2012 Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing

>> Good morning and welcome to WPI, President Dunlap,
Provost Hoverstrung, Provost Haefner,
chairs and deans, welcome to our campus.
It's our pleasure to be the host of this wonderful event.
As you know, this is a special pleasure for me
to welcome you to our campus.
RIT is where I first got the pleasure of learning,
that pleasure of understanding where passion comes from,
learning the sciences and engineering fields.
My career in biochemistry started at RIT.
And as the dean of Arts and Sciences here
at WPI it is especially a wonderful treat
for me to welcome you.
It's also the place where in that first year
of chemistry I met my husband,
and it's been chemistry ever since.
[Laughter] So today I've actually found four WPI faculty
who are alums of RIT.
You know, we have a lot in common.
We recognize that WPI and RIT share a similar mission
as technologically oriented institutions.
For those of us who are new to WPI,
our RIT home made us feel right at home here.
Since its founding in 1865, WPI has pioneered as one
of the intersections of education which looked
at both the theory and the practice of education.
Today our project-based curriculum continues
this tradition.
We have full term projects where students concentrate each term
on eight projects in their junior and senior year.
We have great problem seminar,
and we've expanded our graduate programs,
which now together compose the heart of the WPI Plan.
WPI is also extremely fortunate to be surrounded
by a vibrant community of those who not only study, but practice
in the arts, the arts of historians, archivists,
writers, documentarians.
The Antiquarian Society is certainly the cornerstone
of this community and we are so grateful
to have this national treasure right here in our backyard.
So today RIT School of Media Sciences is here
to honor our neighbor and our partner,
The American Antiquarian Society,
with the Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing.
This honor is so very fitting to the Antiquarian Society,
and we are so very proud.
So as an alum of RIT, as a Worcester community member,
and as the dean of one of these historian institutions, WPI,
it is my pleasure to welcome you to our campus on behalf
of the entire administration.
And we would like to send our sincere congratulations
to the Antiquarian Society for this very prestigious award.
We hope that you have a stimulating
and very fruitful day on campus.
And I'd like to now invite associate dean of the College
of Imaging Arts and Sciences from RIT, Dr. Twyla Cummings.
>> [Applause] Thank you.

Thank you.
I guess I need to get to the mic [laughter].
But on behalf of myself, Provost Haefner, Dean Justice
and the entire Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing committee,
please accept this small token of our thanks.
Thank you.
>> Thank you.
[Applause]
>> So good morning everyone and thank you for joining us
at this award celebration.
In addition to my role as associate dean in the College
of Imaging Arts and Sciences, I hold the title of the Paul
and Louise Miller Distinguished Professor.
And it this endowed chair along with the School
of Media Sciences that is sponsoring today's events.
We use several acronyms at the Rochester Institute Technology,
so I will, of course, just refer to it as RIT.
Today we honor the recipient of the 28th Isaiah Thomas Award
in Publishing, which was established in 1979.
This award, which honors leaders in the newspaper industry,
is named in tribute to an early leader
of the American Publishing Industry.
One of the many criterion for this award is someone
who has demonstrated career achievements
and has been a role model for students pursuing careers
in the fields of printing, publishing, and media sciences.
Past recipients of the Isaiah Thomas Award include Allen
Neuharth, Founder of the Freedom Forum and USA Today.
Katharine Graham, President, Washington Post Company.
Arthur Sulzberger Junior,
Chairman of the New York Times Company and Publisher
of the New York Times .
And Thomas Curley, President and CEO of the Associated Press.
Joining this select group today is the American
Antiquarian Society.
This is the first time the award has been presented
to an organization rather than an individual, or in the case
of last year, a group of individuals
when we presented the award
to seven RIT Pulitzer Prize Winning alumni
who won a combined 11 Pulitzers in photography.
In bestowing this award on the American Antiquarian Society,
we also honor Isaiah Thomas, who founded the Society in 1812.
The Society's vast collection of history, literature,
and culture documents the life of America's people,
from the Colonial era through the Civil War
and reconstruction, including Thomas' printing legacy.
This year the Society celebrates its bicentennial
as the first National American Historical Organization.
The theme for this year's award ceremony is
"Celebrating the Life of a Patriot Printer:
A Tribute to Isaiah Thomas."
Throughout the course of this morning's program you will learn
about Isaiah Thomas and how he advanced newspaper publishing
in the 18th Century.
You will also hear about the media innovations at RIT,
the College of Imagining Arts and Sciences,
and in the School of Media Sciences.
And we will find out whether in the 242 years
since Isaiah Thomas launched his newspaper, if the mission
of news has really changed,
and how its history has been preserved.
We will hear much more about the society
and its distinguished founder later in the program,
but at this time it gives me great pleasure to introduce you
to Dr. Lorraine Justice, the dean RIT's College
of Imaging Arts and Sciences with the official welcome.

[ Applause ]
[ Footsteps ]
>> I'm a little vertically challenged;
I hope you can all see me [laughter] over the podium.
Thank you, Twyla.
Good morning.
On behalf of RIT's President, Dr. William Destler,
the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences, and the School
of Media Sciences, it is my distinct pleasure to welcome you
to the 2012 Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing.
We are so honored and appreciative to the Worcester --
Polytechnic -- Worcester -- sorry.
, [Laughter] Polytechnic Institute,
the American Antiquarian Society, and the Museum
of Printing for their gracious generosity
and for making us all feel truly welcome.
It is RIT's mission to lead higher education
and innovation, and creativity.
As we work towards these goals, it is associations
like the American Antiquarian Society that we rely
on as a resource to guide our research initiatives,
and to provide a historical perspective
of the news-publishing sector of the printing industry.
I think its founder would appreciate the many ways
in which RIT partners with industry, involving students
in important research projects and paving the way
for successful careers.
He would be an enthusiastic supporter
of the News Media Initiative and the applied research projects
that our faculty and students engage
in that furthers our understanding
of the News Media Industry.
He would be impressed by projects from the RIT Press
and the Open Publishing Lab.
He would marvel at how multiple issues
of innovation news are generated in real time,
during the imagine RIT Festival and other live events as a means
for generating instant news.
He would also be astounded at the creative
and compelling images captured by our photojournalism students,
and he would appreciate the collaborative efforts
that are occurring with the School of Media Sciences,
the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences and the College
of Liberal Arts Journalism.
RIT is known around the world for its educational programs
and facilities in the print and publishing industries.
As this year's honoree celebrates their 2000th
Anniversary, the School of Media Sciences is proud
to celebrate their 75th Anniversary throughout the
entire academic year.
RIT and the School of Media Sciences are fortunate
to have the industry support of media companies
such as Gannett and E.W. Scripps.
Additionally, through the work of our endowed professors
and the schools new media initiative, we are very focused
on conducting research on issues relevant
to the news media publishing industry, offering courses
on the changing world of news media,
creating strategic partnerships with news media companies,
industry associations and suppliers,
disseminating our work by attending conferences,
giving presentations, and sponsoring the Paul
and Louise Miller Lecture Series,
and this Isaiah Thomas Award, and by engaging students
by creating programs and events for them in developing co-ops
and employment opportunities.
And we have several students with us here today
so they can enjoy this event.
This award is made in honor of a history making publisher,
printer and patriot, with a capital P. We are very honored
to pay tribute to his legacy
by recognizing the contributions he made
to the news publishing industry through the founding
of the American Antiquarian Society.
So with that, I would like to turn the podium back to Twyla,
who will introduce our panel.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
[ Silence ]

>> Thank you, Lorraine.
The topic for today's panel discussion is
"Preserving the History of News in a Digital Age."
The newspaper industry has gone through a series
of dramatic shifts, changes, and challenges.
This has resulted in a situation
where many newspapers no longer offer a print version
of the paper, but instead are embracing multimedia platforms
for the distribution of digital news content.
Today's panel will focus on the challenges of preserving
and accessing artifacts from the history of print journalism
and the challenges associated
with converting print documents to digital format.
So let's see what this group of professionals has
to say about all of this.
It gives me great pleasure
to introduce our distinguished group of panelists.
Our panel moderator, David Pankow, is the director
of the RIT Press, a university press dedicated
to exploring new publishing models
and technologies of dissemination.
The Press deploys a broad array
of publication technologies including print divisions
for scholarly and mass-market audiences,
print on demand additions with options for digital delivery
of content, or digital additions
that offer media integration opportunities
and limited additions with unique aesthetic features
for specialty audiences.
Professor Pankow has recently retired
from his concurrent position as curator of the Melbert B. Cary,
Jr. Graphic Arts Collection at RIT.
The Cary Collection is a comprehensive library
of original resources on printing and bookmaking history,
graphic arts processes, and typographic exemplars.
Bruce Gaultney is publisher
of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette .
He came to Worcester in April 2006 from Ocala,
Florida where he was publisher of the Star-Banner .
Prior to becoming the publisher in Ocala, he worked as editor,
operations director, and then general manner --
manager of the Star-Banner .
Mr. Gaultney is a current board chair of the United Way
of Central Massachusetts and has served as his campaign chair.
He also serves on the boards of the Worcester Regional Chamber
of Comments -- Commerce and the Worcester
Education Collaborative.
I can say Worcester now, can't pronounce other words.

