by Roopinder Singh

LIFE, the iconic American magazine, gained a new life after over 1,860 issues, covering the years 1936 to 1972, were digitised and put online. Computers and the Internet together have created an atmosphere where we expect knowledge and entertainment at our fingertips, not by turning pages, but by tapping at the keyboard. Increasingly, we see that this trend is impacting something that we have taken for granted for centuries – books, the traditional repositories of wisdom, and more.

Books … we love the content, the feel of the paper they are printed on, what they convey to us and how they enrich us. Yet, books in classical form have limitations imposed by the very factors that make them so alluring – they can get damaged, cost money to print and distribute and have to be physically taken from one person to another, etc.

A page grab of the Google Books home page

E-books, or electronic books, promise to transform the content into bits and bytes that can be freely transmitted to all the corners of the connected earth, and beyond, for that matter. You can read what you want, when you want to, and where, provided you have an e-book reader, computer or even a mobile phone handy. A universal e-book library seems within reach.

The Internet giant Google has been in news recently because it is engaged in litigation defending its right to digitise books, following an agreement it penned in 2004 with a number of top university libraries to scan their collections. Over one crore books have been scanned by Google Books and this has made it the owner of the largest collection of titles in an electronic format.

This very ownership has raised the hackles of communities that are defending the rights of authors and copyright holders, as a result of which Google has given full access only to those books whose copyright has expired, or those whose copyright it has bought.

Many books are out of print, but have valid copyrights, which are sometimes difficult to establish. Such books are called “orphans”. Google has made an agreement through which Book Search users can read, download and print out-of-copyright books, freely.

Those books that aren’t actively being published or sold, but are within the copyright period, would, under the latest agreement, be digitised and become available online for preview and purchase.

The income would be shared between various parties. Right now, Google has almost come out of a long and complicated legal battle. Its doggedness is about to pay it rich dividends, since no one can compare with Google Books in the sheer number of titles that they have online, whether in limited view or otherwise.

However, Google is not the first mover in this field, nor is it the only player. Long before Google came up with the idea, other digitisation endeavours were underway, including the Library of Congress’s American Memory project, Project Gutenberg, the Million Book Project and the Universal Library.

Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitise and archive cultural works and to “encourage the creation and distribution of e-books.” It was started by Michael S. Hart in 1971 and is considered the oldest digital library. Effort is made to provide these texts in standard, long-lasting, open formats that can be used on almost any device – computer, Kindle, Sony Reader, or iPhone. Although pioneering, the project has just over 30,000 free e-books to read.

Microsoft has been an also-ran in this endeavour. It started Live Search Books, a project similar to Google Books, in late 2006, but abandoned it in May 2008. All was not lost, since the scanned books are now available on Internet Archive, a non-profit organisation.

The Europeans digitised over 30 lakh objects, including video, photos, paintings, audio, maps, manuscripts, printed books, and newspapers from the past 2,000 years of European history from over 1,000 archives in the European Union. The French National Library’s Gallica links to about eight lakh digitised books, newspapers, manuscripts, maps and drawings, etc.

Lakhs of books to read, and how many readers? Well, lakhs, even crores. Just a day before this article was written, Project Guttenberg showed that 1,01,122 books were downloaded. And the most popular authors? No surprise there: In the last month, the top five downloads were Charles Dickens (48,591), Mark Twain (40,703), Jane Austen (30,929), Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, (29,907) and William Shakespeare (28,163). Google, after digitising the Life magazine, has added many others to it its repertoire, and it is a pleasure to browse through them.

Amazon’s Kindle2 has triggered new interest in e-books and it has competitors like Sony nipping at its heels. What exactly is Kindle? Well, this e-book reader is lighter than an average paperback, while being as thin as a magazine. A wireless network connects it in over 100 countries. It can store over a thousand books and the new text-to-speech features reads out to you. As of now, 2,30,000 books and many newspapers and magazines are available. Incidentally, Kindle is also a software program that allows you to download book on to your computers or mobile phones.

