In the Company of Readers: The Digital Library Book as Practiced Place

1
In the Company of ReadersThe Digital Library
Book as Practiced Place

• Nancy Kaplan and Yoram Chisik
• School of Information Arts and Technologies
• University of Baltimore

2
Why a book as practiced place

• de Certeau a space becomes a practiced place
  when the people act in the space and give the
  space meaning through their actions.
• Through traces of human activity, we create
  practiced places we sense the presence of
  others.

3
First principles

• Literacy practices have always been social
• Reading for pleasure differs from reading for
  work or school
• Reading for pleasure enhances childrens literacy
  skills

4
Libraries have social lives

• Communal reading rooms
• Visible presence of others

5
Books have social lives

• Signs of use
• Marginalia

6
Representing the social, digitally

• Social context weakly represented in digital
  books, digital libraries, the World Wide Web
• Annotation systems widely studied, but usually in
  the context of adult work

7
Key goals

• Work with the International Childrens Digital
  Library
• Developed by the HCIL at the University of
  Maryland and the Digital Archive --
  http//www.icdlbooks.org
• Augment the social in digital books
• Meet the needs, expectations, and desires of
  10-14 year old readers

8
Children as design partners

• Contextual Inquiry
• Observing and interviewing children reading
  at home, in public libraries, and in bookstores

9
Participatory design activities

• Exploring potential directions
• Focusing on key functions and affordances
• Designing interface elements

10
Alph is born

• Page images (jpg)
• Stable spatial structure
• Shared visual representation among all users
• Controlled access
• Protected environment for children
• Identifying marks and notes by their authors

11

12
Taking Alph for a spin

• Would participants enjoy using a sociable digital
  library book?
• Would we be able to see sociable literacy
  practices in action?
• What would evidence of social interaction look
  like?
• Would we learn anything about reading as a social
  practice?

13
Field test design

• Participants were members of the design team,
  their families and friends
• Data included
• time per session
• pages viewed
• marks and notes created and deleted
• private and public designations of marks and
  notes
• content of all notes

14
Field test design

• Feedback included
• Sticky-note session with all participants
• Group discussion

15
(No Transcript)
16
What we found

• Participants used Alph to be sociable
• Many clusters of notes with question/response
  structures
• beer yuck that is soo nasty
• How would you know what beer tastes like?
• Feedback from participants focuses on Alphs
  social features

17
(No Transcript)
18
Some tentative conclusions

• Signs of sociability everywhere
• Authors shared 80.9 of their annotations
• Annotations show awareness of the presence of
  other readers
• Participants oscillated between reading -- moving
  forward in the story -- and socializing --
  moving around to see what notes had been left

19
Some limitations

• Technical issues
• Legibility
• technical skill when theres no on site help
• constraints on locations for reading
• Design of the preliminary field test
• composition of IRGs

20
For the future

• Wider use of Alph to tease out more issues
• Wider questions to pursue
• Will communities of readers arise spontaneously?
• What role might existing social ties play in the
  formation of reading groups?
• How else can we practice the place of the book?

21
Wed like to thank
Our Design Partners, Short and Tall Robert W.
Deutsch Foundation EIA-0203323
nkaplan_at_ubalt.edu
ychisik_at_ubalt.edu