Abstract
[...]before capabilities for mass produced printed books were invented, manuscripts were created during two distinctive periods, 'The Monastic' (approximately 400 CE to the twelfth century) and 'Secular Age' (from the end of the twelfth century to late fifteen century);5 in Western Europe, the former mainly focused on diligent copying of religious texts and some ancient Latin works by monastic scriptoriums6 and the latter saw a significant increase in secular works, encouraged by the formation of university libraries and book copying workshops in the later twelfth and early thirteenth century to address growing student requirements.7 An increase in public literacy from surfacing middle classes also created a demand for books on informational (i.e. science, law) and leisure based topics (i.e. novels) during this time.8 Moreover, the book can be said to be mutable through tears and marks evidencing its handling, mistakes found in text replications and additional annotations added. Drawing on early analysis of fourteen one-to-one reading evaluation studies where participants were introduced to and interviewed on how they might use the a-book, we theorise that the a-book could alter: book physicality by encouraging a dedication of print to timeless content that provides tactile navigation and organisation of agile information; discourse through collective reading interactions and personalisation capabilities afforded by virtual and material components; mutability using editable features to transform curated print content into visual markers for storing personal accounts; and temporality through digital facilities that enable capture and curation of multiple user temporality signifiers that can be shared, reinterpreted and modified by subsequent viewers. A-books introduce additional sensory aspects to reading; they achieve this presently mainly using complementary audio and/or video, accessed by either interacting with the pages (e.g. Listen Reader)11 or using specific specialised equipment (e.g. barcode scanner or electronic pen) to activate supplementary associated media (e.g. Books with Voices12 and Leapfrog Tag Reading System).13 QR codes14 are also commonly employed to augment other forms of printed content such as magazines, brochures, leaflets and newspapers, linking readers to web-based videos and related online sites, encouraging fragmented multimedia reading. 'Social media' in this instance refers to a group of internet-hosted applications that support the generation/provision of user-created content, emerging from the philosophical and technological beginnings of Web 2.0-when Internet participants transitioned from passive to co-creators of online platforms through evolving usage and responsive modification from original providers.21 Through practices of co-creation between traditional publishers and end-users in the mutual generation of published content,22 these developments are broadening the physical forms book content can take, the discourses and temporalities it depicts, the way it can mutate, as well as its temporality through platforms supporting additions of multimedia content, online publishing, copying, modification, and reinterpretation, heightening intertextuality.