Reading and Writing Knowledge in Scientific Communities E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 261

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Practices associated with the culture of "scholarly" reading have been developed over many centuries and annotations themselves have become the subject of study, either as additional elements in connection with the original texts or as documents in their own right. The first "scholarly" reading techniques, seen historically from the 12th Century onwards, combine reading and writing in a process known as lettrure, involving both attentive reading and commentary. The Internet has transformed this activity, adding technical layers that relate both to the reading and writing process as well as to the circulation of texts; their potential and effective augmentation, diffusion, and reception. This book examines digitized reading and writing by focusing primarily on the conditions for the co-construction of scientific knowledge and its augmentation. The authors present numerous examples of studies and personal feedback concerning the intellectual process, open critical spaces, collaborative scholarly publishing, methods for the circulation and mediatization of knowledge, as well as the techniques and tools employed.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Foreword: Reading and Writing in New Systems of Digital Documentality

1 Introduction to Scientific Reading and Writing and to Technical Modalities of Augmentation

1.1. Introduction

1.2. The digital humanities

1.3. Notable features of reading and writing

1.4. Current hypertext technologies

1.5. Conclusion

1.6. Bibliography

2 Ecrilecture and the Construction of Knowledge within Professional Communities

1

2.1. Introduction

2.2. Ecrilecture and research practices: state of the art

2.3. Ecrilecture: an informational activity in a professional context

2.4. Ecrilecture: production of an augmented document

2.5. Ecrilecture: a factor in structuring and constructing knowledge

2.6. Conclusion

2.7. Bibliography

3 “Critical Spaces”: A Study of the Necessary Conditions for Scholarly and Multimedia Reading

1

3.1. Critical positioning and operations

3.2. The critical mechanism: tensions between material, meaning and space

3.3. Bibliography

4 “Annotate the World, and Improve Humanity”: Material Imageries in a Web Annotation Program

4.1.

Serving of all humanity

: the aims and claims of Hypothes.is

4.2. Materialized and imaginary visions reformulated through software

4.3. Conclusion

4.4. Bibliography

5 Construction of Ecrilecture Standards for Collaborative Transcription of Digitized Heritage

5.1. Introduction

5.2. Participatory enrichment of digitized collections: institutional regulation and community ecrilecture practices

5.3. Providing Internet users with the means for scientific ecrilecture

5.4. Associating human and algorithmic ecrilecture by aggregating concordant transcriptions

5.5. The role of forums in the production of concordant data

5.6. Re-editorializing transcription traces: consultation of community archives

5.7. Conclusion

5.8. Bibliography

6 The Challenge of Platform Interoperability in Constructing Augmented Knowledge in the Humanities and Social Sciences

6.1. Introduction

6.2. Interoperability models for the circulation of documentary metadata

6.3. Focus and methodology

6.4. Different levels of interoperability

6.5. Integration and enrichment of metadata in Isidore

6.6. Conclusion

6.7. Bibliography

7 The XML Portal for the symogih.org Project

7.1. Introduction

7.2. The symogih.org project and the interoperability of geohistorical data

7.3. Editorialization procedures

7.4. Discussion

7.5. Conclusion

7.6. Bibliography

8 Issues of “Hypermediating Journals” for Scientific Publishing

8.1. Introduction

8.2. Digital technology and the transformation of scientific journals

8.3. The concept of hypermediating journals: the

COSSI

case

8.4. The role of the tagger in the ecrilecture process

8.5. Conclusion

8.6. Bibliography

List of Authors

Index

End User License Agreement

List of Tables

6 The Challenge of Platform Interoperability in Constructing Augmented Knowledge in the Humanities and Social Sciences

Table 6.1. Corpus construction

Table 6.2. Presentation of the OAI repositories for the five information sources studied

Table 6.3. Proposed set formation criteria, based on the source harvesting carried out on 14 January 2016

Table 6.4. List of available metadata formats, based on the source harvesting carried out on 14 January 2016

Table 6.5. Examples of reference use

Table 6.6. Examples of permanent identifier use

8 Issues of “Hypermediating Journals” for Scientific Publishing

Table 8.1. Parallels between Web 2.0 and Science 2.0 [GAL 09]

