By Chris Kubica
Read Part Two and Part Three of this article on our news blog.
Imagine the future of books not as physical objects, but as relational databases…
You use relational databases every day whether you realize it or not. When you get money from an ATM you are accessing the bank’s relational database (which is quietly keeping track of you and how much money you have available). When you travel by plane massive, international, relational databases keep track of the airport you’re at, the plane you’re in, where you are, where your bags are, et cetera. When you search for a good book to buy at the website of a bookstore, you are accessing a vast database of inter-related titles, authors, subjects, reviews and cover shots.
It may be easier to think of a relational database this way: You know that old, tin recipe box on your kitchen counter that’s filled with all the wonderful hand-written recipe cards you inherited from Grandma? That recipe box and all its contents is a relational database, too.
A relational database is something that stores information in a structured, organized way.
Let’s mull over that recipe box example for a bit.
The recipe box itself is the relational database. All the information about Grandma’s recipes is stored (hopefully) neatly inside. The recipe cards inside the recipe box are related to the recipe box. In other words, this particular set of recipe cards can only be inside one recipe box at a time, right?
Each and every recipe card in the box has its own related list of ingredients as well as a related list of instructions or steps you take to make the recipe. There might be a list of necessary equipment (like cookie cutters) on each card as well.
And if Grandma was a Fancy Nancy she may have written a category (dessert, main course, appetizer, et cetera) on each card to keep the recipes organized. She may have even had the recipes sectioned up into groups or sets using tabbed dividers.
A diagram for this tin and paper-based relational recipe database looks like this:
If you have an upgraded Grandma 2.0, she has moved beyond the tin and paper and now types all of her recipes as “records” into a relational recipe database on her kitchen netbook (which is why she has donated her tin and paper “backup” to you). Now that everything is stored electronically and relationally (meaning she’s put things in their right place, like by typing only instructions into the instructions part of a recipe record, for example), Grandma (and you) can use the data contained in all of the recipes — in aggregate — in ways impossible to do with paper and tin alone.
For example, you can run queries (searches) on your recipes:
Or you can run reports or summaries on the recipes:
So what would a relational database of a book look like in diagram form? Somewhat similar. Like this:
The book is the anchor of this relational database much like the recipe box is in the recipe box example. Inside the book: chapters, a table of contents, maybe an index. Each chapter is made up of sentences (at least sentences…maybe pictures, too!) and each sentence is made up of words.
You can extend this as I do above to include the book’s genre (or several genres) and language (like English), as well.
There are other relationships at work in a book, too, but for simplicity I’ve left them off the diagram. For example, each entry in the table of contents has a related chapter and certain sentences or words might relate to an entry or three in the index, and so on.
Assuming the program or “platform” that your book-as-database is published on has tools you can use to do such things, what types of queries might you or your readers like to do on/in the book?
How about:
If it’s an e-book, you could run summaries such as:
If your book is paper only, the above queries are simply not possible. That “intelligence” is locked away in the book with no way to get to it.
Not at all! Just because the book is built sentence-by-sentence, record by record, in a database doesn’t stand in the way of a simple, elegant “interface” (how the book looks/how it works) on the reader side. In other words, it will still walk and talk like the types of books we’re currently used to reading. For example, here’s a screenshot of a book I’m writing myself using my own book-as-database platform, neverend books:
See? It looks like a pretty calm, easy-on-the-eyes e-book, doesn’t it? But it is a book-as-database behind the scenes.
Writing/building a book-as-database from the start requires thinking about how the contents of a book can later be searched, shared, aggregated, re-organized, re-presented, re-purposed and indexed.
However, the interface for readers and even for the author need not be complex or extra-technical in the slightest. A writer could write the book the “old fashioned way”, using a word processor and then upload the manuscript to be “processed” into database format by the publishing platform (more on platforms later). Or a writer could simply write right in a Web browser while the platform automatically saves the work regularly into book-as-database format.
The world is already filled with many millions of existing books, and new books are being written and published every day. So while the diagram of your book by itself that we see here is interesting, it doesn’t paint a complete picture of the ecosystem in which your book can live.
Tomorrow, in Part 2 — which will be posted here to PP’s “News Blog” – I consider how to incorporate your book-as-database into the larger ecosystem of libraries, collections and information.
Chris Kubica of Chapel Hill, North Carolina is the founder of neverendmedia.com. He is a software developer by day, author by night, reader always. He can be reached via e-mail, phone at 1-919-259-8023 or Twitter @chriskubica
DISCUSS: Should Writers Write for Themselves or Others?
VISIT: Chris Kubica’s own “book as database”
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Should Writers Write for Themselves or Others?
2 months ago
[...] Today’s lead story by Chris Kubica outlines a future for books in which they are not physical objects, but relational databases. The, argues Kubica, enables the writer to open up the text and unlock the information inside, allowing the reader to engage more fully — and even participate — in the growth and development of the book. It is a future where books are “neverending” texts that integrate the experiences of the readers themselves, giving readers a genuine role to play in the life of the book. [...]
Brian O'Kane
2 months ago
Chris,interesting notion – hadn’t hought of a book as a database, or as far as you have extended the idea – but we have taken two of our books, Quick Win Marketing and Quick Win Digital Marketing – both made up of a series of Q&As where the content is effectively a grid and adapted the as iPhone apps, using the grid for navigation. You can see then at http://www.bit.ly/QWMLite and http://www.bit.ly/QWDMLite. But I can see how you could extend the notion to write a VERY comprehensive tome on a subject and then publish versions at different levels of complexity for different audiences – students, practitioners, researchers – by selecting different elements from the database. Clever!
