From Big Cats to Barthes

I’ve just been checking out Wikibooks, a project of the Wikimedia found­a­tion that aims to create free books. Like Wikipedia, anybody can con­tribute to the books either by adding new material or editing existing books. Those books that are complete or voted ‘good enough’ are also avail­able as PDF doc­u­ments and even print editions created through Lulu.

A branch of the project is devoted to children’s books, WikiJunior, where you’ll find books about things like the solar system, big cats and the Kings and Queens of England. There are also things like A-​​level and GCSE text­books, lots of computer science stuff and hundred of others. The com­munity votes on which new books to develop, though looking at the history of many pages, a lot of the books are the creation of one enthu­siast with cor­rec­tions and addi­tions from others. Wikibooks appears to be a con­sid­er­ably more sedate and good-​​natured bunch than the wiki­pedia crowd, with little evidence of the edit-​​wars, van­dalism and obsessive nit­picking that char­ac­ter­ises some of the more con­tro­ver­sial wiki­pedia items. Perhaps this is because the project is less well-​​known, with a smaller com­munity. Perhaps it’s because books are typ­ic­ally big things that require a lot of work and so command some respect.

The aims of the project, like wiki­pedia, are to demo­cratise and spread know­ledge and inform­a­tion. Traditional pub­lishers, say the organ­isers, fail to recog­nise merit because their business models rely on creating best-​​sellers and so they’re risk-​​averse:

Traditional pub­lishing houses make the bulk of their income from re-​​issues of classic books, new books by authors with long track records, or celebrities who are famous in their own right. The chances of a truly good new work being pub­lished solely on the basis of merit skyrocket when you overturn the tra­di­tional business model and tap the well­spring of new talent out there using the ‘net.

With this project we have reached a cross­road between the books of yes­terday, and the encyc­lo­pedia of everything for tomorrow. Simply by reading this book and telling your friends, you have advanced the cause of free access to inform­a­tion and of demo­crat­izing the field of publishing.

There are issues, of course. I read through the PDF version of Big Cats, which is deemed complete, avail­able in print-​​format and on its way to a second edition. The inform­a­tion it contains appears to be accurate, well-​​researched and care­fully written to suit a young audience. Unfortunately, though, it was a bit odd. There’s lots of half-​​finished edits, changes in tone and register and the layout is pretty basic. Ultimately, I wouldn’t buy it.

So what does that mean? If one of the most highly developed books avail­able is still not good enough, is the project a failure? This is the sort of charge that’s levelled at Wikipedia: it contains incor­rect inform­a­tion, so it’s no good.

That’s not really the right way to look at wiki projects, though. The point of wikis, in my view, is that they are always works in progress. That’s their strength and their weakness. Unlike print editions, new inform­a­tion can be added at any time. When Pluto ceased to be clas­si­fied as a planet, thou­sands of books were suddenly out-​​of-​​date; Wikipedia was imme­di­ately up-​​to-​​date.

This philo­sophy inter­sects strangely with the idea of books, though. The idea of a book has con­nota­tions of com­plete­ness, cor­rect­ness and authority. (Correct in the sense that we don’t expect spelling mistakes, etc.) The idea of an unfin­ished book is para­dox­ical — if it’s not complete, then in some senses it’s not yet a book.

What you’re looking at when you read pretty much any wiki project is not some­thing analagous to anything produced on a printing press. It is a pal­impsest. The Romans wrote on wax tablets that could be re-​​used. Medieval monks wrote on vellum, a form of calf leather. If they needed new paper or made a mistake, they could peel off the current layer and write on it again. Modern scholars use ultra­vi­olet and multis­pec­tral imaging to try to decipher the history of the page. Wikis lay this process bare. The ghosts of previous versions, previous authors, can be seen in the crooked­ness of the edits; its history page provides an X-​​Ray of its genesis. Portents of its future are on the dis­cus­sion pages: some of these proph­ecies will come to pass while others will be forgotten.

WikiBooks might thus be viewed as the ultimate in post-​​modern writing. Derrida and Barthes talked about books having a ‘magic tablet’ quality. That there were other meanings and expres­sions hiding beneath the surface:

The Palimpsest intro­duces the idea of erasure as part of a layering process. There can be a fluid rela­tion­ship between these layers. Texts and erasures are super­im­posed to bring about other texts or erasures. A new erasure creates text; a new text creates erasure.

The “oddness” of Wikibooks is only apparent in the print and PDF versions. To publish them in these formats runs directly against the nature of its pro­gen­itor. Wiki pages are liquid; they exist at this moment in time, and they are always moving through time as edits and changes accrete con­tinu­ally. When those moments are frozen, captured into a snapshot, it’s like taking a still from a film. We know that the future and past of that picture already exists, but we can only guess at it.

(found through Derek Wenmoth’s fab edu­ca­tion blog)

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