Sony has its own readers which compete with Kindle. Sony has a good library also. Its readers have some special features that make them attractive. Other competitors include the iLiad, the Cybook Gen3, the Barnes & Noble nook and the Readius device from Polymer Vision.

Many people use personal digital assistants like Palm TX for downloading and reading e-books, but the main distinction that e-books have is the e-ink screen, a kind of electronic paper based on research started at the MIT Media Lab. The ultra-low power consumption screen is black and white and you can read without glare, even in bright sunlight. The image is stable, unlike computer or phone screens, it does not need to be refreshed constantly. It reflects ambient light rather than emitting its own light. Thus, it is much superior to other displays.

As we see a profusion of e-books and readers, the manufacturers will have to move towards universalisation of standards in technology and in ensuring that copyright violations do not take place. The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown’s latest book, can be downloaded free and publishers are up in arms against the distribution of pirated books through the Net.

This, however, is an old battle, albeit in a new form. Pirated editions of the book are available in Mumbai, Delhi and Chandigarh off the roadside stalls, in the conventional form. Technology is a tool, which can be used positively, or negatively.

As we move towards making books more accessible through digitisation, the idea of a universal library does not seem so utopian. The sheer reach of the electronic medium is staggering, and the written word continues to carry weight, whether it is printed on paper or read on screen.

This article was printed in The Tribune on November 27, 2009

Indian Persuasions: 50 years of Seminar: Selected Writings

Ed. Rudrangshu Mukherjee.

Roli Books. Pages 544. Rs 695.

Reviewed by Roopinder Singh

TO judge a book by its cover would be a transgression for whom only the written world matters. Yet, this cover comprises letters that when read together become the names of some of the finest minds in India, collectively representing a formidable intellectual legacy. Their coming together on the same page, so to say, shows the vision of the people who brought them together.

Indian Persuasions: 50 years of Seminar: Selected Writings

 Seminar is a magazine only in a strictly technical sense. It is far removed from the glossies that populate newsstands and purvey what purports to be opinion and information. Seminar, ever since its inception, has been a periodical that devoted itself only to one issue every month and encouraged experts to write on different aspects and express their views freely and frankly.

Raj and Romesh Thappar, the founders, brought out the first issue in September 1959, and kept it going till they both died in 1987. Romesh Thapar dallied with the Left in the 1940’s and 1950’s, and after spending some time in Bombay, where he was involved in films and art, he settled down in Delhi. His wife was his partner in every sense, and together with some friends, every month they brought out a new issue that provided fresh food for thought.

After their death, their daughter Malvika and her husband Tejbir Singh have kept the flame alive by continuing the legacy. Seminar provided a platform for new ideas, and it attracted the best—Nirad Chaudhuri, K.N. Raj, Amartya Sen, Nirmal Kumar Bose, and Beteille, have all contributed to it.

Rudrangshu Mukherjee, the historian who is editor with the Telegraph, has put together a collection of 60 articles divided into five sections:

1. Maximizing the Possibilities: Personalities, Parties and Politics
2.  Does the Centre Hold? Trends in Indian Politics
3.  Growing Out of Planning: Problems of Economic Development
4. Education the Nation: History
5. Other Themes; and Culture, Art, Identity.

India’s finest intellectuals find the space here to discuss various problems and issues. As we read them, we see how these articles are still as pertinent as they were the day they were written.

Perusing the volume, we find ourselves nodding our heads as the late Ravi Dayal describes Delhi as “a collection of villages, each with its own ways and mannerism, and altogether more provincial than stylish, integrated city of not so long ago”.

Krishna Kumar rightly focuses on the anti-rural bias in the Indian education system and points out that the rural school’s timetable is totally out of tune with the socio-economic routine of village life throughout the country. Robin Jeffery gives us a perceptive insight into Indian language newspapers. In India and History, Romesh Thappar gives an account of Indira Gandhi and her 19 years of rule as only someone who knew her well could have.