[Laughter] Vincent Golden has been the curator of newspapers
and periodicals at the American Antiquarian Society
for the past 10 years.
Since that time he acquired over a quarter
of a million newspaper issues for the collection.
Prior to coming to AAS, he worked in special collections
at the University of Illinois for 10 years
and was the rare book librarian at Illinois Institute
of Technology in Chicago for four years.
He routinely gives back to the academic community
and has volunteered at the University
of Virginia's Rare Book School for the past 15 summers.
Dr. Tracey Leger-Hornby is the dean
of Library Services here at WPI.
Prior to this she was Associate CIO at Grand Dodge University,
Director of the Regina Library at Rivier College in Nashua,
New Hampshire, and preceding that,
worked in the Simmons College Libraries.
Dr. Leger-Hornby has served on the Board of Trustees
of the Northeast Regional Computing Program
and is the co-leader
of the Professional Development Constituency Group and serves
on the EDUCAUSE Orderly Editorial Board.
She was contributing offer --
author of the e-book entitled Cultivating Careers,
Professional Development for Campus IT .

Alex Rogala is the senior media arts and technology major
in the School of Media Sciences at RIT.
He is the editor in chief of Reporter Magazine ,
RIT's award winning weekly student news publication.
Alex began writing for the Reporter in fall of 2008.
Shortly after entering RIT, he edited the magazines "Leisure
and Feature" sections before becoming its editor
in chief in March 2012.
He is currently working with the talented staff
of student writers, editors, designers, photographers,
and illustrators to help reinvent the publications
online presence.
Last, but certainly not least,
RIT professor emeritus Frank Romano's career has spanned 53
years in the printing and publishing industries.
Many know him as the editor
of the International Paper Pocket Pal .
He is the author of 52 books, including the 10,000-term
"Encyclopedia of Graphic Communications"
with his son Richard Romano, the standard reference in the field.
He lectures extensively and was the principle researcher
on the landmark EDSF study "Printing in the Age
of the Web and Beyond".
He has been quoted in many newspapers and publications,
as well as, on TV and radio.
He appeared on the History Detectives , PBS program
and serves as president of the Museum of Printing
in North Andover, Massachusetts.
What an impressive group.
So at this time I'm going to turn the program
over to our moderator.
[ Silence ]

>> Like Lorraine I'm vertically challenged, as well.

[Laughter] Well thank you Dr. Oates
for hosting this event here at WPI.
It's an honor to be here,
and I know panel members feel exactly the same way.
We're delighted to be part of the process
of helping the American Antiquarian Society
to celebrate its bicentennial this year,
and I'm very much looking forward to seeing the exhibit
on Isaiah Thomas when we go over there later this afternoon.
Earlier this summer I had the occasion to go out to Colorado
to settle my mother's estate.
It was a very sad and moving experience for me,
because one of the discoveries I made was a scrapbook
that she had kept when she was
in her teenage years and her early 20's.
And it was a scrapbook that consisted of many,
many clippings from newspapers from her town
and the different places
that she had lived during that period.
There were photographs in there, there were other memorabilia,
but what I was most alarmed by were the clippings
in the condition in which they were in.
Now this a treasure to my family and I
because it represents a part of my mother's history
that we didn't really know very much about,
but at the same time it's the kind of artifact that my family
and I are very worried about handling.
How are we going to care for this,
do we make preservation photocopies, do we digitize it,
what do we do with the original itself?
How do we ensure that the information it contains can
survive for future family members?
So if I'm feeling terrified on this level with caring
for this document -- excuse me --
imagine how much more curators of collections
like Vincent working at the American Antiquarian Society
and other similar repositories, imagine the feelings
that they have and the responsibilities they have
for carrying forth newspapers and other artifacts
that represent hundreds of years of history
and which offer opportunities to scholars and to social
and political historians, and to genealogists
and to other researchers, opportunities to look
at the history of this country on a day-by-day basis,
a week-by-week basis, town-by-town, city-by-city.
And so what I'm hoping that we can accomplish today is
to have a discussion and hear a little bit from these experts,
both from the preservation repository side as well
as from the newspaper side, how they feel it will be possible
to help these great records
of our history survive well into the future.

We're going to take about 40 minutes or so for the questions
to the panelists themselves and then we'll leave some time
at the end to see if anybody in the audience would
like to ask questions, as well.
So my first question is to Vincent.
You're the curator of newspapers here at AAS and care
for an enormous number of early American newspapers
and other examples of print.
What percentage of your users are interested
in the physical artifact
and what percentage would be satisfied
with the digital version of the content?
And one follow-up question,
how does that drive your preservation policies?
>> Well, first of all, I think a lot of people, when they come
to the American Antiquarian Society,
they come with a purpose of using originals;
that's what we're noted for.
We're a big old building filled
with big old stuff and small old stuff.
[Laughter] That's what's on our shelves.
Every month we pull between 100 and 300 volumes
of newspapers alone for readers to use. And yet,
when we -- when a new reader comes we introduce them
to the digital process too, we give them an orientation.
This is how you find things on our online catalogue,
which they make requests, and here's our databases
and we introduce them on how to use them.
And a lot of people do use them, but we --
when we train them to use them we also start giving
them caveats, not everything in our collection is digitized.
If we have -- we've had a long-standing relationship
with Readex, this is a company
that has been digitizing our newspapers, they market them,
a lot of our newspapers.
Since 1962 they've been digitizing,
or I shouldn't say digitizing,
photographing our early American imprints since 1955.
But like a newspaper, if they just concentrate all their
resources on digitize what we still have in our stacks,
it would take them a minimum of 15 years to get through it all.
So when they say everything's on the internet, no it isn't.
[Laughter] And I keep acquiring so they got
to keep catching up to me.
[Laughter] And that's my goal, I got to keep ahead them.
[Laughter] I mean, this -- in a way there's still problems
with using these online resources,
whereas you can casually skim through a newspaper,
when you wait for each image to load, you've got that lifetime,
that people just aren't used,
they're used to the high broadband
internet popping up and it's here, just as slow, and then,
nope, that's not what I want.
Back, click.
No, that's not what I want.
But, on the other hand, because it is full fetch searchable,
they're finding things in ways
that they've never imagined before.
I'm sure looking at there's a whole group
of faculty already telling their doctoral candidates,
"In my day we had to read the stuff."
[Laughter]
Now they're doing keyword searching
and they're finding things in newspapers you don't even think
about looking at, but I still give them caveats
because this is still the emerging problem.
Newspapers, a lot of times there's only one or two copies
that have survived a newspaper.
It's not in good condition, it's stained, it's torn,
it's wrinkled, and when they come to digitize it and then try
to OCR it because the stains, the wrinkles,
the tears, there's a very low accuracy in the OCR,
and so it's not going to pick up everything,
especially proper names.
I've found that no matter what data banks I use,
if it's some weird spelling of a proper name,
then it's almost variably has problems and when you get
into the 18th Century,
the long S -- they're getting better now with trying to adapt
to account for that, but there's still problems with,
you know it's S and the computer says it's an F.
The computer's telling you no and you're saying yes,
and it can create some really interesting results.
I won't delve further but let's just say,
you end up with some rated-R results.
[Laughter]
So I mean it's an emerging thing,
like I've said, we've been
working with Readex when all these new technologies emerged.
These -- the newspapers were first published in micro opaque.
cards. For those of you who aren't familiar
with micro opaque carts,
think of microfilm without the joy.
[Laughter]
It's a horrible, horrible format.
Then they went to microfilm.
And now they're going to digital,
but what they're doing is they're digitizing
from the microfilm.

And all of those faults that I talked about, like the stains,
you know, you have a light brown paper,
you've got a dark brown stain, you got black text,
you got the original in front of you,
you can work your way through the stain and read the text.
On microfilm, it's a big, black blotch; totally illegible,
and that's what they're digitizing.
But fortunately because they save the stuff,
Readex has found problems.
Sometimes they skipped a page and they missed something.
They put in a request for those,
we still have the original
like we can bring it down, they can go back.
In 2001 Nicholson Baker came out with a book Double Fold,
a mild little tone about the problems of
microfilming newspapers
and everybody throwing away their originals.

With this huge U.S. newspaper project for microfilming
a lot of places they film the papers throw out the originals
without ever checking the film.
There's stuff that is out of focus or they've missed frames.
They miss whole issues.
There's one case in upstate New York library, public library --
I won't name which one -- they microfilmed their newspapers,
threw away the originals.

They put out for the readers to use the master negatives,
they didn't put out a reading copy.
Somebody stole the master negatives.
They don't have the originals to go back and reshoot.
It's lost.

