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

本论文的研究，在NSF的科学，技术和社会计划的支持下，调查的大规模数字化的书籍作为一个显着的转变，不仅在印刷书籍的形式，但也在书的社会机构。它试图探索马歇尔麦克卢汉的声明，近50年前，“任何媒体的内容总是另一种媒体”通过探索发生了什么事，当它成为网络计算机的内容。该研究项目围绕三个相互交叉的问题组织：如何通过数字化将书籍重新实体化？它是如何被重新估值的？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物质实践和数字化图书的物质性。另一个目标是识别和绘制围绕数字化图书的“新兴集合”--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化图书出现的争议、质疑和实践。该研究的智力价值在于：它将是当代为数不多的关注图书的社会科学研究之一;它提供了一个来自仔细的、多地点的实证调查的整体视角;它剖析了在新的实践被编纂或稳定之前，一种不断变化的重要社会形式。为了最大限度地扩大其更广泛的影响，已发表的研究将以详细，仔细记录的方式，围绕图书数字化的技术，法律的，经济和文化问题，以便参与新兴数字形式监管的人员能够更充分地了解现有（或传统）的知识流通和保存机构和实践受到挑战和质疑的风险。

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.