Reading the book, the reviewer often found himself looking at the end of each article to find out which issue it had originally been printed in. How Seminar brought out such insightful issues on relevant topics was something that one often wondered about as a student in Delhi when one was introduced to the magazine, became a reader and a collector. At first one only bought of immediate interest, then one started picking up those which could be of interest later, and soon all. For those who missed out issues, or are new converts, the magazine has an online presence and is now available in a digital format, as CDs.

One does not read such compendiums cover-to-cover in a linear fashion. One started at the beginning, which set the tone of the tome, but also dipped, skipped and jumped backwards and forward. The distinctive cover is typographical, echoing the technique used for the magazine since its inception—this book can thus be judged by its cover, since it reflects the content, while establishing a connection with the original magazine. The editor and the publishers deserve to be congratulated on putting together such a fine and relevant collection of essays. Indeed, this is a rich fare, to be savoured, mulled over, ruminated upon and revisited, much as people who have issues of Seminar tucked away in their shelves have been doing for over 50 years.

This review was published in The Tribune on Sunday, November 22, 2009.

The Press Council of India had decided that on the National Press Day, we would deliberate on ‘The changing face of Indian media’. The District Journalist’s Association, or the Zila Patarkar Parishad, Panchkula, had invited me to speak on this very topic on Sunday.

The Tribune Assistant Editor Roopinder Singh addresses mediapersons at the National Press Day celebrations in Panchkula on Sunday. Tribune photo: S Chandan

It’s always daunting to speak to one’s colleagues, and it became more so when I found that I was the only one who addressed them in English—the rest of the proceedings were largely in Hindi, where I have limitations, especially in speaking formally. The audience was multilingual and this proved no impediment.

The Tribune’s Chandigarh edition had a rather extensive report on the event. Please click here to read it.

A very Happy Gurpurab to all. Today is the day when Guru Nanak Dev ji came to this world to dispel fog through the light of enlightenment. Guru Nanak Dev’s message is universal, and as various man-made boundaries crumble, the world needs to understand and adopt the Guru’s message of oneness of mankind. 

I feel that the youth and the world at large is seeking Guru Nanak’s message and we have to provide it to them through every means possible. Having written “Guru Nanak: His Life and Teachings,” in 2004, I thought that the 2006 Hindi translation would enable it to reach wider audience. It did, and now I thought that I would reach for the cyber world. Today I unveiled a page on Twitter, which is devoted to the teachings of the founder of Sikhism. The venue was the Panjab Kala Bhavan where my publishers, Rupa and Co, are holding a book exhibition.  

The Twitter page, will be updated daily with a new message from Gurbani, translated into simple English every day. I must thank my friends from Intelligaia, Rajiv, Cheena, Sandeep and their team for going out of their way for translating my ideas into workable cyber solutions. The website, blog and now the Twitter page, all this I owe to their skill and enthusiasm for my projects.

From Website

The original experience of being in a Gurdwara and listening to Gurbani recitation has no substitute, but it is not possible for many people to go to a Gurdwara, and for many others to understand Gurbani in its original language. That would be ideal, but they can still get the Guru’s word through other languages and in various mediums.

Guru emphasised on “shub karam”. Now, if we look at the cyber world, we see that people are working together, across continents and civilisations without knowing each other physically. What binds them is their work ethic, and the ability to work together. This proves that all too often we are caught up with minor differences that take away our attention from the essential universality of mankind. 

Today, we have a cyber sangat that extends the reach of the message far beyond normal geographical limitations. Websites such as SikhWiki.com, Sikhnet.com and SikhChic.com have brought out various aspects of the Gurus, and Sikh religion, art and culture for the world to see.

When we are in a world which is yet evolving and which is seeking guidance, I feel that Guru Nanak’s message is what the world needs, and that too in simple English for people to understand and follow.

Besides my family and friends, a number of Chandigarhians and some foreign students were present at the event.  THANK YOU ALL.