Implementing New Knowledge Environments: Building Upon Research Foundations to Understand Books and Reading in the Digital Age Ray Siemens Faculty of Humanities University of Victoria Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 3W1 001 250 721 7272 siemens@uvic.ca Julie Meloni Electronic Textual Cultures Lab University of Victoria Victoria, BC, Canada V8W 3W1 001 509 592 7873 jcmeloni.etcl@gmail.com INKE Research Group ABSTRACT In this paper, we present an overview of the first year work and plans for the second year work of the INKE (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) research group, a large international, interdisciplinary research team studying reading and texts, both digital and printed, as part of a seven-year project. The INKE team is comprised of researchers and stakeholders at the forefronts of fields relating to textual studies, user experience, interface design, and information management. We aim to contribute to the development of new digital information and knowledge environments that build on past textual practices. We discuss our research questions, methods, aims and research objectives, the rationale behind our work and its expected significance – specifically as it pertains to our first year goals of laying a research foundation for this endeavour – and the concrete steps to be undertaken in our second year of the project. Categories and Subject Descriptors H. Information Systems; H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (e.g., HCI) (I.7); H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6); H.1.2 User/Machine Systems; Human information processing General Terms Design, Human Factors, Theory. Keywords Text, Interface, Prototype, Reading, Book. 1. INTRODUCTION This paper presents an overview of the first year, foundational work and plans for the second year work of the INKE (Implementing New Knowledge Environments) research group, a large international, interdisciplinary research team (35 researchers from 20 different institutions) working on a seven-year project. We have come together to study different elements of reading and texts, both digital and printed. This paper follows the project overview presented at the BooksOnline '08 workshop in Napa [1], which discusses our larger mandate, and the overview of first year work presented at the BooksOnline '09 workshop in Corfu [2]; discussion of our long term research objectives are available in Siemens, et al. [3] The INKE research group is developing a new digital information/knowledge environment that builds on past textual practices, having already articulated a foundation for identifying the characteristics of digital interfaces that respond to the expectations and needs of a broad constituency of professional, personal, and lay readers. Ultimately, our work will provide functional reading interface prototypes that have the potential to transform the way we engage with the digital materials that comprise our personal and professional reading. This work is accomplished through the interaction of four core groups: Textual Studies, User Experience, Interface Design, and Information Management. The interaction and ongoing collaboration between these groups is crucial to the success of the environment. The Textual Studies (TS) team researches and responds to the need for understanding further what components of existing textual artifacts are essential to represent in new digital objects and reading devices; the User Experience (UX) team identifies characteristics of user engagement with print and digital artifacts and environments both current and future; the Interface Design (ID) team focuses on extending continuous reading and scholarship involving digital environments through interface; and, through iterative processes involving all research groups, the Information Management (IM) team researches and builds prototypical methods for storing, retrieving, and navigating information more efficiently than in the past, while drawing on dynamically integrated collections of supporting materials.