The Development of Business Imperatives for Electronic Publishing December 13, 2006

Joint BISSG/EPSG meeting

Speaker: Dr David Penfold

"It is only within the last few years that electronic publishing has been profitable. And, even now, there are areas in which the business case is hard to determine.

"This talk will look briefly at the history of electronic and digital publishing and then at its growth from an academic tool into a commercial necessity. This will include a brief look at CDs and DVDs, with the main focus on the Internet, the World Wide Web and content management, both within the commercial publishing industry and within a much wider business context.

"The talk will end with a look into the future at the Semantic Web and at what is described as Web 2.0."

David Penfold has worked in publishing for over 35 years. Since 1989 he has had his own consultancy, Edgerton Publishing Services, and projects have included project management of the SuperJANET demonstration project on electronic journals in 1993, moving Macmillan's journals to SGML, the Hutchinson Encyclopedia on the Web, a study of electronic journals and participation in the European study 'Multimedia Rights Clearance Systems'. He has been a reviewer and evaluator for the European Commission and has written several books (including part of the BCS series on ECDL) and many articles. He was Chair of the BCS Electronic Publishing Specialist Group until earlier this year and is a member of the BCS Learned Society and Knowledge Services Board, chairing the working party on web content in 2002. He is now a Senior Lecturer at the London College of Communication (formerly the London College of Printing), part of the University of the Arts London, teaching mainly on the MA in Publishing and supervising several Knowledge Transfer Partnerships.

Official Website: http://www.epsg.org.uk/