Category Archives: Technology

Website Case Study: South Dakota Review Faces Accessibility Challenges

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Websites for literary magazines and presses vary widely, from simple, singular webpages to intricate networks of highly designed sites. For presses and magazines with websites on either end of this spectrum, I thought it might be useful to present a short series of website case studies, exploring some of the challenges and successes of literary press and magazine website design.

For the first study in the series, I looked at South Dakota Review, which provides an example of a common dilemma facing literary magazines affiliated with schools: remote site integration.

When you Google “South Dakota Review,” the first result is orgs.usd.edu/sdreview, the journal’s page on the University of South Dakota’s website. The second result is southdakotareview.com, the journal’s primary website.

The journal’s page on the USD website has:

  • an “about” page
  • sample poems, essays, and stories from past issues
  • submission guidelines
  • subscription information

From these features, it seems like this could easily be South Dakota Review’s only presence on the web. When I visited it for the first time, I assumed it was, and had a very confusing conversation with my advisor about where on the site to find SDR’s social media links.

SDR’s main site at southdakotareview.com is not the fanciest website out there, but it is certainly more sophisticated and has more time and energy devoted to its upkeep than the USD website. Hosted on WordPress, southdakotareview.com has:

  • blog updates
  • an “about” page
  • submission guidelines
  • subscription information
  • a blogroll
  • SDR Facebook link

Notably, the only link I can find between the two sites is a broken image (which seems like it should be the SDR logo) on southdakotareview.com that leads to the University of South Dakota SDR site. If, like me, you stumble onto the University of South Dakota page first, you can still find all essential information about South Dakota Review–the submissions page includes their new Submishmash option, the subscription instructions are consistent with those on the other site. But it seems a shame that SDR’s efforts with its main website could be lost on some searchers. On the other hand, the USD site’s selection of sample poems, essays, and stories would be missed by visitors to southdakotareview.com.

At this point, it seems readily apparent that the integration of these separate websites would be ideal. But there are many possible explanations for why that hasn’t happened:

  • It seems likely that the USD page was formerly South Dakota Review’s primary website, and perhaps the move of the main page to southdakotareview.com was a decision relating to the limited bandwidth available through the University of South Dakota.
  • Perhaps it was also a move to grant SDR more independent control over the site, with WordPress as an easy way to generate a news feed.
  • Leaving the USD page up as a separate entity seems to be both a practical and political move. If readers are used to finding South Dakota Review information through the University of South Dakota, pulling the page from the USD website entirely would just lead to confusion. And certainly SDR wouldn’t want to disassociate itself from USD, which would be an easy conclusion for readers to jump to if SDR pulled its information from the USD website.
  • Why the South Dakota Review page on the University of South Dakota website doesn’t even link to southdakotareview.com is a trickier question. Perhaps this too is a political or logistical issue, or perhaps it’s just something that SDR hasn’t gotten around to addressing yet.

Whatever the reasons for South Dakota Review’s two websites, their presence makes it clear that negotiating content accessibility decisions as a university-affiliated press or magazine is wrought with with challenging issues.

BookLamp: Post-Metadata, Equal Opportunity Book Discovery?

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I was told some months ago to anticipate the arrival of a Netflix for books. And now BookLamp, widely deemed the “Pandora for books,” has arrived. (Not Netflix exactly, but I’ll take it.)

BookLamp uses an algorithm to identify the elements that make up a book. This is done in two branches. StoryDNA assesses the constitution of a book’s settings and actors (elements that act within a setting), and presents the levels of these components compared to other books in the database. The second branch of BookDNA measures elements of language, such as pacing, dialogue, and description. Users can browse by BookDNA element, or use a book they know and love to find similar titles—like creating a Pandora station.

I see BookLamp as an exciting alternative mode of book discovery. While metadata similarly creates specific classifications for books, BookLamp has the capacity to be infinitely more precise, though I do think the genome structure is still in need of development to be more intuitive to reading preferences.

Some readers are up in arms about the preposterousness of a computer giving a truly personal recommendation in the way that a friend can. While of course a computer cannot replace your best friend (or maybe just not yet…), algorithms like this one have proven to be very successful at figuring us out, re: Netflix and Pandora. In the discussion at Publishing Perspectives, Richard Nash responded to the resistance with this TED talk by Kevin Slavin, detailing the unstoppable increasing influence of algorithms on our society.

I think there is great possibility in BookLamp for literary publishers. Unlike Amazon, BookLamp is a neutral recommender. As their FAQ states, BookLamp’s algorithm is unaffected by popularity or marketing, giving books from small presses equal opportunity to be discovered to those from the big five publishers. At last!

Right now, BookLamp has only 20,000 books in its database. However, this number is slated to increase rapidly as BookLamp pursues its goal of working with as many publishers as possible. To join them, email publishers@booklamp.org.

Push Pop Press and Possibilities for Literary Publishers

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Push Pop Press released its first title, Our Choice by Al Gore, on April 28th. Many have hailed the interactive book for the iPad and iPhone as a revolutionary step into the future of ebooks, while others say it’s little more than a glorified website on a platform destined to be a one-hit wonder. Regardless of which side you take, Push Pop Press raises questions about the digitalization of literary publishing, while offering itself as a potential solution.

Co-founders Kimon Tsinteris and Mike Matas told Wired that they intend to release Push Pop Press as an affordable, user-friendly layout program primarily to be used by small publishers wanting to create their own book apps.

Sounds great, right? An affordable way to go digital by custom designing your own app in-house? But Our Choice’s interactive components are mini-documentaries and charts—what should a book app contain, say, for a novel? Must all literary presses and magazines move in the direction of literary magazine Electric Literature, with multimedia presentations of the text?

Considering the attention Electric Literature is receiving, that may be a good idea. But really, I think Push Pop Press and other multimedia designs are just baby steps toward a more complex understanding of how a book can be interactive.  Facebook isn’t boomingly popular because users can watch videos on it, but because of the social connections they can foster while watching them. The ability to blow on a virtual windmill while reading about solutions for global warming isn’t true interaction, yet.