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

本论文由美国国家科学基金会科学、技术与社会项目资助，研究了图书的大规模数字化，这不仅是印刷图书形式的重大变革，也是图书社会结构的重大变革。它试图探索马歇尔·麦克卢汉（Marshall McLuhan）近50年前所说的“任何媒介的内容总是另一种媒介”，通过探索当书籍成为联网计算机的内容时会发生什么。该研究项目围绕三个相互关联的问题展开：如何通过数字化将书籍重新物质化？它是如何被重估的？最后，这本书是如何被重新监管的？这些问题首先通过在一个大规模数字化组织进行扩展的实地研究来解决，在那里，研究人员将参与观察、访谈和其他数据收集。这个网站的一个目标是了解数字化的材料实践和数字化书籍的重要性。另一个目标是确定并绘制出围绕数字化图书的“新兴组合”——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、国家等。该项目将跟踪、记录和分析围绕数字化图书出现的争议、争论和实践。这项研究的学术价值在于：它将是当代少数关注这本书的社会科学研究之一；它提供了一个整体的角度来看，从仔细的，多地点的实证调查书；它剖析了一种重要的不断变化的社会形式，在新的实践被编纂或稳定之前。为了最大限度地发挥其更广泛的影响，已发表的研究将以详细、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，以便那些参与新兴数字形式监管的人能够更充分地意识到，当现有（或传统）的知识流通和保存制度和实践受到挑战和质疑时，什么是利害攸关的。

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.