3.2 Problems of transition

Scholars repeatedly raise several basic concerns about electronic publication that must be addressed beforethe discipline can move forward. Art historians will not—and need not—surrender the pleasure of slowly reading a beautifully illustrated book, a pleasure not likely to be replicated in theelectronic realm. Some worry that the electronic medium imposes, as it were, a cognitive style that favors scanning over close readingand modular information over holistic argument, but the growing range of electronic materials will gradually refute thistechnologically determinist position. Scholars in this study were prepared to believe that distinctive benefits will emerge fromelectronic publication, but flagged practical, professional, and disciplinary concerns summarized below. Their concerns may beunderstood as problems of transition in developing a new framework of scholarly communication.

Image quality

Image quality is a decisive consideration in art history publishing. While image quality will require constantvigilance, continuing technological improvements highlight the advantages of digital illustrations over their print analogs interms of color, interactivity, and quantity. Color is a rare luxury in scholarly print publications (exhibition catalogues are theexception), but color in online publications adds no extra cost. Zooming and panning tools make it possible to illustrate anargument with a thoroughness rarely achieved in print and fulfill the art historian’s singular desire to enlarge details and move through buildings. Of course there are costs, still unquantified,of online illustration programs, but costs are not based on the use of color, resolution, or digital enhancements such asmagnification. As a result, electronic publications promise sumptuous, richly detailed, and interactive color illustrationprograms unparalleled in print form.

Copyright access

As set forth in Part II of this report, the regime of copyright restrictions has limited access to digitalimages and thwarted the potential to reach an expanding audience on the World Wide Web. Electronic publication requires still more thanaccess to images. For the truly dynamic way we propose to use images, licenses must grant liberal terms of use.

Owners of works of art and images of them have a strong attachment to the integrity of the works, and copyrightlicenses habitually insist that images may not be cropped, rotated, animated, or manipulated in publication. When the heuristic valueof interactive images to the works of art can be shown consistently, this objection can be expected to fall away.

Credentialing and academic quality

Because born-digital publications of monographic scope do not now exist in the field, it is not clear ifthey would be accorded the same weight in tenure review as a printed book. Nevertheless, the perception that digitalpublications will be considered lesser contributions threatens to create a self-reinforcing resistance to such initiatives. Thissituation is likely to be changed by two dynamics. First, the increasing capacity of digital print-on-demand may succeed inerasing our awareness of a manuscript’s electronic origins. E-books will cease to seem a breed apart and join a continuum of books withvarying production values. A 2006 University of California study envisioned this outcome: "because print on demand technology makesit possible cost effectively to produce high-quality print versions of rigorous reviewed digital-first or digital-only publications,print publication is no longer a meaningful surrogate for peer review and quality of imprint."