Imagining the Architectures of the Book: Textual Scholarship and the Digital Book Arts (original) (raw)
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Scholarly and Research Communication
The INKE Research Group comprises over 35 researchers (and their research assistants and postdoctoral fellows) at more than 20 universities in Canada, England, the United States, and Ireland, and across 20 partners in the public and private sectors. INKE is a large-scale, long-term, interdisciplinary project to study the future of books and reading, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as well as contributions from participating universities and partners, and bringing together activities associated with book history and textual scholarship; user experience studies; interface design; and prototyping of digital reading environments.
In this paper, we present the first year work of the INKE (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) research group, a large international, interdisciplinary research team studying reading and texts, both digital and printed. The INKE team is comprised of researchers and stakeholders at the forefronts of fields relating to textual studies, user experience, interface design, and information management. We aim to contribute to the development of new digital information and knowledge environments that build on past textual practices. We discuss our research questions, methods, aims and research objectives, the rationale behind our work and its expected significance -specifically as it pertains to our first year goals of laying a research foundation for this endeavour. We thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for funding a research cluster grant, which has made our research network possible, and the generous co-sponsorship of our institutions and research partners.
Proceedings of the third workshop on …, 2010
In this paper, we present an overview of the first year work and plans for the second year work of the INKE (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) research group, a large international, interdisciplinary research team studying reading and texts, both digital and printed, as part of a seven-year project. The INKE team is comprised of researchers and stakeholders at the forefronts of fields relating to textual studies, user experience, interface design, and information management. We aim to contribute to the development of new digital information and knowledge environments that build on past textual practices. We discuss our research questions, methods, aims and research objectives, the rationale behind our work and its expected significance -specifically as it pertains to our first year goals of laying a research foundation for this endeavour -and the concrete steps to be undertaken in our second year of the project.
Preface by Mohammad Obaid, Ilgim Veryeri Alaca, Pawel W. Wozniak, Lars Lischke, Mark Billinghurst pp. 71 - 73 • Adam Girard, Benjamin R. Cowan, Kalpana Shankar, David Coyle Using Emotional Attachment as a Lens to Improve User’s E-reading Experience, pp. 74 - 83 • Pedro Ribeiro, Cristina Sylla, Ido Iurgel, Wolfgang Müller, Christian Ressel STREEN – Designing Smart Environments for Story Reading with Children, pp. 84 - 103 • Monica Bordegoni, Marina Carulli, Yuan Shi, Daniele Ruscio Investigating the effects of odours integration in reading and learning experiences, pp. 104 - 125 • Diane H. Sonnenwald, Jason McElligott Investigating Human-Rare Historic Book Interaction among Young Adults, pp. 126 - 149
From Book To Bookish: Repurposing the Book in the Digital Era
2018
Attacked. Defended. Worshipped. Ridiculed. Recycled. Books today are subject to all of these treatments. Books are used as home décor, mousepads, bill folders, and sculptures. Books are also pulped and anonymously converted into other, non-book related products. It is no coincidence that such transformations and transmutations abound, nor that these bookish forms are variously being shared, promoted or decried. The current digital era both encourages and enables this. But why is the book object still celebrated? How do these celebrations of the book manifest? How much of the ongoing cultural interest in the book is driven by its materiality? Focusing on just one way in which these celebrations manifest, this article displaces questions of text and authorship and instead offers a refreshed, object-orientated account of books today as lively, material ‘things’ and interrogates our taken-for-granted relationships with them. As evidenced in physical and virtual spaces, there is ongoing ...
