ArchBook: Architectures of the Book

ArchBook is an open-access, peer-reviewed collection of richly illustrated essays about specific design features in the history of the book. Our goal is to make the diverse history of the book -- especially the under-appreciated parts of that history -- available to students, researchers, and the public. ArchBook is designed to complement more definitive and encyclopedic resources like the Cambridge History of the Book in Britain with essays that target connections between the history and future of books and reading. A typical ArchBook entry will follow a specific textual feature through its development (or disappearance) across historical periods, with an eye to the continuities and discontinuities the feature might have with digital reading environments. Each entry offers a definition of a textual feature and rationale for its importance, an historical overview of that feature, and (optionally) one or more spotlight sections offering critical arguments about that feature's digital reinvention. ArchBook seeks to combine the public accessibility of Wikipedia, the scholarly standards and original research of a peer-reviewed history of the book, and the critical provocativeness of a project like Raymond Williams's Keywords.