Publish or Perish
Bringing together editors, designers, curators, publishers, and printers, the biennial The National Museum Publishing Seminar is a rare chance for everyone from our small professional world to be in (almost) one room together. It’s always both fun and engaging.
This year’s seminar focuses on the intersection of print and online publications, new media and “old.” We’ll be attending many of those sessions and carrying the conversations over to dinners and drinks, learning from our colleagues and sharing our own ideas.
Coverage of changes in the publishing industry often seems to present us with either/or choices: Print or digital? Hardcover or Kindle? Brick-and-mortar library or Google Books? These are useful conversational questions, but the reality is of course more subtle. Museums, like all large institutions, need to connect with their audiences through any and all media, not choose one or the other. We shouldn’t abandon print entirely for the Web, and online projects needn’t threaten bibliophiles—both can help us publish important scholarship and promote our organizations’ missions.
Believing in print isn’t a reactionary attitude. Books are a technology, not a response to technology. Online publications, books, digitized collections, and limited editions can and should coexist in the same space. Just like editors, designers, and curators.
By Adrian Lucia
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