Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Open Book: Digital Form in the Making

本论文在美国国家科学基金会科学、技术和社会计划的支持下，研究了图书的大规模数字化是一项重大变革，不仅体现在印刷图书的形式上，而且体现在图书的社会结构上。它试图通过探索当这本书成为联网计算机的内容时，这本书会发生什么，来探索近50年前马歇尔·麦克卢汉的一句话，即“任何媒介的内容总是另一种媒介”。这项研究项目围绕三个相互交叉的问题展开：这本书是如何通过数字化重现的？它是如何被重新估值的？最后，这本书是如何重新监管的？这些问题首先是通过在一个大规模数字化组织进行广泛的实地研究来解决的，在那里，研究人员将参与观察、采访和其他数据收集。这个网站的目标之一是了解数字化的物质实践和数字化图书的实质性。另一个目标是识别和绘制围绕数字化图书的“紧急集合”--图书馆员、出版商、作者、搜索引擎公司、版权律师、作者组织、“开放”倡导者、国家和其他人。该项目将跟踪、记录和分析围绕数字图书出现的争议、争论和实践。这项研究的学术价值在于：它将是当代为数不多的关注这本书的社会科学研究之一；它提供了这本书的整体视角，源于仔细的、多地点的实证调查；它剖析了一种不断变化的重要社会形态，在新的实践被编纂或稳定之前。为了最大限度地扩大其影响，已发表的研究报告将以详细、仔细记录的方式列出围绕图书数字化的技术、法律、经济和文化问题，以便参与监管新兴数字形式的人能够更充分地意识到，随着现有(或传统)知识流通和保存的机构和做法受到挑战和质疑，这将是一种危险。

This dissertation research, supported by the Science, Technology, and Society Program at NSF, investigates the mass digitization of books as a significant transformation not only in the form of the printed book but also in the social apparatus of the book. It seeks to explore Marshall McLuhan's pronouncement nearly fifty years ago that "the content of any medium is always another medium" by exploring what happens to the book when it becomes the content of networked computers. The research project is organized around three intersecting questions: How is the book being rematerialized through digitization? How is it being revalued? And, finally, how is the book being re-regulated? These questions are pursued first through extended field research at one mass digitizing organization, where the researcher will engage in participant observation, interviewing, and other data collection. One goal at this site is to understand the material practices of digitization and the materiality of digitized books. Another goal is to identify and chart the "emergent assemblage" around the digitized book--librarians, publishers, authors, search engine firms, copyright lawyers, authors' organizations, "openness" advocates, the state, and others. The project will track, document, and analyze the controversies, contestations, and practices emerging around the digitized book.The intellectual merits of the research are that: it will be one of the few social scientific studies that focuses on the book in the contemporary moment; it provides a holistic perspective of the book derived from careful, multi-sited empirical inquiry; and it anatomizes an important social form in flux, before new practices are codified or stabilized. To maximize its broader impact, the published research will lay out, in a detailed, carefully documented way, the technical, legal, economic and cultural issues around book digitization so that those involved in the regulation of emergent digital forms can be more fully aware of what is at stake as existing (or traditional) institutions and practices for the circulation and preservation of knowledge are challenged and called into question.