And so the digitization I'm beginning to see some
of the original -- same problems.
People are rushing into work digitizing
and they're satisfied with, oh, we got this.
They're not just realizing you got issues again
with legibility.
One of the reasons Readex is shooting from microfilm.
There's limitations to shooting directly
from the original newspaper.
With the technology that they have, they can shoot up to
about a 22, 23 inch tall newspaper.
When you get larger than that,
you get a problem called spherical aberration,
where the edges start to curve, and once the lines start
to curve, the OCR goes to hell.

Google, they had a archive database of newspapers.
They were digitizing newspapers.
They stopped that because they were running
into so many problems they couldn't solve technically,
they just said it was too much problem and stopped.
There's a case of a public library in Maryland,
they got a grant, they digitized all their newspapers,
the images are sitting on a hardrive
because they didn't have any money for servers, technology,
or to hire somebody that knew what to do with it.
So they got the images, nobody can use them.
So we're receiving all these teething
problems coming along.

We'll solve them.
They solve them with microfilms sometimes,

but we don't know exactly what the problems are yet.
We don't know how we're going to solve them,
but in the meantime we --
American Antiquarian Society still has the originals.
People can still come in and use it.
If you do come over to the exhibition,
I'll give you one example, I have opened up a volume
of The Massachusetts Spy with the obituary of Isaiah Thomas.
It's digitized, because the binding right
where the margin is, it goes right into the margin
and curves in, if you look at the digital of this,
you can't read the stuff in the margin,
because it's bound too tight.
Say 30, 40, 50 years from now, somebody comes
with a new technology that can read into that margin
and digitally straighten it out, well, we still got the original.
>> Thank you, Vincent.
It sounds like you've got job security.
[Laughter] My next question is for Bruce.
As publisher of the Worcester Telegram and Gazette ,
you have seen many changes take place in the newspaper industry
over the last 20 years as it copes with the demands
and expectations of a digital world.
What responsibility do you think newspaper organizations have
for ensuring the survival, digital or otherwise,
of their issue archives, morbs, and photo collections?
>> Well I'm going to start, I guess,
with sort of the first part.
You're definitely right,
the newspaper industry is experiencing a great deal
of change as a result
of the expectations of the digital world.
We know that's true in virtually every aspect of our lives.
I was talking with two college presidents recently
about the impact of the internet learning and what's going
to be happening --
with education, a higher education.
And I was struck last night as an example
of how digital is reshaping our lives,
when I was at a wondeful event,
and my wife gets a text from our babysitter, who is asking
for the password to our Wi-Fi so that she can do her homework.
[Laughter] So, you know, it permeates everybody's lives.
I was also pleased to see, when I got home,
I said, "So did you get on?"
She said, "Yes."
I said, "What was your homework?"
And she said, "My journalism class."
Not making that up.
I said, "Good."
She said, "This is hard," by the way.
I see our transformation
to the digital news organizations a tremendous
opportunity for us and our audience.
If you look back through history you'll see numerous
transformational areas in the news business
radio and TV, just to name two.
Newspapers endure it,
even though at the time they cannot fully utilize
new products.
Today, though, we can utilize the products
to make news available to everyone.
And in every community, they can still have the
largest news gathering organizations.
We now have the ability to provide breaking news
to your Smartphone, to provide video news events,
to digitize searchable records, and interact
with our readers like never before.
And we not only use these tools for presenting the news,
but also for sourcing and gathering news
at a much faster pace.
One of the advantages of digital information is it makes
so much available to us all.
But that can be a disadvantage, as well.
We have found that brand matters more
in the digital world than ever before.
Just as I might not consider getting a online degree from an
educational institution that I'm not familiar with, I would stand
in line to take an online course from RIT or WPI.
So too in the news world, I turn to names I trust.
The New York Times. Because I know that not all that passes
for news and informational on the web is always credible.
So to save time and to make sure we get it right,
we turn to the brands we trust and Worcester
as in most communities that news brand is the local favorite.
It just happens to be now available on your iPad,
your laptop, your Smartphone, or still a tape recording.
Now, as to the preservation of those records,
as a regional community newspaper,
we take our leadership role in chronicling stories
that will last for 146 years very seriously.
And we do see it as part of our responsibility to ensure
that a complete record is kept of our published work.
As it is said that newspapers are the first rough draft of
history, we should help to preserve
and protect that record.
Now, while we have not yet digitized our archives back
to 1866, and in listening to Vincent,
I know we need to talk more
[laughter].
Although, I know our staff has already spoke with the
Antiquarian Society.
Other papers in our company, The New York Times and the
Boston Globe have both been digitized all the way back to
their first papers. Right now we have
ensured that we have a master copy microfilm safety tucked
away from 1866 to 1989,
and we are continuing to explore our options as far
as digitizing those reels.
[Inaudible].

But we are going to be dealing with that, so we have spoken
with some companies that are working with us,
and really it's just a matter
of time determining what's the best course of action
and the best fits our business needs, as far as,
digitizing those records
and I'm confident we will be getting there.
In the meantime, like every paper we provide sets
of our microfilm, we will assess it to the public library
for the public and we have to look -- preserve the digital
formats since 1989,
which is the commonplace for original paper to be out.
The - just as one example I guess the importance of our
work product over the years, we recently as many of you --
now we recently moved from,
a building that had been in more than 100 years.
And as we began to think
about that process moving to a more
modern workplace,
one of the teams that was responsible for that said
"Okay we need to have a lot of material."
It is amazing what you can find in nooks and crannies
of a 100 year old newspaper building.
So we contacted the Worcester Historical Museum to see
if they would be interested in the materials
that we could not move to our new space.
We donated our biographical clipping files and photos
to the museum and in sorting those files, pulling out
most of our connections, scanning them, and making them
accessible to the public in preserving the photos
themselves. That's part of the portrait collection.
And in doing the same thing with biographical clipping files
so they're making those into preservation copies and again,
you can't taking note of those that are historically
significant. And we've also we donated our cartoon collection
to the Worcester Public Library.
Trying to find- and then
of course we took a lot of the clippings with us.
And the newspaper clipping library -
were busy places before,
there were so many graphics available digitally.
A journalists myself, included under the pressure
of deadlines, we were always digging through those files,
and so occasionally clippings or photos were lost.
Ellen told me last night how you were looking
for a photo of her,
we couldn't find it. So it does happen.
But those clippings do provide a paper trail of important stories
in our history, I'm thrilled that those clippings are now
safely in the historical museum and they're
cataloguing them, and making sure that they're protected.
And again as I say we do have several witnesses
so that's a little bit about where we stand.
>> Thank you Bruce, it sounds
like you've taken some very responsible steps about caring
for the legacy of your newspaper
and made some very sound decisions.
By the way, if I ask you the question do 47%
of American's pay their taxes [laughter] you'd be able to turn
to one of your trusted sources and find out for me right?
>> Absolutely.
[Laughter].
>> My next question is for Frank Romano.

In many ways you have the broadest perspective
of anyone here
on how dramatically the graphic arts industry has evolved.
And you'll soon be publishing a book on the history
of the line detect machine, which I'm happy
to say we will be publishing through the RIT Press.
You're an expert on digital publishing technologies,
but also manage a printing museum.
Now it seems likely that print and digital will be able
to coexist in the book environment, but can they exist
in the world of journalism?
Should museums of printing expand their mission
to document the development of digital publishing,
as well as from the print era?
>> A few years ago, at RIT,
we had some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and they were used
in the Imaging Science School
of the scanner that they had.
And I was only a few inches away
from something over 1,000 years old.
And I said to myself, what
if they weren't the Dead Sea Scrolls,
what if they were the Dead CD ROMs?
[Laughter]
What would we do with them?
And I acknowledged through the evolution of media from paper,
tape and punch cards, to magnetic tape, to hard drives,
to floppy disks in three different sizes,
through the era of the SyQuest Drive and disk,
the magneto optical, the zip drive and disk --
how many remember the zip disk?
How many remember the "click of death?"
[Audience laughter]
And then through the CD-ROM and now the DVD,
and now of course they're going away, as well.
Sony closed down the last plants in the U.S. that made CD-ROM's.
The DVD's are still made, but mostly for the media industries.
We're now told that we're going
to store everything in the Cloud.
What is the Cloud?
It's a Google hard drive somewhere in West Virginia.

