the Centre for Information Modelling in Graz is
organizing an event in the Marie Skłodowska-Curie programm "DiXiT":

Call for papers:

*Digital Scholarly Editions as Interfaces*

International symposium, 23.-24.9.2016, Graz (Austria)

Scholarly editions intermediate between the texts and their readers,
which does not change with their transfer to digital media. Over the
past two decades, research on digital scholarly editions (DSE) was 
deeply engaged with the impacts of the digital medium on the critical 
representation of texts and the changing conditions for the editor. 
However, less research has been done on the roles of the readers, or - 
as they are called in the digital environment - the users. A critical 
examination of the topic has already been demanded by Jerome McGann in 
2001, it was repeated by Hans Walter Gabler in 2010, and was taken up 
more recently by Patrick Sahle (2013) and Elena Pierazzo (2015). User 
studies are rare, and systematic considerations of principles of Human 
Computer Interaction are still marginal in theory and practice of DSE. 
In addition, the conceptualization of the DSEs as interfaces between 
machines could be intensified. However, the discourse on DSEs benefits 
from considering paradigms of interface design, from reflecting on the 
cultural and historical context of the visual appearance of scholarly 
editions and their affordances, as well as from examining the 
interactions between user and resource.
The symposium will discuss the relationship between digital scholarly
editing and interfaces by bringing together experts of DSEs and 
Interface Design, editors and users of editions, web designers and 
developers. It will include the discussion of (graphical/user) 
interfaces of DSEs as much as conceptualizing the digital edition itself 
as an interface. In this context, we are interested in contributions to 
the following questions and beyond:

- How can DSEs take full advantage of their digital environment without 
losing the traditional affordances that makes an edition "€˜scholarly"? 
What is the role of skeuomorphic tropes and metaphors like footnotes, 
page turn and index in the design of DSEs and concerning the user 
interaction?
- Do interfaces of DSEs succeed in transferring the complexity of the
underlying data models?
- Plurality in representation is a core feature of DSE. How do
interfaces realize this plurality? Do we need different interfaces for 
different target audiences (i.e. scholars, digital humanists, students, 
public)?
- How can user interfaces of DSEs succeed in transmitting Human Computer 
Interaction design principles like ‘aesthetics’, ‘trust’, and
"€˜satisfaction"?
- Citability and reliability are core requirements of scholarly work.
Which user interface elements support them? How can we encourage the 
user to critically engage with the DSE?
- What are the users of a DSE actually doing: are they reading the text 
or searching and analyzing the data?
- Can we conceptualize machines as users? How can we include application 
programming interfaces (APIs) in the discussion on DSEs as interfaces?
- Does the development of user interfaces for DSEs keep up with the
rising distribution of small handheld devices? Will interfaces on 
tablets greatly differ from those on computer screens and perhaps 
encourage a larger readership?

Please submit your proposal for a talk at the symposium until April 17,
2016 to dixit@uni-graz.at. The proposal should not exceed 700 words.
There are funds to reimburse travel and accommodation costs. Please
indicate with your submission if you need financial support.

For further information see:
http://informationsmodellierung.uni-graz.at/de/aktuelles/digital-scholarly-editions-as-interfaces/