Century of web handling literature

Abstract

This paper is a review of some 3,500 published works in the areas of web handling, winding, converting and related subjects. These individual works include articles, books, columns, conference papers, instruction manuals, theses, course notes and other material spanning the better part of a century. There are hundreds of authors that have contributed to this vast body of industrial art and science. These authors represent scores of companies, independent consultants, universities, trade organizations and trade publishers. The individual works were found by a combination of professional and public database searches as well as direct inspection of collections at libraries, attendance at conferences, magazine subscriptions, websites and other sources. These original works were then inspected for the bibliographies contained therein and added when new and relevant items were found. All web related works were entered into a flat database of a dozen fields that extended beyond the obvious (author, title, publication) to include such information as author's employer, copyright holder, rating and other fields. The search and database construction took place over the course of a quarter century.

Analysis of this database within this paper includes a study of publication counts by author, subject, type and source. While the great majority of authors have only a single or a few web handling publications, some of those are uniquely valuable as they may be the only treatment of a particular topic. A handful of authors have more than one-quarter century of steady publication. Even so, the most prolific author still only accounts for less than 10% of the total. The organizations that account for the majority of the web related publications include TAPPI, Paper Film Foil Converter Magazine, the Converting Magazine, AIMCAL and, of course, the Web Handling Research Center. The publication count ranking nearly matches the age of the major organizations, possibly suggesting a steady publication rate. Unfortunately, the overall publication rate seems to show the common life-cycle pattern of development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline. If TAPPI publications are not considered, because the paper industry has been in a decade plus long decline, the remaining publication rate seems to be holding since its peak in the mid 1990's. A prospective of near future publication is also given.