[Laughter] Or somewhere
where there's inexpensive electrical power.
So we have a problem with storing,
not only the information, but the media
and technology that is used for it.
I was on the committee for the Library of Congress
on how we would store information
that would be accessed into the future.
And so they worked with Adobe
to create an archival version of PDF, PDF/A.
So that would then be something
that could be readable far into the future
with text and graphics.
We hope that would be the case.
As with media, we are now every few years refreshing media
by taking the data from one medium
and storing it on another.
The government printing office, even if the document is only
in electronic form, doesn't exist as paper,
they still print 20 copies of it and they go
to the depository libraries in the United States
because through the Federal Government, the only medium
that has existed for 236 years has been paper,
and so that's what they now use
as the primary storage technique.
Even though many of the products that the government does are
in electronic form, such as the Congressional record,
which you can access every morning at 5:00 a.m.
But if you wait a few hours more you get the paper version.
And I don't know of anyone
that actually reads the paper version.
I was on the committee
that created the Electronic Congressional Record
and we interviewed several senators and representatives
and they all said, "Oh no, I might want to take --
put it in my briefcase and take it home at night."
[Laugher].
And I wanted to say, to do what, burn it?
[Laughter] You're certainly not going to read it
because if you want to find anything,
it comes with an equally sized publication, which is the index,
and as a result most people will use THOMAS, which is the
Library of Congress' System, named for Thomas Jefferson,
where you can search for anything using Boolean searches
or whatever online and you can print it
out in any form that you wish.
So the problem is we have to store this information
so that it will be accessible into the future.
And today most people are scanning material.
The problem with microfilm, of course, is it's not searchable,
whereas at RIT we recently scanned the Inland Printer
magazines, the first magazine for printing in the world
from 1883 to the early '50's, I think it was.
>> 1950.
>> And that database is -- that publication is searchable;
you can find anything you want.
In fact, I recently went around the world and took that file
with me and was accessing historical information
as I traveled.
So we have to put information
into a form that's not only preservable,
but is also searchable so that we get to the material we want.
There's also another aspect and that is what do we preserve
from the old world how we printed,
and I'm specifically looking at printing
because I'm the president of Museum of Printing;
one of only three left in the United States.
The Smithsonian closed down their printing exhibition.
They replaced it with Julia Child's kitchen.
[Audience laughter] Oh, and Archie Bunker's chair.
[Audience laughter].
And all of the artifacts are in deep storage.
I recently had a student from the University of Reading come
to visit me to do research and we went down to visit --
had access to some of the material there, we had to go
to the Bethesda, Maryland, it's an old, drafty, cold building
which had almost no support facility for researchers,
and that's where we had access to some of the stuff
that is in deep storage.
So we have some of the machines of the era.
We have some of the printing presses.
We have a whole newspaper press from 1888
that printed the Gazette for 80 years.
We have a Whitlock Press
that printed the last letter press newspaper
in New England.
And, by the way, the last issue was printed
in 2004, which is interesting.
Still using that technology at that time.
But our problem is
that virtually every day we get an email from someone
who has something they want to donate.
We don't have the space or the ability to handle it,
and that's the issue, that a lot of our history
in the printing industry is disappearing and it is very sad.
We also have a very large collection
of photo typesetting technologies.
And that's a technology that existed
for 40 years and then disappeared.
Those artifacts, over time, will disappear.
We have done some work at RIT in terms of what would we preserve
from that era that we could reasonably keep in one room,
rather than trying to have all the machines, perhaps,
of the artifacts and documents and material.
A few years ago the family
of a man named Edward Fry donated his collection
It was in a house in Chapel Farm, New York,
and it had sat there for 50 years,
but he had started collecting it in 1895, on his death,
just stayed in the house.
The house was empty for many, many years.
Many of our members, when we collected it all,
over 100,000 pieces.
He collected every publication, promotion piece, paper sample,
type of record sample from the period 1895 to 1945.
It is an unbelievable historical capsule
of what happened during that period.
And we've had students from Emerson College assisting us
in preserving them all, and we are starting to scan it.
We scanned it at high resolution in a searchable form,
and it's going to take years for it to happen,
but we think it's important into the future to have access
to what happened in the past.
And so with news or other information or other artifacts
of our lives, I think it's important to have people
in the future, know what we did in the past.
>> Frank, I have a collection of zip disks for you.
[Laughter] You better take them.
[Laughter] Thank you very much.
Our next question is for Tracey.
You have many years of experience in academic libraries
and are an expert in the implementation
of the digital technologies for libraries.
To what degree do you think that newspaper collections continue
to represent an important resource
for general academic audiences?
And are your -- are University libraries, to your knowledge,
working with the newspaper industry to ensure the survival
of or perpetual access to digital additions of newspapers?
>> Okay. Academic libraries, our mission is
to support the curriculum, the research
of our faculty and students.
And we're not that different from mission
of the public library, which is basically an educational role
to support and inform citizens.
So the academic library directs most of our energy,
resources in providing and distributing materials rather
than creating material.
So we are a repository of sort for patrons,
what we call our library users.
Our key activities are to facilitate discovery,
we've been talking about how do you find what is out there?
To make it available and to preserve our own collections,
most libraries have a very long-range view
of good collections.
In the past we used to collect physical artifacts, books,
newspapers, journals and we used to spend a lot of time --
we still spend a lot of time worrying about how
to bring materials in,
what to bring in, we don't have everything and how to store it
in different formats like microform.
There was talking about fiche here's --
students may not know what this is, this is fiche.
We need a special reader with magnifying and lights,
but you could use a magnifying glass and good eyesight
to be able to do that, microforms, microfilm reel,
we still have a lot of these around and we have copies
of the New York Times back from the original editions --
on microfilm, makes you dizzy to look at that,
but you can still see it.
And we have paper our student newspaper [laughter] we keep the
paper copies in the library.
So we had many of subscriptions in the past, now we --
let me see, we have six that we get,
paper subscriptions we still receive into the building,
in the past we used to get a lot more, but it used to be a delay,
if you wanted to read the Financial Times
or another international paper or whatever,
it would take awhile for it to arrive in the building.
And then you would put them on sticks,
you would have a big rack with the newspapers hanging
and then people would come in, pick up the paper
and read the paper in the building.
Now you can get a lot of that through the internet
and through our subscriptions, we enable anyone at WPI
to gain access to things library subscribes to it and if you're
on campus or authenticate,
identify yourself as a person here,
you have access to these things.
So we are a consumer of the newspaper industry
for our students, faculty and researchers,
and our primary goal providing access is
to provide primary resources, primary sources.
What is happening in the world and can you get to that data
and from a historical perspective, can you go back
and see what was happening
by reading the accounts in the newspapers?
So we buy newspaper subscriptions,
not one at a time anymore, primarily as part of a package.
So if you're a consumer at home,
you buy usually a cable subscription package
and the cable subscription package,
maybe the sports package and it has golf,
and tennis, and football.
And you may only be interested in hockey,
but you get the bowling and the whatever it is,
you get the package and the price is usually fixed
for that package.
That's how we buy newspapers, in a package, it comes as a bundle
and you can't say, "Oh, I'll take this,
but I won't take that."
You get the bundle and we are part of a buying club
to get the best price possible for that,
but we don't always get the selections that we want,
but we also list, in our catalogue through our access,
many open access sources, the free versions, which may
or may not be there and it's kind
of you get what you pay for,
one day it may be there, the next it may not.
We also collect, as I held up the student newspaper
and had historical documents for the University,
the student newspapers a critical piece
of the University's history and we keep copies
in the archives at WPI.
And we have recently been digitizing them
through a grant that's been made possible through the state
and hope to have those issues available online.
They're not indexed so, so if you wanted
to find a particular person who is at WPI who had a story
or a sporting event, it -- we're not quite there yet.
It's a long process and we're trying to find support for that,
but it's not something that is on the top
of the list right now.
As we build our repository, we are worried about discovery,
how will people find our materials?
The access will be easy for them to get them,
and want current issues around preservation.
How will we keep this stuff going in years, and years,
and years, and years to come?
If we post items, but no one can find them,
or they can't download them, it's lost,
that item doesn't exist to people outside of our community.
We have a couple of gems in our collection and one
of those is our student reports.
Students here work on a lot of projects
and they publish their project reports and those receive 100's
of thousands of hits online.
They're available, but only online since 1999.
If someone wants an early one they have to come and see us
or we have a huge gap -- those items are missing.
So for academic libraries we are most interested in the discovery
and that is related to the optimization of our information
on search engines like Google,
the standard name formats,
how do we know it's a particular person that we're talking
about when we identify these students or issues
that are on our databases?
So the last concern that we have is about cost and coverage,
so the current library marketplace is quite volatile
in terms of these packages that I've been describing,
so a vendor will put out a new kind of a product and then
with the digital form -- as first came in the CD-ROM's,
we would still get the print, but we had to also if we wanted
to get the CD-ROM, we had to buy the two together.
You couldn't buy one without the other, we still have
that issue right now, so there's certain subscriptions we buy
and we captive -- if we wanted the print only,
you get the online too, or vice versa.
So as we look at our budgets and how they've been shrinking,
the cost of acquiring material has --
continues to increase and we have to make tough choices.
What are the things that we are going to get?
What are the things that we are not going to be able to provide?
So we have started buying things an article at a time,
rather than a subscription at a time.
We call it document delivery,
somebody identifies a particular item that they want,
it may be less expensive for us to purchase it at $50 an article
than at $10,000 a year for a subscription for items
that we receive in the library.
So we are struggling to try and keep the access.
It's a very important choice to keep newspapers, particularly
as a -- as I said, a primary resource.
And in the early days of collecting these items,
we were talking about gaps, we used to worry
about keeping a complete run, did you have every single issue.
Was it -- did you get all the boxes of film?
Now, because we license it, that is out of our control,
when we are licensing newspaper, word journal subscriptions,
we are getting out Cloud and we have no control
over what is included in that package and what is not.
It's not something that we own, this is in the library,
unless somebody steals it, it's ours and we can refer to it,
but if it's something that we licensed
and the vendor either goes out of business
or decides that's not included they want
to put something else in, what we were paying
for we thought we had, we don't have any longer.
And that's an issue for us, particularly as we get used
to having things and they become important entities
for our students to be able to do their research.
So we're struggling with that, we work with vendors;
the last part of the question is how do we work
with the industry?
We don't directly, we are buying products through a third party,