Tradition and Transparency: Why Book Design Still Matters in the Digital Age
New Knowledge Environments, 2009
Designing for the Internet can be a wonderfully enlivening experience for the graphic designer. Layouts can be morphed fluidly, pages can contain all manner of multimedia objects, and design decisions are not hampered by practicalities such as the cost of four-colour reproduction. But it can be an equally frustrating experience for typographers, as their control over typeface, word spacing, justification, and the other myriad details that define a well-crafted printed page is reduced to the most rudimentary choices. This paper will examine this apparent disjuncture by first briefly outlining the historical separation between the trades of graphic designer and typographer and then discussing some of the advantages of having the designers of electronic interfaces become familiar with book typography traditions and of having electronic reading interfaces support basic typographic practices. Book typographers have traditionally viewed the more "artistic" graphic designers with suspicion because "typography is the efficient means to an essentially utilitarian and only accidentally aesthetic end" (Morison 5), and any overtly artistic gestures by the designer can potentially intrude upon the reading experience. This notion of typography as the art of creating a transparent interface between the author and the reader has its roots in the humanist tradition of the author-god and is obviously challenged by new models where the act of reading has the potential to be a three-way communication between authors, readers and the community and where the lines between the three are blurred. As a result some typographic practices, such as methods for including scholarly apparatus and annotations, will undoubtedly need to be modified. But this does not mean that all typographic traditions need to be tossed aside. For example, many digital reading interfaces present a "page" view designed for a screen that is taller than it is wide. While this mimics the dimensions of a single page of a book, readers of books seldom view a single page; the bound book presents a "spread" that allows the reader to view two pages at once. Presenting digital texts in such a manner not only has the advantage of familiarity, but this orientation also allows for specialized displays of information such as parallel text editions or facing page translations. If one is truly serious about wanting a digital interface to be "read," it is worth gaining an understanding of the practices of the craftspeople that have focused on just that for over 600 years.
Interactive Books: Reconfiguring the Experience of Reading
2011
"In the contemporary technologically dominated era, powerful software programs and applications have the agency to redefine the traditional stable perception of the cultural artifact of the book. By the affordances of computer technologies, books are not only digitalized in the format of e-books but have also reshaped them as multi-modal interactive objects known as interactive book. This new artifact of the book is enabled by the properties of the software which transfer it into a rich multimedia environment that includes text, pictures, sound effects and video in an integrated, holistic form. Interactive books present a transformative experience for readers and writers as they engage in new practices for consumption and creation of stories. This article will explore how the software reconfigures the space of the book and can give an agency to a new type of digital artifact. The goal of the article is to present how the digital artifact invites readers and writers to adopt new practices, skills and roles which give a new meaning to the perception of the book. By examining the case study of the educational digital book Inanimate Alice, the article aims to illustrate the new ways of experiencing literature. "
In this paper, we present the conceptual and theoretical foundations for work undertaken by the Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE) research group, a large international, interdisciplinary research team studying reading and texts, both digital and printed. The INKE team is comprised of researchers and stakeholders at the forefronts of fields relating to textual studies, user experience, interface design, and information management. We aim to contribute to the development of new digital information and knowledge environments that build on past textual practices. In this piece, we discuss our research questions, methods, aims and research objectives, the rationale behind our work and its expected significance.
The Digital David and the Gutenberg Goliath: The Rise of the ‘Enhanced’ e-book
In the recent past, the large-scale production and marketing of e-reading devices, such as Amazon's Kindle, and tablet computers, such as Apple's iPad, have allowed literary works to be presented in a digital reading space, both in the form of standard e-books and, more recently, as enhanced or 'amplified' e-books. Given the rapid rise of the Digital Humanities in the world academy, these products have gained a new prominence, despite continuing fears among literary guardians that the digital reading space might cause fluency disruptions and break the hermeneutic immersion necessary for strong, deep reading. For such scholars, digital reading is seen as irrevocably altering the traditional, paper-based reading experience. It is necessary, however, to acknowledge that the reading landscape has shifted decisively towards the digital sphere, and that the new digital reader -the so-called digital native -absorbs information almost exclusively in a digital, hyperconnected space. How do some of the literary products on the frontier of the digital reading space 'measure up'? Is there room enough only in the nonfiction and educational genres for a digital evolution, as predicted by many publishers and academics, or will fiction, too, absorb digital media into its storytelling praxis?