Exact Editions is an access platform, not a download platform, which enables users to access books through the web at any time. This means that the platform can be used to give time-limited but fully open access to complete books. When books are distributed as complete files for the end-user’s system, as is almost always the case with PDF files and eBook formats, there is no easy way of stopping their use at the end of a certain period. So Exact Editions can be used to give a book time-limited free access as part of a promotion, perhaps for no other reason that to promote the printed book. 

The case for putting books on the Exact Editions platform may be strongest and most compelling with books which can only be messed up or wrecked by being presented as ebooks. And ebooks  most obviously fail with highly illustrated or tightly designed books, which are beautifully presented on formatted pages but are hopeless when dissolved in a reflowable format such as used in the Amazon Kindle or the EPUB format of the International Digital Publishing Forum.

Although highly illustrated books are particularly suited to the Exact Editions platform, many other books have a finished quality which can be wrecked when converted to reflowable formats, and for such books Exact Editions provides a new kind of promotional platform. Carcanet Press are one of the most admired modern poetry publishers and are working with Exact Editions to provide promotional access to many of their new and forthcoming books.

These books will take advantage of Exact Editions unique ability to provide fully open, fully citeable, but time-limited access to books on the web. Currently two Carcanet books are available for completely open, but time-limited access (limited until 1 October).

https://institutions.exacteditions.com/beowulf

or

https://institutions.exacteditions.com/complete-nonsense

Clicking on those links will take the user straight through to the editions themselves. Press the “View” button and the book is there in your browser: no password, no user name, and every page in the books is citeable via its own URL.

Carcanet Press’s full use of the Exact Editions promotional platform will start on 1 October, with 10 titles live for a month, including:

Understand the Weapon, Understand the Wound –John Cornford

The Homeric Hymns — Peter McDonald

Today the complete archive for Crafts magazine is launched on the Exact Editions service as a compelling resource for universities, colleges, schools and organisations that can use this reference resource.

Crafts complete archive from an iPad

The complete archive includes all 254 issues, since the very first issue published in 1973. Grant Gibson the current editor  surveys some of the scintillating features in the latest issue assembled from international craftsmen (and women!)

We hope this all goes to show that even in our bite-size digital age – where it seems too often genuine expertise is denigrated in favour of the bluster of easy rhetoric – skill and a deep understanding of materials really matter, perhaps now more than ever. Crafts editorial September/October 2016

In the case of the complete archive for Crafts magazine we have an example of the rather more than bite-sized advantages of digital solutions. A deep understanding of the magazine is facilitated when the digital version is available and searchable in complete form to subscribers also to researchers and students in universities and colleges. Over 250 issues, approximately 30,000 pages and we estimate over 13 million words.

Crafts is, as it should be, a beautiful magazine, easily browsed and it is richly illustrated, but it is also an essential and highly informative cultural resource for anyone interested in the rich history of practical arts and crafts in the UK and elsewhere over the last 50 years. It is now a fully searchable resource and searches on the database can be freely undertaken (even by users without a subscription).  The complete archive will be of interest and fascination to active craftsmen and artists, but the ease of searching now makes Crafts also a tool for scholars and researchers.

A search for “Lucie Rie” brings up over 200 hits

Opera Magazine has launched its complete digital archive, going all the way back to the first issue of the magazine, in February 1950. Digital subscribers can now enjoy unlimited access to 66 years’ worth of articles, reviews and photographs: an unparalleled resource within the operatic world.

The archive is both historically fascinating and relevant to what’s happening now – those following Plácido Domingo’s latest performances, for instance, will be able to look back to his debut. All the content is fully searchable, and there are hundreds of in-depth profiles of favourite singers past and present to explore. Highlights also include articles by great composers and authors including Ralph Vaughan Williams and E.M. Forster, plus reviews of significant premieres around the world, including all the Britten operas from Billy Budd onwards.

Described as ‘the bible of the industry’ by the Daily Telegraph, Opera has been the world’s leading commentator on the lyric stage since its foundation. The magazine continues to provide unrivalled coverage of events through a mixture of features, analysis, news and reviews by a network of international correspondents, covering performances from every corner of the globe.

If you would like to access the complete Opera archive, by purchasing a digital subscription, please click here.

Starting today for a week Exact Editions and Carcanet Press are providing Open Access to a wonderful collection of 50 Carcanet titles via Twitter tweets. See here

And now for one of Mervyn Peake’s nonsense verses to whet the appetite and cover the head:

Exact Editions is now providing access to three fascinating books on Social Media from the new Open Access publisher University College of London Press.

The first three titles are available as free PDF files from the UCL Press web site, and they can also be accessed from Exact Editions via these links:

https://institutions.exacteditions.com/how-the-world-changed-social-media

https://institutions.exacteditions.com/social-media-in-an-english-village

https://institutions.exacteditions.com/social-media-in-southeast-turkey

the whole collection from:

https://institutions.exacteditions.com/ucl-press

The books provide empirical, comparative, insights into our use of social media and they have an elegant and readable design:

Reading and searching the books through Exact Editions’ new web Reader is  straightforward. All this aids readability, and yet much the same functionality can be found with the original PDF files and an adequate PDF app. The distinctive and for books on social media, highly appropriate,  functionality that the Exact Editions platform adds is that the book becomes much more shareable and more efficiently citeable. For example, I can simply and directly share with you via email, message, Twitter or Facebook, individual pages. Here the page which gives us a map of the  city in which the Turkish study was centred:

https://reader.exacteditions.com/issues/51052/page/19

That link will take anyone directly to the right page in the book. Having each page individually linkable and shareable is a great advantage for a book that is being studied by a group or used in scholarly references. And for open access books this is a special advantage because, of course, anyone can see the full page. It seems likely that the ability to cite and link directly to individual pages will be very necessary for students of social media. It is really quite inefficient to link to a full PDF file, much better if direct digital links to the precise page are available. And if a discussion is taking place over specific topics in the book, the discussion can proceed with every participant seeing and linking to the same individual pages.

The importance of sharing a specific view or interaction with a digital book is also illustrated by the way that search highlights are delivered when a search query is shared. Again this is a feature which has real potential for teaching and classroom discussions.

Or see a parallel search for ‘Orkut’ in Social Media in an English Village.

twitter.com/adamhodgkin/status/748546273716932608

The Exact Editions platform uses the open PDF files that the UCL Press makes available for its open access books, and PDF files are a reliable and sensible choice for preserving books with print functionality, but if a book or a set of books is to be widely studied and the reading experience shared, there is much to be said for a platform which allows users and readers to share and cite individual pages.