List of Illustrations

1 Introduction to Scientific Reading and Writing and to Technical Modalities of Augmentation

Figure 1.1. Chronological frieze for the display and examination of content taken from a bibliographic database, linked to external content (LOD). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 1.2. Example of enrichment of a hypertext page

Figure 1.3. Example of article annotation in the PeerJ journal. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

3 “Critical Spaces”: A Study of the Necessary Conditions for Scholarly and Multimedia Reading

Figure 3.1. The six links in the chain of reading

4 “Annotate the World, and Improve Humanity”: Material Imageries in a Web Annotation Program

Figure 4.1. A still from a presentation video published by the founder of Hypothes.is in 2011. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.2. A still from a presentation video published by the founder of Hypothes.is in 2011. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.3. A still from a presentation video published by the founder of Hypothes.is in 2011. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.4. A still from the 2015 Hypothes.is presentation video. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembelllec/reading.zip

Figure 4.5. A still from the 2015 Hypothes.is presentation video. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.6. A still from the 2015 Hypothes.is presentation video. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.7. A still from the 2015 Hypothes.is presentation video. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.8. Some of the partners of Hypothes.is

8

Figure 4.9. The Hypothes.is program in action: activated plugin in Google Chrome. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.10. The Hypothes.is program in action: general document frame. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.11. Technical documentation of the Hypothes.is program code

12

. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.12. The Hypothes.is program in action: relative function of a frame. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.13. The Hypothes.is program in action: circulation of an annotation. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 4.14. The Hypothes.is program in action: visual structure of discussions

Figure 4.15. The program in action: showing/hiding annotations. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

5 Construction of Ecrilecture Standards for Collaborative Transcription of Digitized Heritage

Figure 5.1. Screenshot of the page for specimen P03406709 in the Les Herbonautes platform

6

. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 5.2 Distribution of canceled contributions over the number of complete specimens

Figure 5.3. Distribution of numbers of contributions and numbers of comments

7

Figure 5.4. Analysis of co-occurrences in messages associated with specimens, produced using Iramuteq

8

7 The XML Portal for the symogih.org Project

Figure 7.1. Ontology of the symogih.org project – version 0.2.1

Figure 7.2. Diagram of editorialization processes in the symogih.org project

Figure 7.3. Chronological representation of Galileo’s correspondence. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 7.4. Interface of the digital edition of L. Michon’s “Mémoires”. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 7.5. Actor page. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

8 Issues of “Hypermediating Journals” for Scientific Publishing

Figure 8.1. Presentation of articles within the “Articles” section. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 8.2. Editorialization of the full article. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 8.3. Concept page for “information” with definition fragments. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 8.4. Information fragment showing the hierarchical relationship between “information” and “durable information”. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

Figure 8.5. Info-ontology-visualization of formal/informal of the “information” concept

Guide

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Reading and Writing Knowledge in Scientific Communities

Digital Humanities and Knowledge Construction

Edited by

Gérald Kembellec

Evelyne Broudoux

First published 2017 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd

27-37 St George’s Road

London SW19 4EU

UK

www.iste.co.uk

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

111 River Street

Hoboken, NJ 07030

USA

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2017

The rights of Gérald Kembellec and Evelyne Broudoux to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017937685

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78630-125-3

Acknowledgements

This book follows on from work carried out over the course of a research seminar held in 2015 on the theme of Cultures savantes numériques at the HASTEC Laboratory of Excellence. The editors wish to thank the URFIST Paris, the Paris Nanterre University, the Panthéon-Sorbonne University and the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers for their participation. More specifically, they wish to thank the authors of the chapters and the foreword, and the members of the scientific committee for the present volume for their hard work throughout the process of selecting and editing texts.

ForewordReading and Writing in New Systems of Digital Documentality

In a chapter of a recent work on documentary genres [ZAC 15a], the notion of a digital apparatus for documentary mediation was introduced. Following this approach, based on the semiotics of cooperative transactions, it was found that a digital mediation apparatus does not correspond to a single artifact; instead, it denotes the process of mediation carried out by a series of mediating artifacts in a transactional flow linking the creators and the beneficiaries of a series of conjoined actions. In this apparatus, the question of the identification of fragments which constitute documents, in the sense described below, is more complex than it was at a time when paper was the medium in question. This does not, however, undermine the relevance of the concept of the document as content and medium produced by, and enabling the spatiotemporal transmission of cooperative transactions, by means of the reading and writing activities discussed in this book.

