I don't know about you, but I’ve found the readings for Tuesday night to be particularly exciting. Of all the material we’ve studied so far, this bundle of articles and essays deals most specifically with the impact of networked public culture on the academic world in which we live and work. The transformations in the production, review, distribution and consumption of academic scholarship envisioned in these articles is rather breathtaking, but at the same time they raise a set of vexing issues and sometimes traffic in rather questionable assumptions. Following are a set of questions meant to focus our discussion both on the exciting possibilities conjured up in these essays and some of the key issues they confront us with.
The first few articles I asked you to read provide background reporting on the work being done at the Institute for the Future of the Book. Some of this reading you’ve no doubt found repetitive, but it seems to me each short article contributes something interesting to the overall discussion, and, collectively, the articles provide us with a good sense of what the folks at the Institute are up to. The other articles focus more on a set of specific projects that try to make some of the general concepts concrete. These will be worth some particular attention. Here’s a list of questions or topics from the articles I think are worth our kicking around.
As always, feel free to start off the discussion with a posted comment ahead of our meeting.
From “The Future of Books”:
Is the book a “timeless piece of hardware” or a “device in need of regular upgrading” (and how comfortable are we with talking about books as “hardware” and “devices”)?
How attractive are “print-on-demand” machines like the “Espresso Book Machine” or Caravan Books? Are public access Napster or iTunes-like vendors the future of publishing?
What does it mean to talk about “the social life of books?” Is this a new way of thinking about books, or a way to adapt an old concept to new technologies? How socially networked do you want your books in general, and your academic books/articles in particular?
From “The Networked Book”:
This article shifts our attention from the problem of reading on screen to the advantages and pitfalls of “networked reading.” How important is this shift in focus? How interested are you in networked reading? Do you see it as something new, or as an extension of how we already read?
Vershbow (p.2) points out that when books are produced in networked social spaces “one notion that networked writers might have to give up is closure.” What does it mean to think of writing, peer-review, and publication as a single, fluid, open-ended, indeed, possibly never-ending process? Consider the following quote from p. 3 of “Publishing Trends: The Book as Place”: “What a revolutionary idea! A page or some other portion of a book is not complete unless the reader has commented on it. That means the author’s job is not only to write the book, but to engage the reader so completely that he or she joins the discussion. The reader is no longer anonymous and passive, but must step up and be counted, and the author has not successfully fulfilled his or her role unless that happens?” My question: why is this so cool?
From “The Social Life of Books”:
This article envisions the convergence of three technologies transforming the production of the book: scanning, searching, and open source wikis (p.2). Instead of thinking about Wikipedia, as we did last week, as a search tool, these people are thinking about Wikipedia as the model for a networked book. What are the possibilities and the problems here? How much sense does it make to even think about such productions as “books?” On this topic see also p. 3 of “Book 2.0.”
To what extent can the blog stand as an alternative to article and book publication (p.2, and this comes up in other articles as well)?
In the interview, Vershbow continually invokes environmental metaphors (“ecology,” “ecosystem,” “environmental,” etc.) in discussing open-source networked places. How applicable are these metaphors and how do they relate to our earlier discussion of the internet as a “place?”
Vershbow ends the discussion speculating about what kinds of books lend themselves to born-digital, networked status (“I am pretty certain,” he says, that “the main arena of intellectual discourse is moving away from print to networked, digital media”). Where do the humanities seem to fit in this shift? This question of course comes up in a number of the assigned pieces: to what extend does networked scholarship lend itself more to scientific than humanistic work? See, for example, p. 6 in “Book 2.0.”
From “Book 2.0”:
We should consider the questions raised by Ken Wissoker from Duke UP and others quoted on p. 7 who defend the current system. Do they make some good points, or are they just resisting the inevitable?
From “Publishing Trends: The Book as Place”:
A major issue running through many of these articles has to do with the role, shape, and future of peer review in an age of networked scholarship. This gets raised in the section here entitled “Peer Review on Steroids” (5-8) and is picked up in Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s essay, “On the Future of Academic Publishing, Peer Review, and Tenure Requirements,” as well as in “Toward the Creation of a New Scholarly Press” and “Rethinking Scholarly Publication.” How central is peer review to the work we do, and what do you think of the ways in which the authors of these articles try to re-envision and transform the process of peer review?
“On the Importance of the Collective in Electronic Publishing,” “On the Future of Academic Publishing, Peer Review, and Tenure Requirements,” “Toward the Creation of a New Scholarly Press,” and "Rethinking Scholarly Communication":
It seems to me that these three articles are worth particular attention because they’re about concrete projects aimed at transforming academic publication in a networked environment. Three of these are by Kathleen Fitzpatrick (and English Professor), and two of them have to do with the symposium on forming an electronic academic press held in April, 2006. These are worth some detailed discussion. The proposals for networked publishing in the essay "Rethinking Scholarly Communication” seem to pertain mainly to writing and publishing networked scientific scholarship, but we should be able to discuss how this apparatus can be adapted for the humanities.
