Read More of "Database as Book"

Database as Book is an experimental publishing project that reimagines what a scholarly book can be when built as a living, collaborative database. The project seeks to support new forms of scholarly communication that are open, dynamic, and rooted in local contexts. This pilot contributes to broader efforts to build and sustain public knowledge infrastructures in Kenya and beyond.

The Database-as-Book is presented in three formats: a Print on Demand physical book, a website, and these data essays presented on the Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography (PECE). We started by collecting artifacts particular to the issues we individually wanted to address. These included images, metadata schemas, social media threads, documents, audio-visual texts, and existing scholarly literature. For each artifact, we wrote short analytical reflections that addressed various questions. After assembling our individual artifacts, we identified analytic questions that cut across our disciplinary domains, these questions function as analytics that guide navigation rather than as hypotheses to be tested. The Print-on-Demand book and the website have a more linear format that allows the reader to follow the text more conventionally. The open source PECE was central to our vision of a database book. Its branching structure supports non-linear reading and allows dissent, difference, and unfinished ideas to remain visible.