Making and distributing books, says Simon Spain, has gone through many phases. He sums up the changes in publishing by citing, first, the Book of Kells: the monks made just one copy, and anyone who wants to see it must come to Dublin.
After Gutenberg's printing press, he observes, it become possible to print unlimited copies of books and deliver them to their readers. "But now, with the Internet," he says, "you can make just one copy of a book and have unlimited readership by putting it on a web page."
Spain, a transplanted Englishman with long experience of book-making with children, is artist-in-residence at the Ark, the children's cultural centre in Dublin's Temple Bar. He is also a print-maker. The 1,500 or more primary-school children who have attended his workshop, Changing Pages, in the past month or so have grasped the concept of "limited" and "unlimited" editions the best way of all: by creating them.
In a jam-packed two hours spread around three floors of the splendidly pliable Ark, 30 kids at a time learn - by doing - how to fold, staple and cut a small book; how colour separations work; how to make a screen-print (perfect preparation for a class trip to the Warhol retrospective at the IMMA, I would have thought); and most joyously and frantically, how to make etchings and letters, ink them and pressprint them into a book of their own creation.
Only then - having got their hands dirty and crafted tangible objects - are they introduced to the Internet, about which the children have the mix of excitement and ignorance ("it does your homework for you") characteristic of other generations too. Spain talks them through a series of web pages where they can read a book created by an earlier class, exploring it in ways that are unique to this new publishing medium.
And, to gasps from the children, he thickens the plot further by pointing out that the pages could be printed-out from a computer anywhere in the world, and turned back into a "real" book.
I had the pleasure of sharing the workshop with fifth-class girls from St Patrick's Loreto School in Bray, Co Wicklow, who were as likely to gasp, oooh and aaah at a splodge of ink or an expanding sponge as at any cyberstuff. Deirdre, Camilla, Siobhan, Faye, two Rebeccas and 26 others took to this creative carry-on with unself-conscious ease, and it was all I could do to follow their example.
Amid all the hype about the Internet and millions of pounds for computers in schools, Changing Pages is a delight, emphasising the pleasures of making words and images with old technology, and the continuity with the new. Spain likes to think that the ideas and activities in the workshop can help build literacy skills among children.
Teachers, meanwhile, can only gaze enviously at the facilities available at the Ark. In addition to the expertise of Spain and a rake of staff in trademark grey sweatshirts, the centre offers space, light, ink, smocks, plenty of scissors and a dozen other things that are in scarce supply at your average Irish national school - where a box of broken crayons is shared among 30 children in the name of art.
Sadly, demand from schools for Changing Pages has outstripped supply and it finishes next week. But the five giant books printed by the children will remain, in limited edition at the Ark, and in unlimited edition on the Internet.
