Cairns

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Last updated on Wednesday 19 July 2006

Celebrating 25 years of Cairns Publications
1981–2006

Into the Future

The Cairns website has been expanded to include a whole new section – Cairns Publications Online (CPO in the navigation tool). It was launched on Wednesday 19 July 2006, only slightly later than planned.

New book and new-look website encouraging each other

Because the new book, Out of the Silence...Into the Silence, is fairly long and verges on being a directory, resource, or quarry, it seemed a good idea to make it available as well on the website. You can now read the material on screen or print it off for your own use. You can have before you or in your hand simply what you need for any one day. There are also three additional items:

an extra reading for each day from the Cairns book, Waymarks,
the text in full of the Gospel reading,
and the music for the psalm refrains.

Click here for a free sample.

In time I would like to add further material, for example, a calendar of intentions for praying each day for others, some suggestions for a hymn for each day, and, in time, an unfolding of the Gospel readings from a perspective similar to that used in preparing the psalm versions in print.

Also in preparation are arrangements, words and music, of the psalm or section of the psalm indicated for each Sunday of the three-year lectionary now widely used in most of the churches.

Yet more...

Now that the enlarged website is up and running, I have begun to fulfil my intention to add some of the content of some of the books that have been published over the past 25 years, particularly when they are no longer in print. The first two titles are Brainsquall and Prayer at Night’s Approaching: these are available now for download. And there will also be a number of occasional pieces that have not yet been published. I hope also that in due course the whole website will be given a thematic index.

The site has free pages – publicity and samples – and different levels of subscription giving access and permission to download a certain number of pages and copies. For further news and information please go to Cairns Publications Online.

Books and websites: a complex shifting relationship

The way in which the relationship between books and websites will progress (or not) is unpredictable. It is currently full of fascination, but any exploration on the small scale, such as that of Cairns, feels like a roller coaster of faith. But, hey, what’s new? I can always hope it will add to the pension fund – oh yes, and to our mutual spiritual nourishment...

One thing that seems to be happening is that large reference books like directories and dictionaries are fast becoming redundant, not least because websites can keep them up to date more easily and cheaply. Perhaps the majority of books will continue to be paperbacks, with short shelf lives for all but a few. And there will be a minority of hardbacks and special editions for words that are proving their worth, that need savouring and pondering, and need covers and binding that don’t disintegrate on second reading. It may nor may not be symptomatic of these changes that most of the recent Cairns Publications, including Out of the Silence...Into the Silence, have been published in hardback.

JIM COTTER
CAIRNS PUBLICATIONS

Gernant
Aberdaron
Pwllheli
Gwynedd
LL53 8BG

tel/fax: +44 (0)1758 760296

jim@cottercairns.co.uk

www.cottercairns.co.uk

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