To return to the summary given in the work mentioned above [ZAC 15a], when mediating artifacts have a permanent support that enables them to circulate through space and time independent of the situated gestuality of the actors, they potentially have documentary status, whether their function is principally semiotic or expressive. However, not all of the artifacts in circulation are documents. In the most classic case, it must be possible to transcribe or record the medium, and more importantly to “documentarize” it [ZAC 04]. Documentarization corresponds to specific inscription operations which aim to permit the reuse of the medium in the context of future transactions made by a person with themselves or with others, i.e. to allow memorization and coordination. An on-the-spot recording or retranscription with no structure or contextual information has little chance of being reusable in a different spatiotemporal context. According to the functional vision put forward by Briet [BRI 51], the medium would not constitute a testimony contributing to memories of a subject or to the collective memory of a group, and could not, therefore, be considered to be a document.

Documentarization is an annotation activity in the broadest sense of the term [ZAC 07b] with the capacity to fulfill three complementary functions: attentional, associative and contributive. It may involve a variety of procedures, from (1) attentional annotation: the selection of typographic properties intended to highlight certain elements of a text; to (2) associative annotations: the use of systematized knowledge organization languages which contribute to the classification, indexing, temporal and/or social contextualization of the document; and finally (3) contributive annotations: relate to a process of iterative construction of the body of the text; here, the primary work of documentation is the same as that of documentarization. A distinction may be made between internal documentarization, which aims to establish coherency and to articulate the different fragments which constitute a text or, more generally, the semiotic product, which may also take the form of audio or video, and external documentarization, which aims to create connections between a medium and other media, a document and other documents, and may include certain classic metadata elements found in library science.

In the same chapter as aforementioned, the fact that the use of digital media has led to an anthropological mutation in forms of documentality, affecting many areas, including scientific activity, was highlighted; this is evident in the emergence of the new domain of digital humanities. Notably, a new and unprecedented macro-regime of digital documentality has emerged in the form of Documents et dossiers pour l’Action or DopA (Documents for Action) [ZAC 04, ZAC 07a], a direct consequence of the digitization of media and generalization of access to data networks, now almost as widespread as vocal communication networks. DopA are documentary mediation apparatus which provide evolutive support for the cooperative transactions of a collective using a permanent medium marked by prolonged or intrinsic incompleteness, high levels of fragmentation and a complex distribution of contributions from writers and readers

In the classic regime of documentality, be it administrative and related to government practices, or commercial and related to the publishing industry, there is a clear and asymmetric separation between the participants in a transaction, authors on the one hand and readers on the other; there is also a dissociation in the temporality of their activities. Conversely, the roles of participants in the document for action regime are symmetrical and temporalities are brought closer together through an increase in interactivity, in both professional and non-professional activities. However, the DopA macro-regime of documentality actually covers multiple evolutions of documentality which are specifically applicable to the digital sphere [ZAC 15a]: the distribution regime (circulation vs. publication or push vs. pull), autonomy (connected or disconnected modes), granularity and fragmentation (documents created as a whole or as an accumulation of mechanically-articulated fragments), referentiality (notably in relation to URIs, allowing the identification of resources online, interactivity (through the presence of hyperlinks), and conversationality (“real time” updates and creation of content on a publicly-visible platform).

Taken together, these properties are involved in defining the five types of digital documentary mediation apparatus which we have identified: (1) diffusional mediation, push or pull exchange of highly granular documents through broadly asynchronous transactions, (2) writing mediation, designed to permit iterative and in-depth co-construction of content in a synchronous or asynchronous manner, (3) contributive mediation, corresponding to community usage on and of the Internet (Web), essentially focused on dialog transactions (forums, blogs, etc.), (4) attentional mediation in flow mode, with an intensification of contributive apparatus corresponding to the usages of large social networks in a monopolistic position, and (5) anchored transmedia mediation, in which writing and recording substrates operate alongside other non-documentary mediating artifacts, within the context of a social event or via geolocation.