generally, and so we don't have direct connections except
with our student newspaper and we are working with that to make
that available for historical purposes.
The State of Massachusetts is currently trying
to gather resources so that all libraries, whether public,
academic, school or special libraries have access
to the citizens and residents of the State of Massachusetts
for general materials including newspapers,
and we are struggling at how to make those available,
to everyone in the state.
So I sit on a Resource Sharing Committee and we're working
with other outside groups to see if there's something
that we can take back the content.
Libraries are considering becoming information providers
ourselves, rather than being dependent
on commercial entities.
It's still in a very spark like concept out there,
for us to be able to do that, but as the prices
of things go up, and up, and up, it may collapse and we need
to be thinking about the future and how
to make sure our students are still able
to get materials they need to do their research.
>> Thank you Tracey, that was a very cogent explanation
of what libraries are confronting today as they try
to decide how many print additions to acquire newspapers,
as well as, how to manage big collections of newspapers
that are provided in digital formats.
One of the things that I've always found interesting --
or I'm starting to find it interesting is how it's going
to be possible for researchers of the future
to understand how digital auditioning is going
to be working?
If you think of how many newspapers --
digital newspapers like USA Today, for example,
over the course of a single day,
they will add stories, new stories.
I don't know if they're actually documenting
when those stories were added to their Website,
or if it'll be possible for a scholar 100 years from now
to see exactly when news became news on USA Today,
as well as of the newspapers.
But thank you Tracey.
My last question is for Alex and I've saved you for last
because you represent a generation of users
and practitioners in publishing who have grown up digital.
You're the Editor and Chief
of RIT's Student Newspaper "The Report."
My question for you is do students still appreciate a
print edition?
>> Well I'm a bit of a bias source here,
I'm kind of print junkie, I think it ultimately depends
on what sort of publication it is.
To kind of pull things back out to kind of the macro house
of the publishing general.
I believe you did mentioned earlier David that as far
as books go there is kind of this realm of where print
and digital can coexist.
The realm of e-readers is still a very, very new venture
and still its infancy.
And I actually was reading the other week there was --
I believe we studied them by some publisher trade group.
It quite -- basically talked about university textbooks.
Seventy-five percent of students preferred
to have an actual print edition.
There were various reasons for this some
of which the immediacy of having it there.
Others were basically you had some sort of resale value,
you had some tangible object.
Now as far news is concerned on the immediate types,
people look at news industries a broad spectrum, I don't think
that really translates over right now from what I've seen
through my generation.
I think one of the things you're seeing
with this generation is we're very connected,
social media's a huge part of our lives.
And I think a lot of news is kind of getting somebody
through that is one major distribution mechanism.
Most people I know who read news in my age group, they don't go
to traditional papers, and sometimes you have people
who might be accustomed to reading, for example,
my hometown paper around -- I'm from Philly,
I used to read that --
I used to hit up the the comics every morning
when I was a kid.
But if you are the type that loved it,
a lot of people would have seen is they're very interested
in getting a very specific kind of news, they're more
interested in what the content is, then where it's coming from.
And really with the internet,
one of the advantages is you have this vast platform
of information.
And basically at the click of a button you can access
papers and basically any student around the world,
you can ask the New York Times , The Boston Globe ,
all of them can provide.
And you don't even need a subscription the way current
models work. So I think a lot of it, what I'll see most
of my friends doing is though we don't mind,
we might find an article they maybe find interesting,
we'll read it then we'll share it on Facebook, we'll share it
on Twitter we'll do that sort of thing.
And here's the way friendships usually work,
people connect common interests, so what if one friend wanted
to share, had new services printed
that way from what I've seen a
lot really the same things posted on Facebook
that I would've noticed otherwise if I hadn't glanced
over if I had been looking at an actual print newspaper.
It actually ties into - I'm not sure the entire actual name
but I know Wired interviewed Chris Anderson seven or eight
years ago had developed a publishing model
and theory called the "Long Tail Theorem."
And basically what it states is,
when we go into this digital sort of age,
facing more publishing online, that means a lot
of different things whether it's a newspaper,
whether they're talking about music or whatever
specifically you're talking about, the demand kind of rises
for these smaller, more specialized interests.
Surrounded by just looking at general, "Okay, here's
a newspaper," you might have had two or three back in the day.
But now you have access to all these like niche publications,
which might not have had the opportunity to print back
in the day, which might not have been a chance
to really read to a large audience.
And I know that's what I'm seeing a lot with some of my
friends personally is they find this community,
these smaller communities they are interested in.
And I've seen it as far as the newspapers;
I know RIT actually gave a program with student government
and I believe student affairs be distributed
in several locations of the campus.
Made these newspaper boxes basically your students use
student ID to swipe it; you can get a free paper.
Now one of the challenges I heard they face is actually -
a lot of the papers actually are professors, faculty that sort
of thing taken a class of students and have that access --
who want to seek those papers.
I haven't seen many of my friends take them,
I usually hit it up every morning when I get
a chance for a copy of New York Times .
But the one interesting thing in here too though is,
student publications are sort of an addition to the list.
If you will get on -- I was reading actually on pointers --
this journalistic institute, one of the things they were saying,
I believe a few months ago was
they did some studies what students actually prefer --
well, they generally get most readers online now.
They, for some reason or another they didn't really speculate the
article out, there wasn't a correct answer,
but students preferred the physical print edition.
Probably because it's sort of an niche market,
one of the things it is --
they mentioned actually was
that print editions did more draw for students there,
it's kind of like part of campus culture.
Now Websites, but also said was that a lot
of these sites are more popular with the alumni or more popular
with perspective students.
And it's interesting is this tied
into one of the challenges The Reporter faces now.
RIT recently sold its GOS-72,000 which was it's last traditional
massive web off set to the graphic press.
Basically that's not where the publishing industries are going
now, there's not as much demand for that sort
of high volume printing.
So what we're doing right now is we're working to
redevelop our presence.
We're currently an online magazine, that's probably
going to be switching sometime in the next year,
to a less frequent print edition, with more news online
basically daily, depending in that market.
And it's interesting since we've made this announcements --
since we've talked about it I've heard a lot from people in the
campus community. And we've had a website since about 2000,
about 11, 12 years now, I remember right
after we made the announcement,
one of the most common questions I got is,
"So I hear you guys got shut down."
[Laughter] no one has - I guess a lot
of our website's right on the front of our magazine.
But I guess it's not being publicized as much.
One of the more curious answers I've gotten,
few people have actually said,
"If you don't have a print issue, I'm not going to
remember to go online."
One of the joys of walking around campus seeing it,
maybe cover draws them in, and then they start reading.
So that's one kind of challenge we had to look at now.
Though there are ways which campus papers are making work --
one I found particularly interesting, and if you have a
Facebook account. I encourage you to go check it out,
it is on Onward State. It's a Penn State news publication,
it's not their official college paper. They're their own entity,
I believe they describe themselves as kind of a news
blog. But what I find interesting about them is they
publish - they have their own Website, they don't print
edition, they publish the bulk of their content
basically on Facebook and they have a fantastic Facebook page,
basically every hour on the hour they're updating
they're throwing articles up constantly,
they're putting up their pictures
of different campus life is a really beautiful product
that really fixes the way students consume media.
I'm from Pennsylvania. A ton of my friends go to Penn State.
Basically this thing didn't exist four or five years ago
and now it's completely ubiquitous up there,
everyone knows about it.
And everyone visits it.
And it's one of the more interesting facts, these student
publications, the websites that had more successful ones
that have their own need for original content
that doesn't just appear in the print edition.
>> Thank you Alex, it sounds like you get your news
from two sources, traditional print, you go to that Kiosk
and pull your New York Times out every morning and also,
a lot of news comes to you through the curation of friends
on social media, which is very interesting to me.

