This special feature describes the "Beyond Book (BB)" project, which aims to go beyond "e-books" by taking advantage of the digital environment. "eBooks", which began to be developed in the 1990s, have become popular as "E-books," but they have not fully taken advantage of the benefits of digitization and networking. Therefore, our "BB" project aimed to develop products of a new form of knowledge beyond the E-books. This special issue consists of five parts. Parts 1-4 describe the concept and elemental technologies of the "BB" project. Part 5 describes the concept and current status of the "New Book" project, the successor to the "BB" project.

Taking full advantages of books and Internet information resources, we worked on the development of Beyond Book (BB), a new integrated knowledge structures suitable for the digital age that minimizes their disadvantages. For that purpose, past R&D cases and their problems were reviewed first. In addition, a research team to implement it was organized by human resources from various fields. Just as books and materials form the core content of libraries and archives, it is expected that BB will play a central role in digital content for digital archives in the future.

As a function of beyond book, five requirements such as openness, networking, interactivity, and micro-content of digital cultural resources are incorporated as much as possible. As a form of use, it is assumed that it would be a means to obtain useful knowledge in work, hobbies and life outside of user’s specialty, and as a user, a young businessperson who is interested in a new intellectual trend is assumed. The possibilities of the profit model to ensure the continuity of the use of BB was also examined. As content to satisfy these factors, four books of "Science about Sake" of the Kodansha Blueback’s series were converted into text data. Finally, the production flow for BB prototype production was set.

In this paper, the design and development of the elemental technologies that support functionaly of the Beyond Book (BB) are described. Specifically, the following functions were implemented: 1) collection, 2) categorization, 3) theme extraction, 4) optimal placement of micro-contents, 5) link estimation among contents, 6) Internet information linkage, 7) translation / collaborative editing, and 8) automatic knowledge acquisition based on user actions. All of these technologies were designed and implemented with the intention of improvement to the overall functionality of digital archives.

Based on the enormous amount of data of books and Web contents, we produced a prototype of BB, a knowledge experience platform that supports user curiosity, with an emphasis on UI/UX design. In the UI/UX design of BB, we designed three knowledge experiences: "You can systematically learn from what you want to know," "You can cultivate curiosity with a sense of play," and "You can cross between books and Web content," and explored new forms of knowledge experiences. By researching what they want to know on a mobile app, BB users can gradually develop curiosity while systematically learning knowledge backed up by books and web content. The UI/UX design of such knowledge experiences can be applied to all forms of use of digital archives, and supports the systematic learning of the knowledge content contained in digital archives while having fun.

The "Beyond Book" project is the result of the "DNP Endowed Chair for Academic Electronic Content Research," which ran from 2017 to 2021. This chair was rebooted as the "KODANSHA & MEDIA DO New Books Endowed Chair" from the fiscal year 2022. The new chair aims to develop and socially implement "New Books" that provide new reading experiences in the future society, while utilizing the achievements of the former chair. Therefore, we have begun activities that incorporate bottom-up and back-casting methods such as "Sci-Fi Prototyping," "Art Thinking," "Design Thinking," "Logic Models," and "Sense-Making." This part describes the aims of the "New Books" project, the methods used, and the current status of the project.

In Okinawa, many books written about local history have been published by municipalities. However, there are several problems with the collection and utilization of materials. This paper shows the possibilities of collaboration between local history research and digital archives through the case of Nanjo City, Okinawa. Digital archives can contribute to the effective management and utilization of materials. To promote local history research using digital archives in Okinawa, it is necessary to share the knowledge and experience among local municipalities.