The chapters of this work explore the different ways in which we may profit from new systems of digital documentality in the field of humanities from the perspective of reading and writing activities, the renewal of which is intrinsically linked to the new functions of media, as Broudoux and Kembellec explain in the first chapter. Furthermore, the activity of scholarly reading is not limited to the domain of research. Considering the results of several empirical studies, Clavier and Paganelli highlight the central character of these activities within a process which, whilst often unobserved, forms an essential part of many professions in the tertiary sector.

Some authors have highlighted types of digital mediation apparatus which are still at an early stage of development, presenting the associated innovations in terms of technology and usages. Lisa Chupin is one of these authors, devoting a chapter to contributive apparatus used in the Recolnat project, of which the Dicen-Idf laboratory is a major partner. She shows the way in which academic crowdsourcing combines community and algorithmic forms of reading and writing, creating the potential to produce new knowledge for research professionals, and for amateurs interested in the activities in question.

Similarly, Thomas Bottini’s chapter, focused more specifically on writing mediation apparatus used by researchers working on the same project, explains how the transformations of documentality regimes linked to the DopA have re-founded critical working practice enabling an externalization of the thought operations involved in scholarly reading in both individual and community contexts, in an almost totally new way.

Similarly, Verlaet and Dillaerts study the transformations resulting from the interactivity of hyperlinks in diffusional mediation apparatus in 2.0 journals. This evolution of forms of indexing, requiring increased user engagement, is, according to the authors, likely to facilitate the appropriation of a collection by users over time, enriching modes of transverse navigation.

Two further chapters focus on specific properties of digital documentality, notably with an in-depth look at the role of knowledge organization systems. Interactivity via hyperlinks has transformed the internal and external documentarization of media, amplifying the potential for referentiality. Thus, Letricot and Beretta highlight the central role of knowledge organization in the architecture of contributive digital mediation apparatus designed for collaborative annotation of historical sources and information: the XML portal from the symogih.org project. As in the case of 2.0 journals, but this time in the context of corpora of historical texts, the use of an “ontology” to structure the hyperlink system facilitates transverse navigation allowing the creation of new connections between sources.

Prime-Claverie and Mahé consider the interoperability of systems for the organization of knowledge used in external documentarization of scientific collections in the humanities, a question which is crucial to referentiality; their approach is based on the standard promoted by the OAI-PMH protocol. However, their analysis is nuanced by the difficulties involved in the harmonization of descriptive criteria and vocabulary when one steps outside the confines of a specific scientific community engaged in shared work.

Finally, Marc Jahjah considers the Hypothes.is platform demonstrating the extent to which digital mediation apparatus are based on constructs which associate technical functionalities with new systems of cooperation. The importance of the discourse which accompanies the promotion of platforms, as we highlighted in the case of Bitcoin [ZAC 15b], is also evident in the field of digital humanities. The author shows how different modules of the site (forum, link bases, calendars, résumés, etc.) constitute a form of Dossier for Action, a medium for collective expression and community feeling.

Manuel ZACKLAD

Bibliography

[BRI 51] BRIET S., Qu’est-ce que la documentation?, EDIT, Paris, 1951.

[ZAC 04] ZACKLAD M., “Processus de documentarisation dans les documents pour l’action (DopA)”, in SAVARD R. (ed.), Le numérique: impact sur le cycle de vie du document, available at:http://www.enssib.fr/bibliotheque-numerique/documents/1209-processus-de-documentation-dans-les-documents-pour-l-action-dopa.pdf, 2004.

[ZAC 07a] ZACKLAD M., “Annotation: attention, association, contribution”, in SALEMBIER P., ZACKLAD M. (eds), Annotations dans les documents pour l’action, Hermès-Lavoisier, Paris, 2007.

[ZAC 07b] ZACKLAD M., “Réseaux et communautés d’imaginaire documédiatisées”, in SKARE R., LUND W.L., VARHEIM A. (eds), A Document (Re)turn, Peter Lang, Francfort-sur-le-Main, 2007.

[ZAC 15a] ZACKLAD M., “Genre de dispositifs de médiation numérique et régimes de documentalité”, in GAGNON-ARGUIN L., MAS S., MAUREL D. (eds), Les genres de documents dans les organisations, Analyse théorique et pratique, PUQ, Quebec, 2015.

