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INTRODUCTION
Traditional notions of the book usually portray it as a physical embodiment of text (either annotated or printed) on pages; 'it is not a book unless the sheets are bound together'.2 Yet as digital text formats become increasingly commonplace, physical properties of the book remain historically enduring and culturally embedded criteria by which people engage with longer form texts. Drawing on preliminary findings from the EPSRC funded project Next Generation Paper (NGP) exploring augmented book technology, this paper introduces the 'a-book'3 and examines ways that core book properties, physicality, discourse, mutability, and temporality, could develop through synergies of print and digital that it affords. Book history, using historical study of communication through print, shows how examining book production and content can lead to greater understandings of large-scale societal communication.4 The a-book evidentially opens new research within book history practices, such as how original and subsequent book versions with evolving digital components, editable by multiple users and publishers throughout lifecycles, are to be identified, studied and archived. A deeper discussion on this topic is beyond this paper's scope, however, its mention is significant to position it as an introduction to an emerging field with implications for book history practices, encouraging future scholarship within this area.
Returning to book properties mentioned, books understood as objects with bound pages are physical in appearance and through tactile engagement, such as turning of pages. Books have also historically supported recorded discourse through humankind's tendency to construct narrations around society's accomplishments, discoveries and fantasies. For example, 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,...