Textual Studies

At the inception of INKE, 4 foundational research areas were established to examine and explore electronic textuality: Information Management (IM), Interface Design (ID), Textual Studies (TS), and User Experience (UX). These areas were later joined by Modelling & Prototyping (M&P).

Textual Studies (TS)’s objective was: To document the features of previous textual forms as the essential context for implementing new knowledge environments.

TS asked, “How has the Internet altered reading practices?” TS combined close study of material artifacts with interpretive inquiry into human activities and extended this study to digital artifacts and online multimedia knowledge environments. Overall, TS sought to bridge the study of print and digital texts to develop a technical vocabulary for comprehensively describing the salient features of digital texts.

During the third year of the INKE project, TS hosted the conference “Beyond Accessibility: Textual Studies in the 21st Century” at the University of Victoria. Also during the third year, TS members helped to share a collection of rare books with a UPEI history class. CBC covered the story and produced the following report:
“Sharing a Collection of 15th and 16th Century Books (2012)” (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation 2012)

Leads

Alan Galey (U Toronto) and Richard Cunningham (Acadia U)

Members & Research-active Partner Representatives

Richard Cunningham (Acadia U), Brent Nelson (U Saskatchewan), Ray Siemens (U Victoria, current INKE director), Paul Werstine (King’s UC/U Western Ontario), Michael Best (U Victoria), Alan Galey (U Toronto) , David Gants (Florida State U), Bertrand Gervais (U de Québec a Montréal), Julia Flanders (Northeastern U), Christopher Fletcher (U Laval), Matthew Kirschenbaum (U Maryland), Geoffrey Rockwell (U Alberta, current Interface Design member), Susan Schreibman (Trinity College Dublin), Pierre Lévy (U Ottawa), Christian Vandendorpe (U Ottawa, current Interface Design member), and Josée Vincent (U de Sherbrooke).

Post-doctoral Fellows: Paul Caton, Jon Bath (current Modelling & Prototyping co-lead), Scott Schofield
Graduate Research Assistants: Gord Barentson, Robert Imes, Matthew Wells, Michael Choi, David Purdy, Rebecca Niles, Jenette Weber
Undergraduate Research Assistant: Meaghan Smith

Key Prototypes & Publications

Architectures of the Book knowledge-base
ArchBook Image Repository
ArchBook blog

Partners & Affiliates

Folger Shakespeare Library, Electronic Literature Organization, Text Encoding Initiative, Canadian Research Knowledge Network, Early English Books Online — Text Creation Partnership, Internet Shakespeare Editions, Oxford Text Archive, Proquest, Public Knowledge Project, Transliteracies, and the Versioning Machine.