[ZAC 15b] ZACKLAD M., SOK K., “Les “Organisations Autonomes Distribuées”: innovation sociotechnique ou utopie techno-centrée?”, Actes du Colloque Org&Co, pp. 286–294, available at: https://org-co.fr/toulouse-2015 (accessed on 4 October 2016), 17–19 June 2015.

1Introduction to Scientific Reading and Writing and to Technical Modalities of Augmentation

1.1. Introduction

This collective work is the result of a project begun in 2015, the fruit of reflection carried out by members of the haStec Laboratory of Excellence1. The project started with a seminar2, from which some of the participants agreed to contribute or evaluate chapters for this book. This work brings together original contributions, selected and reviewed by at least two members of our scientific committee, to whom we are greatly indebted. Our introduction aims to synthesize the broad outlines of the seminar and to provide tools for understanding the rest of the book.

The purpose of this chapter is to situate digital reading and writing in the context of digital humanities, in order to better understand how the procedure is connected to, and involved in, the disciplinary movement. Reading and writing, from a scientific as well as a more general perspective, are ancient practices; the procedures involved have developed in parallel with the tools available, existing and structuring the thought processes of generations, well before the development of new theories of thought during the 20th Century.

Nevertheless, in terms of the history of scientific writing, new schools of philosophical thought emerged in the first half of the 20th Century, which established normative positions in scientific thought, through which thought may be described and categorized. The possibility of using tools to connect human knowledge was explored via the idea of the Memex3, at the end of the Second World War, although it only began to take concrete form in the final decade of the 20th Century: the Web was initially envisaged as a scientific, writable entity. In this section, we shall provide a brief overview of the digital humanities and their connection with the reading and writing process, externalized through dynamic forms of reception. We shall also take the opportunity to present models for structuring information, particularly those used for data linked to the semantic web; this will be useful in understanding certain chapters in this book.

1.2. The digital humanities

1.2.1. Field of practice

The “digital humanities” have progressively gained territory over the last decade or so, as an interdisciplinary field of research which encompasses a set of practices currently coming into use in the humanities and social sciences. The first phase consisted of making use of available computer technology to digitize documents. Objects of study in the fields of history, literature, arts, and the museum and archive sectors have been digitized, offering a wealth of new and unprecedented research opportunities, with simplified access to sources generated by the construction of new databases.

Visual representations of statistical calculations carried out on quantitative data are now accessible to all, thanks to algorithms used in graphical interfaces. In e-books, augmentation takes the form of multi-entry summaries [TRE 14], and map-style representations make it easier to search for information. Finally, narration and hypermedia illustrations add new elements to the experience, as shown in the example below, taken from a prosopographic knowledge base for history of art, which represents a chronological frieze generated by a search in a database.

Figure 1.1.Chronological frieze for the display and examination of content taken from a bibliographic database, linked to external content (LOD). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/kembellec/reading.zip

The first phase in the emergence of the digital humanities was thus the incorporation of digital techniques into methods for the analysis and interpretation of corpora, languages, research terrains and archives, alongside a major focus on editorial digitization projects, with the aim of broadening access for researchers and the general public to historic works, authors and documents.

A second, more reflexive phase, corresponding to the arrival of native digital research objects, highlighted the need for training, corresponding to a form of digital literacy [LED 12], which Emmanuel Souchier [SOU 13] prefers to call digital “lettrure”4. In parallel, a need to consider the ongoing transformation of research and analysis methods became apparent [RRIE 12], with shifts taking place in the borders between disciplines and professions [DAC 115].

1.2.2. A disciplinary movement

An explanation for this movement can be found in another characteristic of the “digital humanities”, their self-description as a form of disciplinary shift. The origins of this movement can be traced back to efforts to break down barriers in the “humanities”, as they were seen in North American circles, as non-viable disciplines, without the connections to social sciences such as sociology and anthropology, which were already widespread in Europe, where humanities and social sciences tend to be grouped together. This movement has now had effects far beyond the boundaries of the humanities, posing fundamental questions concerning the theoretical basis of the new inter-discipline.

