Creating Narrative Space: New Modes of Navigation for Online Scholarly publications

Abstract

Navigating online scholarly publications is theorized here as an active journey that readers embark upon and undertake, creating personal meaning through narrative structures that, in turn, make sense of the online data that has been individually explored. The concept of the “eversion” is examined as a useful way of understanding how readers interact with data via networked smart objects, and through different interface designs and mechanisms. The passageways and “border exchanges” between analogue and digital worlds are sites that illuminate how people engage with information seeking and digital sensemaking; coupled with the centrality of the contemporary digital self, the article argues for a humanistic outcome in this focus on human engagement with inverted analogue and digital worlds.