TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

‘Chasing Crusoe’ via multimedia: Robinson Crusoe the novel vs. the real ‘Crusoe’ and his island

By David Rothman

A real Robinson Crusoe lived and breathed outside the pages of Daniel Defoe’s 18th-century novel—so it’s believed.

He was a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk, marooned off the coast of Chile.

What if a multimedia Web site compared the lives of the Defoe character and the sailor and introduced us to the real island as it exists today?

That, in fact, is what Chasing Crusoe actually does—see for yourself.

Enjoy the multimedia presentation and drop by the novel’s Wikipedia entry as well. So much the better if you read the actual Robinson Crusoe from Project Gutenberg or manybooks.net if you haven’t already.

Bilingual—and also a preview of the possibilities of multimedia e-books

Available in English and Spanish, the site is a collaboration between Prof. Rich Beckman’s multimedia story-telling class at the University of North Carolina and students from Universidad de Los Andes in Santiago, Chile. Kudos to everyone behind the site; ahead in this post, see a photo of the documentary crew.

If I were an English or history teacher and the site fit my curriculum, I’d point my students to it. Chasing Crusoe also could be good link fodder for K-12 libraries and even above. What’s more, the site offers a good preview of the possibilities of multimedia e-books—except that some might already regard it as a book of sorts. In fact, over at the Institute for the Future of the Book, Bob Stein might feel more vindicated than ever about his pioneering multimedia CDs at Voyager two decades ago.

Meanwhile, I’d welcome TeleBlog readers’ thoughts on issues ranging from Flash use to the question of multimedia’s effect on freedom of expression.

The heavy use of Flash

Was Flash overused? Could people have more easily navigated through the site with standard hyperlinks and great captions in standard text? Also, how about access for disabled?

I’m curious, too, about the possibility of university computer departments collaborating with the SVG community to bring graphics more into the XML era. This would be long term. For now, Flash is The Show for projects like Chasing Crusoe.

The site as a driver of people to the literary classic

Does the Crusoe site make you more likely to read the novel? Or would a good movie based on the book have been a better way to whet your interest? Yes, the ideal would be a mix of a movie and multimedia, but forced to choose between the two, which would you prefer—both personally and for society at large?

Multimedia’s possible displacement of in-depth text: Why not have both?

What do you think of an observation from Prof. Beckman? He has been quoted as saying that in a few years, newspaper Web sites will offer less text. Is this good or bad?

I see images and sound as a great addition to text, but do we really want less information for those who appreciate it? Via hyperlinks, journalists can serve up endless text for drill-down readers while sparing the casual browsers?

Freedom of expression issues

There are also freedom of expression issues. On one hand, yes, you can do so much more technically with multimedia presentations than with straight text. But will this make newspapers and magazines even less adventurous than they are today?

Highly refined multimedia isn’t cheap, so will a focus on packaging will leave fewer resources available for, say, investigative journalism?

Remember, too, we’re talking about teams here, not just individuals. And that might encourage a more corporate approach at the expense of good surprises from individual newsroom staffers—both in terms of style and content.

No, I won’t absolutely despair, far from it. Imagine all the sizzle that great graphics and multimedia can add to investigative pieces.

Blending multimedia into the Web as a whole

I also wonder about how the multimedia efforts will blend into the Web as a whole.How deep-linkable will multimedia sites be? Some in the newspaper business would hate deep links. But remember, the Web abounds with blogs that are designed to flourish in such an environment; newspapers can’t afford to fall behind.

The TeleBlog currently isn’t running ads, but if it did, many shoppers in search of e-book hardware or other products would be drawn here by the content (we’re actually outpulling LibraryJournal.com at times—with a content budget of $0).

Can newspapers, too, learn to blend into the Web as a whole?

The corpse collector and the story-by-story decision

In the end, I suspect, the use of sophisticated multimedia presentations should be a story-by-story decision. Trot out the full multimedia treatment on the biggest stories and on special occasions; otherwise use text and videos. Watch the New York Times’ memorable text and multimedia about a rapper-body collector in Detroit. It’s a long way from a full-blown presentation, yet probably does a good job of holding the attention of those who want more than the text. I suspect that the entire crew consisted of the reporter and the videographer and perhaps an editor.

No, I’m not suggesting that one video segment is the same as the Crusoe effort, but I suspect that the Times did the story in a fraction of the time. For newspaper use, different from library or school use, would the extra (live) bodies have made a difference in enlightening readers and holding their interests?

Specific suggestions for the Crusoe multimedia crew

In the case of Crusoe, I myself would have appreciated some well-chosen videos—of, say, the students learning in the island’s school about the Defoe novel, assuming that this is happening. This way, the Crusoe site would have a warmer, less textbookish feel and draw more visitors. Maybe such videos are there, but if so, they are not as conspicuously displayed as they should be. Significantly, the site comes most alive in its segment featuring the locals as they live today, many of them dreaming that a crowd of tourists will make the long, expensive voyage to the island. (Alas, local fishing harvests are declining.)

For that matter, I’d have welcome a little interaction between the student journalists and the locals, not to mention a Crusoe expert. In the age of videography when it’s stylish just to let the story tell itself, I know my ‘tude is out of vogue. So be it. I’d even welcome a video in the vein of the late Charles Kuralt’s On the Road segment to help me get into the subject matter–ideally something with a little humor. More of a peoplish approach, please! The video could appear on the home page, along with moderated comments from visitors, especially from schools. While much of the Crusoe site is about an island, that’s no reason for the site to be one.

In a related vein, how about reaching out to the K-12 community in other ways? For example, the site could encourage students and educators to reposition the material—with pointers back to rcrusoe.org—and even record their own YouTube-style videos of class discussions.

Crusoe’s present Alexa rank is 5,125,754, which, given all the creativity lavished on the site, should be much better. I hope this review helps send visitors that way. Laudably, a link already exists from the Wikipedia’s page devoted to the novel.

Here’s to experimentation, especially the kind that makes the Web a richer, more useful place—which is exactly what Chasing Crusoe does in spite of its flaws!

Related: WUNC audio segment on the Crusoe project.

Puzzle: I could not find a copy online of the current Carolina Communicator, the student-written paper in which the article appeared. What’s the point of hiding the Communicator—intended as a vehicle to publicize the journalism school? A printcentric mindset just won’t cut it these days if newspapers are to survive. As a Carolina alum, I think the J school could do much better in telling its story online.

Update, Feb. 1: The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Wired Campus blog pointed to the Crusoe site and, like me, was supportive of the Carolina experiment. Meanwhile I need to make clear that there is some education-related video content on the site, but apparently not what I have in mind—for example, videos of students learning about Crusoe in school, assuming this is happening. And once again, in general, I’d welcome more of a people-ish feel to the site in general. That way a good site could be still better.