Twyla do we have time for a few questions, five questions
or five minutes, okay [laughter] all right.
Here's how this is going to work, we have two microphones
in the far aisles here, if you can get up and walk
to a microphone, that would be great,
if you have some impediment we'll bring the microphone
to you, but let's take two or three very quick questions,
you can ask an individual panel member
or you can address your question to the panel in general.
>> Hi I'm Mike Ciaraldi
from computer science here, but also an RIT masters in 1979,
so I'm sure almost everybody's read George Orwell's 1984,
and you know there the government always revising
histories, and they had to collect all the old books,
throw them away and put the new ones with the updated history.
Digitally, of course it would be a lot easier, now.
So the question is how can you worry about the government,
but how would you make sure
that as these digital things get archived,
that even individuals
or organizations would start modifying you know,
47% on a particular site is 27% and and nobody
remembers that it was 47% -- that's another thing.
Thank you.
>> Frank you want to take
that one [laughter] you were talking before
about the GPL?
>> Give me the impossible one.
[Laughter] Well it comes out as a security printing.
We have a big problem with forgery, counterfeiting,
false pseudical packaging instances, so we need to figure
out some way to preserve that digital image in a way
that it cannot be changed.
But once it's in digital form, there aren't too
many technologies that market it, and no one's thought
about a 1984 scenario at this point in time.
There's just so much information out there that's duplicated
in so many different ways, if you were going to go back
and change history, you would have one heck of a job.
>> Thank you.
Sir?
>> Hi my name is Dave Walden. I'm interested
in anybody's comment on how to site digital material.
Traditionally we had a way of building biographicals a way
of citing through footnotes and so on,
today many Websites have 50, 60, 70 cryptic characters --
that maybe end with one PDF that are completely unsuitable for
sight, they assume you're going to proof mark it digitally.
But a lot of us are still working in print citations,
plus the content's changing all the time, it needs something
of what's the date, what's the time
of the thing that's publish, how does one deal
with citation in the digital world?
>> Thank you Tracey, Vincent [laughter] you fight
over that one?
>> There are actual formats that are used in academic publishing,
so the NLA and the APA they each have a standard format
and there are ways now with special tools to capture
as you are looking at the site, the citation, we use a variety
of tools, and recommend the students do it - EndNote
and there were other cryptic graphic management tools,
basically what you're doing is saying that on this day
at this time I looked at this, and you qualify it
that it was there when you looked at it.
And then it's not there later, at least you have something
that says you looked at it, so there are tools that exist
to be able to site things.
One of the things that you want to do as a producer of a page,
if you want it to be durable,
is that you create a durable - there are acronyms all over the
place to do that - you register it, basically say
that it's permanent URL, if you want something that's going
to last, that you can keep coming back to it.
The problem's if you're an organization where somebody says
"Oh yeah well now we're putting this new front end
on - this particular domain is going
to change or get a move.
So the trick is to establish structure that you try not
to change it's something that you want to have last
for your consumer to use one of these tools
that helps you establish this and to say when you looked
at it -- those are kind of "pop" tips on how to manage.
>> Thank you one more question.
>> I'm John and I have a question
to answer historical research in this new world.
Typically people look at the digital analogue and sort
of substitutes for each other not compliments
and I'm just kind of curious.
When Tracey what you're showing those different techniques,
clearly there must be qualitative differences
in terms of, what people take away,
so if you have a keyword search,
you already know what you're looking for
and in a more systematic and that's great,
but when Vincent was talking about a paper
that almost is seeing things that are really hard to model
from a computer standpoint,
I'm just curious if people done any studies to get sense
of what people gain and what people miss in terms of looking
at these different formats and in terms
of what research would actually take away,
versus looking at a page and seeing things they weren't
looking for. Like nylon, they weren't looking for nylon. They
came upon it when they were looking for these polymers
so there's more
surprise sometimes that comes up as opposed to
already knowing what you're looking for.

>> Thank you very much,
well I think this has been an enormously interesting panel
discussion about the issues involved in preserving the news,
and I'm sure that if there are more questions,
all our panel members will be very happy to answer them
for you after this formal event concludes and I want
to thank each one of them for taking the time
to be here today, for answering thoughtfully and thoroughly all
of my questions and I hope you found it as interesting
as I did, thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
[ Noises ]

>> I would like to thank our moderator and our panel
for sharing their knowledge and insights
on this very important topic.
There is a gift I think it's behind your chair that we want

to present to you, we can't repay you for your time
and for your enormous talent and great resource of information,
but we ask that you would please accept it
with our sincere thanks.
Let's give our panel another round of applause.
[ Applause ]
[ Noises ]

While the panel is moving
to their seats we'll just keep going, we're here today
to present the 28th Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing,
but before we do that, I would
like to introduce Professor Christopher Bondy
who is the Administrative Chair
of the School of Media Sciences at RIT and he's going
to share more about -- more with us
about the great patriot printer, Isaiah Thomas, and his impact
on the news publishing industry.
[ Background Sound ]
>> Thank you Twyla, as Twyla mentioned the School
of Media Sciences is celebrating its 75th year in existence
and the Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing is one
of the most significant events included
in this yearlong celebration.
But today I shall answer the question, who is Isaiah Thomas.
>> With your kind permission Sir,
I believe I could answer that question.
>> I believe you have the stage.
[Audience laughter].
[ Applause ]
>> Well you see I am Dr. Thomas in the flesh, I am vaulted
into your time, through the powers
of Professor Cummings [laughter],
although I must admit that if I was surprised
that a woman would be a professor
at the college [laughter], or for that matter President
of my own Antiquarian Society.
[Laughter].
But these women are extraordinary,
indeed Dr. Cummings has orchestrated my presence before
you now, while I come from another age,
I share with you a love of printing,
the art from which all other arts derived.
And in my time, we also preserved printed
materials digitally.
We held them carefully in our fingers [audience laughter].
I myself am a printer and a book seller, a stationer by trade,
indeed, most American's in my time learned to read
from my printers, studied their geography from my textbooks,
passed their time with my novels, plant their crops
by own almanacs and worship with my Bibles.
I have sold books to learned gentlemen and to poor farmers,
to skilled craftsmen and to shopkeepers, the finest ladies
and the gaudiest wenches, have all turned my pages and for all
that I have been amply rewarded by God's good grace,
I have a mass of $200 thousand, one of the largest fortunes
in these United States, the country, I helped to create.
Now I learned the trade printing from apprenticeship
with Mr. Fowle, Zechariah Fowle was a printer and a seller
of ballads and peddlers of small books.
Although he was honest in his dealings and punctual
to his engagements, Mr. Fowle was uncommonly ignorant.
Though he was an irritable and feminine man, a better skilled
in the domestic work of females than the business
of a printing shop, despite his promises to mother to provide me
with a good school, education,
his printing office was the only school I ever had.
I was left to teach myself,
I was made to do all the civil employment of his family
that I could manage and when that work was wanting,
he placed me at the type cases.
And as I was put to setting type to the press, why --
I was so small at the age of seven years, that in order
that I might reach the boxes for the upper and lower cases
of type, he had a bench,
18 inches high built for me stand upon.
Well as I matured, I began to understand the mysteries
of the trade and to comprehend the possibilities in the arts.
Mr. F has an ink-stained Bible and tactic dictionary
and with these I learned to read and to comprehend
that each piece of type was vested
with a great transcendental power,
that each sort was potent with possibilities.
By the time I was 16 I merrily burned with a desire
to acquire a perfect knowledge of printing.
Oh I left Mr. F, without heed to the fact, I was bound by law
to stay with him until I reached maturity,
I sought to go to London!
The very center of the English printing world!
[Laughter] But alas, I fell short of my goal, I landed not
in London, but in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
And it was in Nova Scotia that I first started fighting
for those rights that each American holds
to be inalienable.
First I rallied against the set-back and then later back
in Boston for independency from Great Britain.
My printing establishment was called "The Sedition Foundery,"
in 1770 I started a new newspaper
for the middling class entitled "The Massachusetts Spy",
it soon became the most widely read paper in all
of the colonies and in it I published the first printed
account of the first eye witness accounts of the battles
of Lexington and Concord
and above the masthead I proclaimed American's liberty
or death, join or die.
I have always believed in a free and unfettered press.
Should the liberty of the press be once destroyed?
Farewell then the remainder of our inhalable rights
and privileges, we mainly expect padlocks on our lips.
Chains on our legs, with only our hands left at liberty
to slave for worse than Egyptian task masters or fight our way
to Constitutional freedom!
The freedom of the press
on which depends the freedom of the people!
The revolution caused general distress and commotion
that was harmful, oh very harmful to my business.
The subscribers for "The Spy"
which had numbered some 35 hundred souls throughout the
colonies, now shrunk to 200, I faced destitute circumstances.
Often my meals consisted of a penny's worth of bread and milk,
but I would eat with my apprentices in the shop.
Gradually through hard work
and determination my condition improved,
in addition to "The Spy" I continued to publish almanacs
and gradually was in able to increase my business
to include the publication of all manner
of books and pamphlets.
After the Revolution my business prospered,
I erected a paper mill and set up a bindery and thus I was able
to go through the entire process of manufacturing books,
I set many of my apprentices up in businesses of their own,
which became branch establishments
in my publishing empire.
At the height of my business,
I controlled some 16 presses throughout the country
and employed some 150 hands in Worcester alone,
I had controlling interest in three newspapers, a magazine,
had eight bookstores in Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New York and Maryland.
I retired of active business pursuits in 1802
and I devoted my energies to writing the history
of printing in America.
This two volume work was first published in 1810
and I am surprised and delighted to find
that it is still consulted.
In the year of our Lord 1812,
I founded The American Antiquarian Society,
the first historical society national in scope.
When I founded this institution I remember thinking we cannot
know what will come in the future,
but we can know the past.
We must preserve that past for the future; it is the debt
that we owe our forefathers.
Today you have given me a glimpse of what has come
after me, it is a wondrous vision, thank you and God bless.

