Welcome to the HCI-Book Strategic Research Cluster
Our work aims to foster the further understanding of the significance of digital and analog books and their role in humanities scholarship. We are very grateful that a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) research cluster award made possible the preliminary work presented on the website.
Research questions
Key questions to be addressed include:
- What do we really know about the ways in which we interact with new texts that replace the print artifact and re-present to us the knowledge and experience of the past, as well as deliver the direct-to-digital record of the present?
- How do we understand the ways in which we interact with these knowledge objects, and the information they contain?
- How do we understand the impact that the confluence of media formats in these digital objects has on our use of them, such that we may best facilitate interaction with the new digital artifact?
HCI-Book members
The HCI-Book group is comprised of researchers and stakeholders at the forefront of computing in the humanities, text analysis, information studies, usability and interface design. The network is led by Canadian scholars, but includes members from the USA and the UK. It is comprised of those who are best-poised to understand the nature of the human record as it intersects with the computer. Our work is divided into four key research groupings: reader studies, information management, interface design and textual studies.
Key research objectives
The working group will begin to identify the central issues relating to the digitization of the human record and to act on that identification, to the end of:
- understanding and describing the basic principles of humanistic interaction with knowledge objects (digital and analog alike)
- articulating core strategies for the design of humanistic knowledge objects, especially electronic books, based on this understanding
- suggesting basic principles necessary for evaluating and implementing current technologies, and exploring future ones.
Further information
For information about the HCI-Book Research Group beyond this website, please contact Dr. Ray Siemens (lastname at uvic dot ca), at the University of Victoria.
The text presented on this website was edited by Vika Zafrin, with Alan Galey.
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