E-Books for Museums: How to Make Them, and Why You Should

Holding decades worth of exhibition catalogs, member journals, symposium papers, and historical records, museums go beyond being repositories of objects – they are also repositories of knowledge about objects and their related fields. Accessible, flexible, and exploding in popularity, e-books offer museums the opportunity to use this readymade trove of material to develop a deeper connection with visitors, increase audience exposure through new channels, and even generate new revenue. Following an overview of the e-book industry, and a look at the few approaches being explored in museums today, we'll dive into e-books by creating one from start to finish in this half-day workshop.

In three and a half hours – using readily accessible tools and a DIY spirit—we'll identify the content for publication, digitize the text, format it, create a cover, finalize and check the files and send it out for distribution. Along the way we will discuss the pros and mostly cons of digital rights management; the ins and outs of all the major e-book sales channels; best practices for format specification and e-book reader rights; and the possibilities for where this content, once digitized, might go next, including print-on-demand editions, online databases, mobile in-museum downloads, and more.

For both the workshop and the successful implementation of e-book programs in the future, no programming experience is necessary to get started. We will start with the basics, focusing on the industry-dominant EPUB format, which is an open specification built largely with web-friendly HTML and CSS that can be as simple or as rich you’d like. Along with nuts and bolts knowledge and a solid introduction to the e-book field at large, participants will walk away with the skills necessary to produce and distribute high-quality industry-standard e-books on their own, for next to nothing, in less than a day.