[ Applause ]
[ Background Sound ]
>> Dr. Thomas, I have heard so much
about your incredible career and I must say it's a pleasure
to finally meet you [laughter] thank you for enlightening us
about your background, your numerous accomplishments
and for accurately answering the question who is Isaiah Thomas,
let's give him another hand.
[ Applause ]
At this time I would like to invite Dr. Jeremy Haefner,
our Provost, and Senior Vice President for Academic affairs
to come to the podium to present the 2012 Isaiah Thomas Award
in Publishing.
[Applause]
>> Thank you Twyla, it is a real delight of course to be here
to present the Thomas --
the Isaiah Thomas Award for Publishing,
to me it's a special award because it has
such a deep legacy here at RIT, it has a deep legacy
of what it represents as well, so it's a special treat
in my role to do that
and of course amazingly enough what makes it even more special
from the other times we've made this award,
we actually have Dr. Thomas with us.
[Laughter] And I'm a little confused because, you know,
while I'm very happy to give it
to the American Antiquarian Society,
I think we also should give it to Dr. Thomas as well,
so [laughter], but it's kind of funny
to give himself his own award, right we'll have
to figure this one out.
It's also a delight to visit WPI and of course the city
of Worcester, we did conduct an informal survey
of how you accurately pronounce Worcester and you saw some
of the results of that survey [laughter] earlier today.
Just so you know if you come
to Rochester it's not pronounced Rochester,
it's called Rawchestah so [laughter] keep
that in mind, as well.
Well let me congratulate the American Antiquarian Society
on its bicentennial, what a tremendous milestone this is.
It's fitting that as you celebrate your 200th anniversary
that RIT recognizes your efforts in preserving history.
And at the same time we honor the man, Isaiah Thomas
who started this legacy
at the American Antiquarian Society has sustained.
We celebrate Isaiah Thomas, this incredible visionary,
who was one of the most influential,
colonial newspaper publishers.
RIT's Isaiah Thomas Award
in Publishing has certainly come full circle.
The university's
relationship with the American
Antiquarian Society goes back more than 30 years.
Bob Hacker Professor Emeritus at RIT, who was unable
to join us today, struck up a friendship
with Marcus McCorison AAS President of Emeritus.
Marcus would come to RIT to attend the Isaiah Thomas Awards
and he traveled to RIT in the early '80's
when contemporary publishing legends like Edward Estlow,
Katharine Graham, Arthur Sulzberger,
were honored with the award.
Marcus enjoyed these trips to RIT
because as a historian it gave him the chance
to meet these present day newspaper executives,
and see how hard the newspaper industry has come in 200 years.
And it was in -- sorry -- in 1981 under Marcus' leadership
that the American Integrity Society gave RIT an original
copy of the November 9,
1808 issue of "The Massachusetts Spy".
Isaiah's most famous publication and each year
since the donation, RIT has proudly displayed it
and we thank you for your generosity,
giving us a piece of American history.
It is through this award that RIT has been committed
to recognizing Isaiah Thomas' foresight
in the newspaper industry.
His spirit of entrepreneurship and his advocacy are freedom
of the press and I can tell you right now
that that advocacy is needed more
than ever in today's society.
It's only appropriate then to honor the success to Society
to Isaiah Thomas founded and financially supported.
The 2012 Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing is presented
in two parts the first is the traditional silver bowl,
which is designed by our own master's silversmith Professor
Len Urso, from RIT School of American crafts.
The bowl is presented in conjunction
with an ornate certificate designed
by professional calligrapher Kris Holmes
of "Bigelow and Holmes" -- that you see on my right.
So congratulations to you
on receiving the Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing.
Now at this time I ask Helen Dunlop,
President of the American Antiquarian Society
and Isaiah Thomas to come forward to accept the award.
Ellen?
[ Applause ]
[ Background Sound ]
>> Thank you very much, I'll put it right there.
Some of you heard me say last night that above my --
next to my desk, near my computer terminal is the key
to Isaiah Thomas' tomb.
[Laughter] I haven't had to use it, because Neil pops
up all the time [laughter] on his way to
yet another school presentation, to tell the story
of the founding of the Antiquarian Society,
but also of the decisions that he faced as a small boy
and the opportunities that he was given and to inspire
in them an appreciation for history as it is being made.
I wanted share -- begin my remarks by saying that I am here
to accept this award and I do so with great pleasure,
but I do it on behalf the entire staff
of the American Antiquarian Society.
We have a remarkable institution of people who work every day
to acquire, to preserve, to catalogue, to digitize,
to make accessible this comprehensive collection,
to all comers and they do so with great generosity
and professionalism and I am very much honored
to be their colleague.
I also want to accept on behalf of our board, our council,
as it is called and in fact our members throughout the country.
We've loved this institution and we are greatly honored
by this award you've given us.
So I do think, as I look at that key and I see Neil,
[laughter] sometimes what would Isaiah think
of what we are doing at the Antiquarian Society today?
And I think that he would be proud for several reasons.
Like Isaiah, who organized his businesses vertically
[laughter], we too have tried to be very entrepreneurial
in the work that we do.
The digitization that we have undertaken has brought a great
financial bounty to our institution.
And we have tried to invest that money wisely in long-term ways
that will preserve, you know,
increase not only the collections, but our capacity
to make it available to others.
Like Isaiah, we have been fascinated by technology
and what it can bring to our enterprise.
And we have also, like him been steadfast in our open-mindedness
about what we collect.
Isaiah, in his time knew
that what was involved among the common folks,
where just as important as what was read
by the elite drawing rooms of his day.
And we had an incident just two weeks ago
in which someone questioned something that we had put
in an exhibition that we have in New York currently,
to his mind he thought it to crude, too racially charged
to be in a public exhibit.
And I have to say when the very topic of take idea --
taking something out of this exhibit was posed,
it was so foreign to me, I can't imagine censoring what we
collect and what we preserve and what we make available
to others, and that I think is very much in keeping
with Isaiah's vision of open-mindedness
and view the openness to various points of view.
Like him we are committed to perseveration
and we are also very much dedicated
to maintaining his point of view that books and pamphlets
and newspapers are what made this nation.
And so to study not only how they were printed,
but how they were consumed and the influence
that these texts had in shaping our society, is his original
and very far-sighted vision, for someone who came
from such modest circumstances and was
so completely self-taught.
I think Isaiah Thomas would be pleased with his decision
to found the American Antiquarian Society
in Worcester [laughter].
We have been inland out of range of the British Fleet [laughter]
and we have been so fortunate to be in this community
where we have been so richly supported
over these generations.
I think he would appreciate the fact that we have fun
when we come to work [laughter], but he would also,
I think take great pride in seeing how each
of the staff members of the Antiquarian Society goes
about the work, the dedication that they bring to their tasks,
because like he said to you today,
his concept of paying the debt that we owe
to our forefathers is very much and obligation
that we feel honored to be able to discharge and he,
as our forefather [laughter], is the embodiment
of I think why we do what we do and the way we do it.
So it's a great honor to be accepting this on behalf
of this great institution thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> So now I would like to invite Dean Justice
and Professor Bondy to the podium
for a special recognition.

