In her new book, How the Page Matters (University of Toronto Press), Bonnie Mak, assistant professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, explains that how text is presented in a book can tell a bigger story than what is inscribed on each page. Specifically, Mak, who has a joint appointment in the Program in Medieval Studies, examines the fifteenth-century Latin text, the Controversia de nobilitate by Buonaccorso da Montemagno in three forms—as a manuscript, as a printed work, and as a digital edition.

Transcending boundaries of history and language, How the Page Matters connects technology with tradition using innovative approaches from architectural, medieval, and new media studies. While historicizing contemporary digital culture and asking how on-screen combinations of image and text affect the way we understand information being conveyed, Mak’s analysis proves both the timeliness of studying the interface design and the persistence of the page as a mechanism for communication.

More information can be found on our website:

http://www.lis.illinois.edu/articles/2011/11/new-book-explores-how-page-matters

http://www.lis.illinois.edu/people/faculty/bmak

 

An excerpt of the book may be found at:

http://people.lis.illinois.edu/~bmak/page_sample_spreads.pdf

 

 

Maeve Reilly

Research Services Coordinator

Graduate School of Library and Information Science

University of Illinois

Rm 219 LIS

501 E. Daniel

Champaign, IL 61820

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(217) 244-7316