Beyond Remediation: The Role of Textual Studies in Implementing New Knowledge Environments

Textual scholars have served both as chroniclers of how humans interact with their written records, and, more actively, as agents themselves in many of the changes that those interactions have undergone. This chapter describes the rationale and initial goals of a particular group of digital textual scholars, the Textual Studies team within the Implementing New Knowledge Environments project (INKE.ca), but also considers the role of textual studies generally in a digital world. This chapter also outlines the online knowledge base, titled Architectures of the Book (or ArchBook), which illustrates the features, technologies, and practices of transmitting knowledge in textual form. ArchBook will not only be the most comprehensive online reference for the history of the book, but will also promote research on the future of the book through its focus on the information architecture of texts.