A movement results from a combination of federating elements, which communicate shared points of view, without being directed by an entity specifically charged with this function. Knowledge of the digital humanities spread through somewhat unconventional meetings, such as BarCamps5, then through the THATCamp6; these events disseminated principles and ideas for action, resulting in the production of manifestos designed to describe situations and define solutions.

The first manifesto, published on December 15, 2008 by Jeffrey Schnapp, Peter Lunenfeld, Johanna Drucker and Todd Pressner on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) servers, was unusual in that it was the product of a seminar (Mellon) and of a collective writing process, incorporating 124 comments (filtered by invitation). It made use of the WordPress platform and the dedicated CommentPress plugin7, which can be edited by readers. The contents of the manifesto are intended to be subversive and radical (it states, for example, that anything which is not “open” should be considered to be “the enemy”), provoking critical comments. The main objective of the manifesto, whilst not stated explicitly, was to “free” the humanities from the confines of universities; disciplines and departments were perceived as systems of domination, perpetuating rules designed to legitimize competitive advantages and blocking the progress of change.

A second manifesto, version 2.0, was published in 2009, ratifying the first edition, notably in terms of insertion into the “wiki-economy” and the fight against the “naturalization” of print culture. In this manifesto, the digital humanities are seen as “an array of convergent practices”, rather than as a unified field. There is a special focus on curation, as an “augmented scholarly practice”, and to openness to actors from outside of the scientific sphere.

In France, the Digital Humanities International monitoring blog8, financed by a TGE Adonis project9, published 568 posts on this theme between 2008 and 2012; this was followed by a major upsurge, triggered by Open Edition with the launch of the first European THATCamp on the subject of digital humanities in 2010. This resulted in the publication of a manifesto, this time in French, with certain marked differences from those published on the UCLA website. Specifically:

– the “modification of the conditions of production and diffusion of knowledge”;

– the formation of the field of digital humanities from the “convergence of interests of communities” with regard to practices, tools and a variety of transversal tools (coding of textual sources, geographical information systems, lexicometry, digitization of cultural, scientific and technical heritage, web mapping, data mining, 3D, oral archives, digital and hypermedia arts, literatures, etc.).

The actors involved stated their intention to create a “supportive, open, welcoming and freely accessible community of practice”. The document places an emphasis on free access to data and meta-data, alongside sharing and collective working.

Digital humanities projects have also been encouraged by public infrastructures that aim to provide technical support for digitization initiatives. In France, equipment has been provided (through TGE Adonis then TGIR Huma-Num) alongside a digital scientific library (BSN, bibliothèque scientifique numérique). At European level, the Dariah-EU infrastructure10 has also been created.

The dynamic nature of the movement is evident in the information published on the DH list, a French-language discussion list on the digital humanities, created in March 2010 by Frédéric Clavert, Marin Dacos and Pierre Mounier. It has now been transformed into a service run by Humanistica, the French-language association for digital humanities.

1.3. Notable features of reading and writing

1.3.1. Scientific reading and writing

Digital reading and writing practices apply both to scholarly reading and to the Internet. Practices associated with the culture of “scholarly” reading have been developed over centuries, and annotations themselves have become subjects for study, either as additional elements in connection with the original texts or as documents in their own right.

The first “scholarly” reading techniques, seen, historically, from the 12th Century onwards, combine reading and writing in a process known as lettrure, involving both attentive reading and commentary. Reading and writing, the exclusive preserve of a small and essentially monastic “lettered” elite, were considered as a single process, made up of connected and complementary actions in which the highly structuring activity of reading allowed readers to become actors themselves, enriching the transmitted ideas. By means of intellectual capitalization and aggregation, this process participated in a scriptural transformation and could take concrete form on the physical medium through marginalia, footnotes and other annotations.

The networking effects of the Internet have transformed this activity, adding technical layers that relate both to the reading and writing process and to the circulation of texts, their potential and effective augmentation, their diffusion and the interception of feedback concerning their reception. The Internet and technologies associated with the use of hypertext links have resulted in the development of enriched reading environments; we have begun to examine these environments both in terms of innovations in programming and from the perspective of current and future usages.

In certain languages, the term “ecrilecture”11 (with regional variations) has been used to refer to creative literary practices involving the use of computers, such as automatic text generation. In 1992, Pedro Barbosa used the term ecrileitura