Electronic publishing
As Electronic publications are referred to publications in the form of electronic media, such as videos, podcasts, computer games, digital reference books and online publications. To use a digital playback device is necessary. Electronic publications are sold either on a physical medium (eg DVD ) or available as over the Internet online publications. Mixed forms in which additional contents and forms of use are offered over the Internet, occur.
In development for traditional broadcasting or the traditional print media have electronic publications today usually a media-specific added value in the form of search capability, interactivity, multimedia, hypertext and copyability on. Since the production of electronic publications can be expensive and their reception is bound to readers, they have to ( for example, as e-books) prevailed so far only in certain areas.
Areas
Electronic publications have so far can enforce priority in the following areas
- Mediatheques
- Scientific articles, especially in electronic journals and other periodicals
- Learning software, infotainment, edutainment, e-learning
- Computer Games
- Software
- Digital reference
Long-term preservation of electronic publications
The long-term preservation of electronic publications is a major problem due to the rapid development and volatility of storage media and software. Unlike print media, microform and digital storage media have typically only a limited shelf life of up to about 50 years. However, the realizable by the regular games on new media archiving of data still does not guarantee long-term availability. While paper with writing is readable even after several 100 to 1000 years, an electronic publication after 10 years can no longer be usable, since the required computer systems and data formats are outdated. Main tasks of the long-term preservation of electronic publications are therefore the conversion to new data formats and the emulation of obsolete computer systems. Helpful are open, media-neutral data formats like XML.
Collection
For the collection and archiving of electronic publications document server to be established. As part of its collection mandate the German National Library ( DNB) is required to collect electronic publications and preserve them for posterity. Making a start in electronic form dissertations, for DissOnline strategies have been developed within the DFG - project and recorded from 1998 in the German national bibliography.
- Http://deposit.ddb.de/ - Archive Server of the German Library
- Http://deposit.ddb.de/netzpub/web_langzeiterhaltung_ep.htm - Long-term preservation of electronic publications
Several other national libraries and other facilities currently experimenting with automatic " harvesting " process to archive clippings of the Internet, especially the World Wide Web. Best known is the Internet Archive. However, such a collection can always consist only of snapshots without further development.