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/bookleteer.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/ebooks-for-evaluation-and-reflection\/
\n<\/a>
\nNow, some of you might now be thinking (sarcastically): \u201cWow, Fred, you\u2019ve discovered the World Wide Web\u2026 Congratulations!\u201d.\u00a0 What this little search for information got me thinking about was how these websites operate as a database (\u00e0 la Lev Manovich) that is used in part to define the eBook as a cultural form. So rather than spend too much time on the history of Diffusion.org.uk, I want to look at how the site is itself used to classify eBooks. This may sound like a particularly dull thing to do, but I think that it is essential since it can not only give us an insight into how the eBook has been developed as a creative tool but also how Proboscis disseminates information about the eBook (which is tied directly to my own research interests<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Diffusion.org.uk is \u201cpowered\u201d by WordPress. Using the blog post format, Proboscis give each of the eBooks they want to profile a \u201cpost\u201d, making it easy to sort in various categories that can be defined using the WordPress system. These different categories can found under the website\u2019s Library tab.<\/p>\n

The first set of WordPress categories used to sort eBooks on the Diffusion website is \u201cSharable Form\u201d. It seems I was wrong in a previous post when I wrote that Proboscis didn\u2019t make the distinction between capture and publication<\/a>. At least on some level, Diffusion presents a classificatory distinction between what they refer to as \u201ceBooks\u201d and \u201deNotebooks\u201d \u2013 the former designates any kind of publication using the eBook format while the latter specifically designates eBook designs for information capture. I\u2019m still going to keep my own categories, partly for convenience but also because some of the material used to capture information with eBooks isn\u2019t presented on the Diffusion website. As of today, there are 428 eBooks on the Diffusion website, of which 37 are also classified as eNotebooks.<\/p>\n

The next way in which the eBooks are categorised is through authors. As of today, there are 138 authors listed on Diffusion.org.uk. It\u2019s interesting to note that the recent series of Pitch In and Publish (for example<\/a>) involves testing ways to publish collaboratively using multiple authors.<\/p>\n

Some of the eBooks are also subdivided into Series. There are 16 different series online including Dodolab (18)<\/a>, Topographies & Tales (11)<\/a>, and Performance Notations (12)<\/a>. The last category that is also included is sorting by date. Based on this preliminary examination of Diffusion.org.uk it seems the eBooks are classified in a fairly straightforward way. There doesn\u2019t seem to be any qualitative judgment about the different eBook iterations. They are mostly just categorised in fairly conventional ways so as to be easily retraced \u2013name, author, date, and related project. The one initial insight that I’ve found significant is this distinction between the eBooks and the sub-category of eNotebooks. As a next step in examining Diffusion.org.uk, I will start to take a closer look at the eNotebooks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now that I\u2019ve had the chance to examine some of the eBook projects in greater detail, I thought I\u2019d turn to an examination of the Diffusion website. To do this, I could provide you with a summary what is available on the Diffusion website and its history. Instead, I\u2019ve found that the group of Proboscis […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-publishing-on-demand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2932"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2939,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions\/2939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookleteer.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}