Richard Nash
2 months ago
I’m reminded of Holocron continuity database. According to the Star Wars wiki it’s:
“… the database used internally by Lucas Licensing to keep track of all of the fictional elements created for the Star Wars universe, and contains elements from nearly every officially sanctioned Star Wars source. It is maintained by Leland Chee (aka Tasty Taste) on FileMaker Pro 7 software, and was created in early 2000, starting from a core of material imported into the database from the Behind the Magic and Episode I Insider’s Guide CD-ROMs, but it has since grown substantially as new information has been added.”
Caitlin @ Roaming Tales
2 months ago
Sounds hellish for both readers and writers.
When I read a book, I don’t want a firehose; I want a carefully edited stream. I’m interested in the author’s ideas and selections. I already have vast quantities of information rushing at me every day; I read a book to make sense of some small part of it. No point trying to drink the ocean with a straw.
And if I ever write a book, I would want at least some measure of control over it.
Chris Kubica
2 months ago
Caitlin, what part of what I describe above makes what I propose a firehose? My idea really comes down to the idea that the book is built in such away to make everything inside it accessible in many ways. But that doesn’t take away from a writer’s control, ability to make careful selections, to only post work that has matures, etc.
Thanks.
Chris
Chris Kubica
2 months ago
Richard, now if only you could somehow become part of that massive Star Wars database as a character in the story THEN we’d be talkin.’
Your Book as a Database (Part 2)
2 months ago
[...] in Your Book as a Database: A Primer, we laid the foundation for thinking of books as relational databases. Today, I want to expand that [...]
James Lamb
2 months ago
What is missing from the database is a box between Index and Words called Concepts. This should form a many-to-many relationship, so that the Index comprises many Concepts, each Concept comprises many Words, and each Word can appear in multiple Concepts.
All book indexes work this way, although in paper books it is usual for the index entries to point only to the page number, just as a pragmatic simplification. Embedded indexes are created exactly this way, identifying the exact start and end of each concept, so that they can be accurately displayed via electronic (i.e. non-fixed pagination) media.
Thelmadonna
2 months ago
To Chris’s list I would add
*novels and biographies, etc.,that engage beyond the page, that are in effect portals to historical epochs, philosophical concepts, etc., by means of photographs, related essays, art, music, you name it.
Personally, I would prefer not to have hyperlinks within the text itself (too distracting) but available in a small, nonobtrusive menu box off in a corner of the page.
Donald Mikkelson
2 months ago
Chris . . . . As I slowly “get” what you are describing, I becomre more comfortable with your ideas. But, like Catlin, my first impressions were that this would become some kind of “cluster soiree” in which some author would write a book (fiction or non) and then other interested “authors” would chime with additions and subtractions of the text to imporve the quality of the book . . . perhaps if they didn’t like the ending of a novel, change it to suit their own fantacies, or whatever. The “book” in such a circumstance would never get published because you could have dozens of “authors” in a never-ending battle over every aapect of the plot, the sub-plots, climax and ending.
Is that what you are suggesting when you say, The [concept] argues Kubica, enables the writer to open up the text and unlock the information inside, allowing the reader to engage more fully — and even participate — in the growth and development of the book.”
A lot of what you are suggesting sounds workable and valuable and like what Amazon.com is already doing (on in a more limited way) with their “books as database” policies. They have the “tag” capability to relate a book to suggestions that others might be interested in and then they send out emails alerting readers who have read similar books.
Perhaps you will clarify what you are saying in part three on Monday. But if you are suggesting a “never-ending-book” due to all the wonderful contributions presumably dozens, hundreds or thousands of people would collaborate in writing, wouldn’t that just be another blog without a turntable at the end of a railroad line? Or are you sugesting something similar to comments that follow articles which have a “reply” box and in that way, the “book” will end only when people stop replying to the content of the book and/or replies to what others have written?
I like what I think you are saying about how your concept would allow an exponential increase exposure to available readers and how they can use one’s book as a database for all kinds of research opportunities.
Don
Argyris Kastaniotis
2 months ago
Here is a book about death which was created by fetching related data from the web using an algorithm . http://vimeo.com/11464150
Matt Cramer
2 months ago
I’ve tried to use two of the multimedia auto manuals you talked about. Didn’t have tips from other mechanics, but they have most of the rest. Unfortunately, none of them have worked as well as the print versions. Sometimes it’s because they leave out critical information. Other times they try to convert fold-out page into imagemaps, scan illustrations sideways, or otherwise exhibit questionable conversion decisions. But often, the worst part is they often botch the way they’re organized. For example, I tried to look up how to change the oil in my own car in one of them, and somehow the directions under “oil change” weren’t the oil change directions, but directions for how to remove half the oiling system!
Your Book as a Database (Part 3)
2 months ago
[...] in Your Book as a Database: A Primer, we laid the foundation for thinking of books as relational databases. Yesterday in Part 2 I [...]
Chris Kubica
2 months ago
Matt: a neverend version of the auto manual would have the readers/users being able to scream the errors and poor quality to the author which would hopefully prompt fast corrections/updates.
Chris Kubica
2 months ago
Donald: a book could be finite. Like if I upload Moby Dick as a neverend book, the text of Moby Dick would not change. The data, notes, comments, highlights, etc of readers is what could e infinite.
On the other hand, a book about how to build computers, say, would constantly be updated as the tech itself is always changing. In that case, the book itself AND the reader metadata could be in a neverending state of flux.
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