>> Well I have to tell you I thoroughly enjoyed
that talk Isaiah, and I'm really interested
in the multiple streams of income
that you created while you were [laughter] alive,
I think our entrepreneurs can learn from that.
Also I have to tell last weekend I had the opportunity
to meet Jack Canfield who did --
who sold over 500 million "Chicken Soup
for the Soul" books and I think I need to talk to him
about Chicken Soup for the Antiquarian Society Soul,
it sounds like we've got a lot of good stories so -- anyway.
I'd like to add my congratulations
to President Dunlap as the American Antiquarian Society
for this well deserved honor.
Well the focus of today's event is to recognize the recipient
of the 28th Isaiah Thomas Award in Publishing and to reflect
on the accomplishments of Isaiah Thomas,
it also serves another purpose.
There are people that we encounter in life
that influence the decisions we make and the directions we take,
both in our personal and professional endeavors.
At this time, we would like to recognize
and honor one of those individuals.
This person has certainly influenced the lives and careers
of many of our faculty and staff, alumni, and more at RIT.
He is very well-known and highly regarded
in the publishing industry and we, in the College
of Imaging Arts and Sciences and in the School
of Media Sciences are benefitting today
from his efforts
in the foundation he laid during his tenure at RIT.
Although we can never repay him for his many contributions
and acts of kindness, today we would
like to give a special recognition
to Professor Emeritus, Frank Romano.
Please join me in congratulating Frank.
[ Applause ]

We will have remarks from Frank shortly,
but first we'll have Chris tell you a little bit
about Frank Romano, Chris.
[ Noises ]

>> Thanks Lorraine, anyone knows Frank is keenly aware
of the many accomplishments and contributions
to the printing and publishing world.
Everything he has done to further the field,
nothing compares to his impact on so many lives,
especially students, faculty and RIT.
This is why we want to celebrate Frank.
Earlier Twyla read a portion of Frank's biographical sketch,
but there's not enough time to read his biography
as it would easily take one section of the Library
of Congress, so rather than give you [audience laughter] the
listing, I suggest you Google him or better
yet you can find him on YouTube or WhatTheyThink.com.
I think you'll get a much better picture
of why this honor's being bestowed on Frank if you hear
from some former students and industry pundits have to say
about him and his impact on their lives
and on the printing industry as a whole.
First, Erik Layman 1997-1999 RIT Alumnus
and the Pre-Media facilities coordinator at the school
of media sciences, "It means the world to me
that I can consider Frank -- Uncle Frank, a teacher,
a mentor, a colleague, and most importantly a friend,
it doesn't hurt to be a card carrying member
of the Romano mafia, either."
[Laughter] Ron Goldberg, 1999-2000 RIT Alumnus,
and Director of Alumni relations for the College
of Imaging Arts and Sciences.
"Having Frank as an instructor and co-authoring two books
with him while a student at RIT, I learned so much from him.
I considered him a mentor, a teacher, a partner in crime,
and also a card carrying member of the Romano clan,
and most of all a friend."
Gisela Delgado, 2002 RIT Alumna, site manager
for New York operations of the Vertis Corporation.
"The day I heard Frank talk about printing, or better yet,
the future of printing,
something sparked up in my brain.
I was too focused on where the printing industry was
and where it had been.
Here was a guy talking about e-books and in the future,
it didn't sound like that amazing thing today,
but imagine this was 14 years ago before the iPad.
Needless to say, I used to love to listen to Frank talk
about printing and how it would evolve.
He motivated me to learn everything there was
to know about printing.
His passion was contagious.
Whether he knows it or not, he was a huge motivational factor
for me, and I still keep his pocket Pell handy
when I'm training new sales people.
You need to understand the fundamental.
Sometimes people think that printing happens
with a touch of a button.
Those people then need to spend a couple days
with Frank Romano."
Marnie Soom, 2003 Alumni
and she's also the Design Marketing Specialist
for the RIT Cary Graphic Art Press.
"Taking a class with Frank was always exciting.
His enthusiasm was a subject at hand
and most inspirational and infectious."
Micheal Riordan, 1997 RIT Alumnus and Lecturer
at a School of Media Sciences.
"I struggle to find people Frank doesn't know.
As for me, I know him as a reason I stayed at RIT,
as the model of integrity.
I perpetually look to."
David Pankow, Director of the RIT Press.
"Frank is one of those perfect storms of intelligent,
enthusiasm, good humor and he's a born teacher.
When he walks into a room, every eye turns towards him
for the latest breaking news in the graphic arts industry.
Few of us have mastered as well the transition
from digital analog to digital,
and done it with such inspiring confidence
in the possibilities."
Antonio Perez, the President CEO
of Kodak Corporation, said this about Frank.
"Frank has played a key role
in helping all understand the dramatic shifts in technology
that occurred over the last few decades.
He is a neat gift for helping people understand the past
and how it's influencing the future,
and why the future is so exciting.
The term 'print ambassador' certainly fits
when talking about Frank.
And he reflects the personal, professional commitment
to advancing this medium."
Twyla Cummings, associate dean
of the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences.
"There are many things that impress me
and amaze me about Frank.
His passion for sharing knowledge, unlike --
is unlike anything I've ever seen.
I always refer to him as a 'human computer',
is a great motivator, unending energy,
and has been a great supporter to me and my career at RIT.
For that I say, "Thank you."
These are a few of the people whose lives have been touched
and influenced by Frank Romano.
For over 50 years, he's blazed the trail around the globe
to -- in this quest for the vision of the future of print,
and to educate leaders.
On a personal note, I had the pleasure of working
with Frank in a number of venues over the past two
decades. In fact, about 20 years ago I wrote an article for
Frank, and this publication "Type World," [Audience laugh]
which was well known around the industry.
I also thank Frank for recommending me to follow
in his footsteps at RIT and it's a distinct pleasure to be able
to recognize you, Frank, for your amazing accomplishments
in this venue in your home town.
At this time I would like Frank to come up and join us
at the podium, as well as Provost Heafner,
and Dean Justice, and associate dean Twyla Cummings.
[ Applause ]
[ Noises ]
>> You saved a copy of that publication?
>> I had it, it's in my own personal artifacts.
[Audience laughter].
>> By the way, this was a Massachusetts find of its day.
[Audience laughter].
>> I would say -- it was.
[Laughter].
So Frank on behalf of the school of Media Sciences
and the entire RIT community,
I'm pleased to give you this certificate of recognition
and appreciation, which was designed especially for you
by professional calligrapher Kris Holmes.
Congratulations.
>> Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> I'm surprised, I'm over whelmed.
I'm at an age now, where I'm getting lifetime achievement
awards [audience laughter].
In fact there are four scheduled over next year --
but this is especially special to me.
Like Isaiah Thomas, I got into the publishing business
and discovered you can make a lot of money, in publishing.
Especially, if you sell your publication
to a very large, publishing company.
And so I retired, at an early age, and had nothing to do.
And I got a call from RIT,
"Would you like to teach for a year?"
A -- 20 years later, I'm still involved.
[Audience laugh] And I think as I look at all these awards --
that I've received -- I've run out of walls
in the house to put them on.
But I think the awards that are most important to me,
are the young people that I have met
and somehow has been involved in their lives.
And I continued it -- the only reason why I'm on Facebook,
is because students ask me to be on Facebook.
And I share what they're doing in their lives as they graduate,
get jobs, have careers, have families and I hear from them
and learn from them as I go along.
Where ever I travel in the world.
I was in Daubi giving a speech and a young man comes up to me
and I said, "You look familiar."
He said, "I worked in your office in 1995,"
and the ship went to Omond --
he had driven from Omond and I had went there to meet with him
and his family, because our students come
from all over the world.
And I'll tell you, they inspire me.
So thank you all very much.
[ Applause ]
[ Noises ]

>> Well let me add my congratulations
to our award recipient and to Professor Emeritus Romano.
Both recognitions are well deserved in the RIT,
the College of Imaging Sciences -- Imaging Arts and Sciences,
and the School of Media Sciences applaud you.
Planning events such as this requires a team
of talented professionals.
We are fortunate to have such a team working
on this year's award program.
I would like to thank our entire Isaiah Thomas Award
in Publishing committee, and at this time,
I would ask that committee to please stand and be recognized.
[ Applause ]
I would like to thank Ellen Dunlap and James Moran.
Jim couldn't be here today, he is very much under the weather,
so -- and he put such effort
into making this event successful,
so I'm really sorry he couldn't be here.
But I'd like to thank both of them from AAS,
Craig Milner of Creative Communications Consulting,
and the WPI Staff and family for their incredible support.
Finally, I would like to thank Isaiah Thomas,
portrayed by actor Neal Gustafson
for bringing a great patriot printer back to life.
Immediately following this program, we invite you
to join us at the Antiquarian Hall for Society tours,
and to view an exhibit featuring the works of Isaiah Thomas.
Additionally, there will be a video/slide presentation
entitled, "The Isaiah Thomas Collection," a presentation
of his life and work, which was produced
by Amelia Hugill-Fontanel
and Kris Holmes in conjunction
with the choreographic arts library at RIT.
You will also note the ornaments on the award certificates
in the program are from the original ornament as it appeared
in Thomas' "History of Worcester".
This book is also featured
in the Cary Collection presentation.
You don't want to miss this exhibit
so we encourage you to stop by.
If you need directions to get there, there are plenty
of people to show you the way.
I thank you for joining us in today's celebration,
and it is hoped that you will take away
with you an appreciation for the legacy
of Isaiah Thomas the printer, the publisher,
the patriot and the man.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
I would just like to say --
and this doesn't have to be recorded.
For those of you who are joining us for lunch
at the Goddard-Daniels Mansion, you can start moving that way
in the next 10 to 15 minutes.
But, please enjoy, network, talk,
have a photo op with Isaiah.
So, thank you.