Publishing

“Unknown” no more

This Veterans’ Day, we honor Joe Garland, his service to his country during World War II in the 45th Infantry Division, and his service to his fellow soldiers and readers back home in the publication of his collective memoir: “Unknown Soldiers: Reliving World War II in Europe.” We miss you, Joe!

Future Library Project

Talk about the publishing cycle, long-form! Last fall, Margaret Atwood delivered her new novel “Scribbler Moon” to the Future Library Project (http://www.futurelibrary.no/), to be read in 100 years after it is printed on some of the thousand tiny new trees that the project has just planted in the forest outside of Oslo, Norway, home of

“Online Publishing: Threat or Menace?” 1993-2015

  The Journal of Electronic Publishing contacted us recently, looking for an update to a paper about online publishing I wrote and presented in 1993, and which this Michigan journal published 20 years ago. Also presenting on the same panel with me at that the Graphics Communication Association Online Publishing Conference was Tim Berners-Lee, showing slides

“Stories From the Shadows” Sheds Light

Helping “grey” (nontraditional) publishers produce books and succeed in the market is an exciting part of what OBS does, so it gives us great pleasure to see a Boston organization, whose mission we so admire, emerge into the world of publishing.  Celebrating 30 years of continuous care of Boston’s homeless population, “Stories From the Shadows: Reflections of a

Accessibility>ASCII: ADA Expected To Get New Teeth in July

When the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was introduced in 1990, compliance for the hearty band of e-publishing pioneers at that time meant converting desktop publishing files and HTML files into plain ASCII, to render their content machine-readable, thus offering disabled readers the  “full and equal enjoyment” of their content, as well as the “effective

< SIGH > There Goes My Job… Or Not

OBS once built a zesty Web interface for a school that enabled students to drop, click, aggregate, and otherwise customize and combine web-based content with their own. The system automated workflow which up till that point had existed on legal pads, hard drives, and in paper files. When we demo’ed the program to the school’s

Yesterday’s Business: Managed Hosting

In the early days of the Internet, OBS used to not only design and develop internet solutions for publishers, but we also served as a managed host for the custom applications we built – keeping the system software environment and the applications updated, secure, and otherwise supported (customer and client support included!), all running behind

OBS at the London Book Fair

Having traveled the world as a publishing innovator and leader, OBS president Laura Fillmore is no stranger to hopping the pond. That said, she is very much looking forward to attending the London Book Fair this month — especially the Research and Scholarly Forum. The London Book Fair is one of the world’s largest and most influential publishing conferences, and is

All Eyes on London in April

Looking forward to the London Book Fair in two weeks, and especially the Research and Scholarly Forum. In our 30+ years of e-publishing experience, it seems like the real innovations come out of the STM space. That may be because scientists seek to discover or uncover the truth as they publish. Scientists tend to stretch