I have always valued books, they have always been a part of my life, and I think I will continue to value books well into the future. The irony is of-course is that I am an e-writer and publish weekly on the Internet. E-writing will of-course be a great part of our future. I do of-course hope that my writing stands the test of time, but the truth is that on-line writing is on the whole of a very low quality. That is one of the things that marks out real books from the wealth of works on this media; quality.

In my youth I remember spending hours in my mother’s favourite store – the book store. I also remember spending many hours leafing through the volumes on my grandfather’s shelves, particularly looking in awe at the older volumes, some dating back to 1770 and earlier. The older works always fascinated me, and today I do own a few reasonable volumes, but not as many as I would really like.

Even though the quality of writing in books published today is much lower than it was say 30 years ago. On the whole though works where an editor and publisher are involved do tend to be of a much higher quality than the vast majority of what is said on the web is full of grammatical and spelling errors, and the chances are I will commit the cardinal sin before the end of this article – but then I do not have an editor or publisher to inspect all that I write, I have to do all that myself.

When asked the question whether people would prefer to buy paper books to e-books? I have to say that I prefer paper to electronic books at any time. Something like Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader does not excite me. The functionality may have improved tremendously but my objection is not about the quality of the readers, which will always continue to improve over time. I prefer the feel of a real book in my hands. That said I do read plenty of electronic documents without ever printing them onto paper. I think there are differences between the media that will be ever present.

In-case you are thinking about being ecologically sound. Our paper needs are taken care of from a mixture of farmed and re-cycled paper. Paper is ecologically sound and will continue to be provided we use it conservatively.

Obviously electronic works can be searched through more easily, but with so much information out there will the important nugget be found? This is where the search engines fail up miserably. Newspapers and magazines were supposed to have been at the forefront of electronic information distribution providing us with exactly the news we were interested in, but sadly that have failed to deliver on this vision and seem to be facing a long, torturous, death. Maybe their role was usurped by the great search engines in the clouds, despite their imprecision.

The future of knowledge and how we deliver it is sure to be an exciting one. I am ready for the journey.

There is however a problem in that the average reader is inundated with papers, many of which are simply routes to advertise the wares of one corporation or another. I like to read genuine papers that add to the knowledge in a particular area of specialty. I think there is a place for all papers published today I would like to see a re-thinking of how we designate published papers within the industry. 

The original concept of white paper came from government circles. When a new law was conceived a green-paper was published for discussion this was sent out to interested parties showing that a new law was being proposed. If the right level of support were available then the proposal and important amendments would become a white paper (or bill) which would be discussed in parliament before becoming law. 

The idea of a white paper is to portray ideas, best practices and discussions. The thing is that we have now extended the concept to informative advertisements and beyond. Today IT Toolbox sent out in its “BI Research Alert” a paper entitled “A BI Agenda for Midsize Organizations: Six Strategies for Success”. The article itself was both interesting and informative but nonetheless geared towards what its sponsor IBM Cognos could offer in terms of a solution. As I said before there is definitely a place for such a paper but I am not sure it should be as a white paper. Sad to say that most such papers end up in the email bin. 

My belief is that white papers should make a contribution to industry best practices assisting IT practitioners to make decision on projects they are managing. Sponsored papers are not able to do this as they will limit the thinking to what is available within the scope of a specific product. 

I would like to see the following types of paper published: 

* Idea papers about the future if IT/computing. 
* Best practice discussion papers 
* Sponsored papers 
* Paid Articles 

Idea papers: I along with many others have ideas on new directions I would like to see IT or vendors take. I have also been known to put pen to paper. I like the idea that such a paper be called a green paper, but we could simply call it an idea paper. It is unlikely to be sponsored. 

Best Practice papers: To my mind these are based upon independent research. There is no reason why they should not be sponsored, for example the Gartner Group regularly publish works under this category. I have also done so in the area of Data Mastering (click here to see). 

These are what I see as a true “white paper”, produced for common industry usage. whilst the majority of such papers will be provided free there is no reason why they could not attract a charge – after all many will be written by independent practitioners involving considerable effort, which should be rewarded. This type of paper must always give an independent viewpoint. 

Sponsored papers: are those papers that are linked to some form of advertising (probably 70% of those that are published today will fall under this category). If I were putting a colour to this type of document it would probably be “Blue”. 

Please feel free to discuss this proposal within your community. Please note that I do not propose any restrictions on publication, merely that the white paper space be returned to its proper use.

by Peter B. Giblett