Monday, March 26, 2007
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9 comments:
Modestly, he also pointed to NINES.org...
fyi, I had a hard time with the .pdf link for "Rethinking Scholarly Communication." I think the following link is the .html version:
Dlib mag
When I think about what happens when a reader engages with a text in-progress, my first instinct is that (unless one is overwhelmed with comments, which may or may not be the case), it can only make for a better product. After all, if the writer responds, the work will come to address the audience and their concerns and questions—and the writer can “fix” areas in the text which are unclear. It’s the same kind of thing we do when we give our work to a peer, but if you can do it on a large scale and get lots of feedback it would seem that then your text would be shaped to be relevant to a larger group of people than if you give it to your friend. Not only will it be more relevant, but I also think that it has the possibility to force writers to develop their assumptions. This all depends, of course, on the writer’s reception of the comments—the responses are only as helpful as the writer will let them be. As far as “versioning” goes, it seems like a good idea, but I wonder how cumbersome it will become for researchers—how dramatically will these drafts be changing, and would we only be “allowed” to cite the most current draft?
I also think that networked books have the potential to create a better product. The articles discussed how they would deter spammers and trolls by having potential commenters register and comment fruitfully 3x before being taken seriously, and I think that this strategy is fruitful. This way, you only deal with people willing to put forth the time and effort to post--and post responsibly (for the most part). I also thought that the improved level of efficiency as a result of networked books was something to consider. Rather than taking a year or more to get a book out (and who knows how much spent in shipping out manuscripts, revisions, etc.), you can get insta-feedback and continue working in a more productive way. Maybe I'm just a product of my instant gratification generation, but I think that networked books is a much more efficient and fruitful way to go about academic research projects. Where I am more ambivalent is how this would work with fiction--how much input should fans have to say, a Stephen King novel, or Toni Morrison's lastest work? Should the artist be left alone, or should they also bow down to the collaborative impetus that's taking over the nonfiction world?
Thanks to Scott for calling attention to the link problem. It's now fixed on the blog. The only point I would make about the posts from Joanna and Natalie would be that they beg the question of how in concerete terms the kind of production they endorse can get folded into the vetting, peer review, and "rewards" system we currently have in academia? This isn't meant as a criticism; I just want to draw attention to these vexing challenges.
The directions that these articles show our field beginning to move in are encouraging. Even so, they're not here yet. It seems like online journals (and journal articles in general) will be valued more and more in the humanities. But this highlights the present state of things, as Fitzpatrick mentions, that the book is entrenched as the most reputable publication in academics. This fact stands in direct contrast to my actual research tendencies. I know as I do research, all of the searches that I initially perform bring me in contact with scholarly articles on my subject. I only browse for full-text sources at first, and I usually come up with a very good batch of information. Books, on the other hand, factor in differently. I will look for them when I'm further into my research, and the uses I have for these "monographs" will be very specific. If the scholarly book is brought online, my processes might change. I won't have to actually go to the library to make photocopies or – gasp – check the thing out and carry it home. And the book might actually perform a more central purpose, rather than being an underused (or perhaps in my case, misused) resource.
Joanna, amen to your citation point. I was just combing through my MLA style book to try and figure out a thousand little nicites for citing digital books, online articles, etc., for my Chaucer paper. This isn't just a minor pain for grad school writers- citation is a way of leaving a bread crumb trail back to the original source, and as such also functions as a way of categorizing knowledge: This Idea came from This Person in This Book in This Year. But as the net allows knowledge production and dissemination to become more communal, let alone spontaneous and downright snappy, the breadcrumb trail becomes less and less valuable. What does authorship mean in a hyperlinked, community edited book that is constantly being revised? The creation of knowledge is no longer a solo effort (rather, it looks less like a solo effort than it did before, not that it ever really was) and "books" no longer have a back cover to bind the project into a neat, eaisly trackable bundle.
So, in conclusion, I don't want to write a works cited page for my paper.
I think we have a new field developing here: Critical Citation Studies. And cudos to both Scott and Julia for the frankness with which they have drawn on their own experiences to underscore how practicality and ease of use often drive how we research (underscoring excellent points made earlier by Joanna and Natalie). But of course I can imagine others responding, "wait a minute, research is difficult and time consuming, and can't take short cuts," etc, etc.
Scott's post makes an interesting point, too, about the fate of the slow-to-be-published book in an age of quick electronic publishing of articles.
Another anecdote from another angle: I still recall a friend/colleague from another university telling me that from now on he would only be submitting his articles to journals that are connected to Project Muse because they're the ones that are online and thus getting read. Cynical? Perhaps. But it drove home an interesting point about where we're at.
The Project Muse-only friend strikes me as wise. Here's yet another convession: I wrote all my sophomore-year undergrad papers using only full-text online articles and books. I didn't like the library decor.
Seriously, though, I'm intrigued by the centrality of the monograph. Fitzgerald makes some good points about its importance in "On the future of academic publishing, peer, review, and tenure requirements"--that it's extended and subdivided, allows for synthesis, supports deeper and wider scholarship--but I'm curious if the academic book carries some old-fashioned implications. A monograph, in its length, substantial physicality, monetary investment, and scholarly process, seems to imply a confidence in the Final Word of one author. Yet literary scholarship as I understand it is increasingly moving toward suspicion of authority (well, it has been for quite a while). We're resistant to models that weaken authorial ownership or control, but on what grounds do we value ownership and control? If we're all about heteroglossic dialogue, do heavy volumes long in the making really facilitate our academic discussions? [Though perhaps the monograph is the place for the results of these discussions, and perhaps some would argue that by the time an author's ideas get into this sort of print, they're weighty enough--and have been weighed enough--to deserve a solid binding and nice paper.]
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