The Polyglot blog re-works some of the ongoing debates about digital humanities: should academics should get involved in digital publishing; what’s worth publishing; what kinds of publishing can you do on the web; who the audience will be for all of this, and a call for all historians by becoming technically literate enough to put their work on the web.
I think of a website as a verb, in action, doing things, but of course, there are the people making that all work. It can be changed on the fly. It is available for an infinite number of people to see. Paper publishing, to me, is much more of a noun. A final product is created, it may get shipped around and shared, but generally speaking only one person can use it at a time. While there was input and process up to the point of publishing, once published, it won’t change.
The Polyglot encourages historians to become familiar with digital techniques in order to open up scholarship to a wider public. One problem I see with his examples is that they don’t challenge academics to think in new ways. Yes, adding hyperlinks and annotations is different, but it is not clear whether he thinks that adding more information is always good. He doesn’t discuss the historians’ role in filtering through tons of material to create a coherent narrative, or whether historians should abandon narrative altogether. I don’t see a change in academic perspective, but rather, a claim that we can add more and make it better if we put it on the web.
Can you get tenure for discussing ideas on your blog, rather than publishing a print article? Why is one format favored over the other? I think these kinds of questions really disturb the standard academic standards. What about if they maintain a website—does that count as publishing an article, or a book? But more importantly, if digital humanities require academics to keep up with the latest via online conversations and websites, what will happen to academics who don’t want to participate in those kinds of conversations? Will they fall behind, become uninformed, be left out of online conferences? I’m guessing that these are some of the anxieties that are underneath squabbles about the usefulness of annotations or hyperlinks.
But this blog was written in 2006, long before the power of social media took off. So what Polyglot didn’t know back then is that the web could become a place of interaction, where ideas are discussed, rather than a delivery mechanism. What academics should be concerned about is whether or how their fields are changing because of new digital possibilities.
I don’t think anyone should be forced to do digital history. At the same time, it seems that academics need to figure out how to value contributions of their colleagues, for both their digital and print work, and work out new guidelines for tenure accordingly.
February 16, 2010 at 2:49 pm |
I’m glad you posted this, as I’ve been thinking the past few days about the relevance of academically oriented websites. These types of sites, targeting a small set of scholars in a particular field, are beginning to strike me as somewhat of a misuse of resources. It takes time to develop a website. It takes even longer to develop an attractive website. Thus, the time invested seems to dictate that the site needs to appeal to a wide audience. It makes no sense to spend weeks developing a site that will appeal only to the 20 scholars in the subfield you are studying.
So, I am starting to feel that history websites almost need to have a default “popular history” appeal. Otherwise, the time spent in development may have been better spent pursuing print publication in an appropriate journal, or simply emailing your paper out to peers. I am not suggesting we leave behind our rigorous attention to detail, or eliminate bibliographies and backing sources. But I do think that the majority of a website should have a look and feel – as well as content – that will appeal to a wider audience.
February 16, 2010 at 2:58 pm |
[...] February 16, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a Comment This week I’ve commented on Rachel and Lynn’s [...]
February 16, 2010 at 3:13 pm |
HIi Dave,
You bring up some good points, ones that I bet we could talk about for a long, long time. I think one problem with web publishing is it that has the potential to reach a much larger, more diverse audience, but the mere fact of web publishing does not guarantee that. And in terms of resources spent on developing a website, academia doesn’t have a model for evaluating the worth of that work. We all know that professors who print publish more are more highly valued than those who don’t. The academy is already skewed there, by not giving equal value to teaching. Still, with its traditions, the academy has developed what it considers sound methods for evaluating both teaching and print publishing. I believe that some of the debates in digital humanities are about creating methods of evaluation. I also think they are about preserving the field of academic historians: if anyone can put up a historical website, has the role of the historian diminished? I don’t think so; I think it’s enriched. But I think there is a perceived professional threat.