What is Interactivity and How Much does it Cost? Key ideas of the Novosibirsk Interactive Museum of the Book Concept

“Priority of preservation over availability” as the main principle of handling a rare and collectible book changed considerably in the digital era. Today, rare books are available to the general audience in the glass shopping windows, but also on the displays of expensive multimedia devices in museums, libraries and archives. Modern multimedia technologies are called interactive, because they enable the viewer to interact with the book’s e-copy – that is, enlarge and diminish the image, elaborately examine small details and similar – and, for instance, augmented reality technology actually makes it possible to see on the modern gadget screens the monuments of the book culture that have not survived. However, multimedia technologies, accompanying equipment and software all have a very high cost. In addition, technologies are continuously upgraded and equipment rapidly becomes obsolete, which ultimately leads to the constant supplementary costs of their maintenance and improvement. The Concept of the Interactive Museum of the Book that is going to appear in Russia, in Siberia, in Novosibirsk in 2018 demonstrates that the notion of “interactivity” is much wider than the “interactive technologies” term and purchasing of the multimedia equipment is the last and not the most important stage of the organization of an interactive book exposition. I suggest considering interactivity as an entire compound of phenomena, qualities and characteristics, rather than in its narrow sense.

"以保存优先于可获取性"作为处理稀有珍藏书籍的核心原则，在数字时代发生了显著变化。如今，普通受众不仅可在玻璃展柜中一睹稀有珍藏书籍的真容，也能在博物馆、图书馆与档案馆内的高端多媒体设备显示屏上阅览这些藏品。现代多媒体技术之所以被称为交互式技术，是因为其允许观者与书籍的电子版进行交互——例如放大、缩小图像，细致检视细节等。例如，增强现实（Augmented Reality）技术便可让观者在现代智能设备屏幕上，看到那些已佚失的书籍文化遗存。但这类多媒体技术、配套设备与软件的购置成本极高。此外，技术迭代持续进行，设备更新换代速度极快，最终会带来持续不断的维护与升级补充成本。将于2018年在俄罗斯西伯利亚新西伯利亚市落成的交互式书籍博物馆项目表明，"交互性"的内涵远不止"交互式技术"一词所能涵盖，而购置多媒体设备，仅是搭建交互式书籍展陈环节的最后一步，且并非最重要的一步。笔者认为，应将交互性视为涵盖各类现象、属性与特征的完整集合，而非局限于狭义范畴。