I wanted to respond to Kristin’s March 5th blog post concerning the ownership of ideas in websites. Some classmates from last semester’s Clio-Wired course probably remember the uproar caused over the website arxiv.org. Recall this site was a forum that housed unpublished articles in Physics, Mathematics and other hard sciences as a means of publication, albeit not peer-reviewed. Dr. Cohen argued that this method of posting new articles benefits a historian more than the traditional form of peer-reviewed submission, as reputation and dissemination are more important factors in finding a job than publication number. It is more important to get your name out there in academic circles quickly, which the net allows you to do, than wait for the slow review process. However an arxiv.org equivalent has yet to surface for the humanities. Why is that? Both disciplines rely on submission, collaboration, critique and re-submission. So what is the difference.
I believe the answer is two-fold. Primarily, in what might seem intuitive to most digitally inclined historians by now, the major establishments (such as universities and journals) don’t fully comprehend the importance of the web. We believe that since we study the past, we are allowed to live in it. Thus websites and blog posts are not taken seriously by many historians. One reason may deal with the idea we have of the written word as seemingly more final than spoken language. We should use the web as a forum for collaboration and revision similar to what we currently do, on a much smaller scale with our mentors and professors. The scary part now is that everyone has access to our ideas and can pilfer them at will if we give too much.
I personally believe that arxiv.org could work for the humanities, but we are more reluctant to adopt this as the major players in the field have yet to embrace digital technology as legitimate. Maybe this means that we create sites that are not completely open-access, similar to online databases accessible only through academic institutions that can be monitored. If we did this I don’t think we would actually have as big a problem with stealing ideas as we think, since we will have records (including dates) of who posted an idea first.
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March 6, 2008 at 9:46 am
Kristin Conlin
Excellent plan, now how do we get people to see this form of collaboration as a reputable forum for discussion? How do we build credit?
I’m inclined to believe that these forums and scholarly blogs will eventually make their way into the ranks of viable publications in the humanities, but I also believe that the hard copy, published, written word will never be superseded by it’s digital progeny. As jeff mentioned (to some effect) in his comments on my earlier post on evolving libraries, the structures will always be there and there will always be literature to fill the stacks. I don’t think people will ever fully ween themselves off of print. I know there is indescribable satisfaction in the tactile experience of holding and reading a book. I don’t get that from cradling my laptop.
To answer the question I posed in the opening paragraph – we build credit through use and through generations. Our generation and our younger siblings are fully immersed and fluent in digital technology and use it avidly in recreation and in academic pursuits. I believe when our generation and our children come to the fully-employed-CEO-stage of our careers, we will be prewired to accept digital publications as viable sources due to our constant use of the media.
So really, the answer is use and time. Now, to encourage use we as digital historians have to create comprehensive websites and databases. We must apply our knowledge of human interaction to the layout of our programs so the digital scholarship we (and others) create will be easy to assimilate into our knowledge.
As we read in Lev Manovich’s book last semester, digital technology relies on all our knowledge of human interaction, light and image perception, and cognition. The science behind human computer interactions is deep. For example, last weeks reading on color use, perception, and layout not only educated us on the finer points of aesthetics, but it also educated us on how users will interact with our site. We can’t just color our site pink because its a website about pretty ponies, there has to be a method to the artistic decisions. Wroblewski made a good point in his article, Natural Selections: Color in Nature about the use of naturally occurring colors as comfortable on the eye, and processed by the brain as coordinating shade/hue selections. Pink does not remind the user of ponies, greens and tans are more reminiscent of pastures, fields, and horse coat colorations.
Although academic publications can get away with drab covers, and uninteresting black text on white paper, digital history does not have that luxury. We have to incorporate everything mentioned above to entice the reader to delve deeper into our site. By creating a clean and usable site, we create our credibility and we promote digital history.
Easy enough, right?