CMC Research Collective

Link: http://blog.oup.com/

Remmel Nunn, vice president for new product development at Readex, is interested in the potential for researchers to help one another through a form of social networking. In "Crossroads: A New Paradigm for Electronically Researching Primary Source Documents," he explores how a new tool and a new collection might establish a new paradigm for presenting, searching, annotating, and sharing material.

And from the Institute for the Future of the Book, a real-life experiment with social reading online.

In mid-October 3-5 readers will begin reading The Golden Notebook and carry out a conversation in the margins. The site will be open and the rest of us will be able to follow their reading and participate in a related public forum. Who do you think should be the readers? The book is perhaps best known for its role in the beginning of the women's liberation movements of the 1970s but it also confronts complex issues of race and the political fall-out from the ideological collapse of the soviet union. The original idea was to invite women from different generations, but we're open to other ideas. Please, tell us who you would like to see as the designated readers. We're interested in general categories but also in specific recommendations. You can even nominate yourself. [The Arts Council grant includes a generous honorarium for each of the readers.]

Link: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3336451.0011.210

I've been travelling for the past week. I've had very little time for online browsing, and lots of time for old-fashioned reading and writing. This soujourn in the world of paper reminded me of the pleasures and rewards of slow reading, and the differences between writing for the page and writing for the screen.

Michael Agger of Slate has also been thinking along the same lines.

For the past month, I've been away from the computer screen. Now I'm back reading on it many hours a day. Which got me thinking: How do we read online?

It's a Jungle Out There

That's Jakob Nielsen's theory. He's a usability expert who writes an influential biweekly column on such topics as eye-tracking research, Web design errors, and banner blindness. (Links, btw, give a text more authority, making you more likely to stick around.)

Nielsen champions the idea of information foraging. Humans are informavores. On the Internet, we hunt for facts. In earlier days, when switching between sites was time-consuming, we tended to stay in one place and dig. Now we assess a site quickly, looking for an "information scent." We move on if there doesn't seem to be any food around.

Sorry about the long paragraph. (Eye-tracking studies show that online readers tend to skip large blocks of text.)

Also, I'm probably forcing you to scroll at this point. Losing some incredible percentage of readers. Bye. Have fun on Facebook.

In the July/August issue of Atlantic Monthly, a thought-provoking article arguing that Web surfing may be affecting our brain circuitry, turning us into hit-and-run information browsers.

Some of the questions that the study seeks to answer include:

-- "What will scholars want to do in their research and with their research results, and what new forms of communication do or do not support those desires?"

-- "How will scholars want to disseminate and receive input on their work at various lifecycle stages?"

-- "How do institutions and other stakeholders support these faculty needs, if at all?"

The Spring 2008 "Draft Interim Report: Assessing the Future Landscape of Scholarly Communication," by Diane Harley, et al., is available at http://cshe.berkeley.edu/publications/publications.php?id=300

The Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California Berkeley is a "multi-disciplinary research and policy center on higher education [that is] oriented to California, the nation, and comparative international issues." For more information, contact: Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley, 771 Evans Hall #4650, Berkeley, CA 94720-4650 USA;

tel: 510-642-5040; fax: 510-643-6845;

email: cshe@berkeley.edu;

Web: http://cshe.berkeley.edu/

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As networked computing continues to cut a swathe through traditional research and teaching practices (see last week's blog on computer labs), how can universities and colleges make sure they're getting the most from educational technologies?

In a recent article in Campus Technology, Dian Schaffhauser looks closely at two American universities experimenting with "incubator classrooms":

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Link: http://eliza08.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/that-camp-humanities-futures/

An interesting snippet in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education caught my eye, leading me to THAT camp’s blog of their recent “unconference” (see my weekend posting on lexpionage). Short for “The Humanities and Technology Camp”, THATCamp is a BarCamp-style, user-generated “unconference” on digital humanities, organized and hosted by the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, Digital Campus, and THATPodcast.

Link: http://eliza08.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/podcasts-of-the-week/

Link: http://eliza08.wordpress.com/2008/05/31/weekend-treat-lexpionage/

Link: http://yaserxp.wordpress.com/2008/05/02/discover-the-best-rss-tools-and-resources-on-the-web/

Link: http://kairosnews.org/cfp-technology-focused-collaborative-res

WORKING TITLE: “Investigating Digital Tools, Texts, and Use Practices: Collaborative Approaches to Research in English Studies”

Submissions are sought for an anthology of scholarly essays on the subject of technology-focused collaborative research conducted by groups of investigators working in English studies, defined broadly. Submissions from scholars trained in English studies or rhetoric and composition but working in newer areas such as software studies or new media studies are welcome. In particular, submissions from individuals affiliated with research centers and other larger-scale collaborative research initiatives are encouraged.

This collection is premised on the idea that evolving technologies, texts, and use practices are impacting not only our research questions but also our approaches to conducting and disseminating research. Of particular interest are the ways in which collaborative project-based research teams or work groups are investigating technology-related questions and the lessons that can be learned from these cases. This collaborative research might bring together faculty, graduate students, and perhaps undergraduates. At times, it is interdisciplinary. In some cases, it may involve researchers from multiple campuses or even from beyond the academy.

Interpretation and the scene of editing:

This session welcomes proposals on the scholarly editing of literary texts, broadly conceived. Possible topics include editing as interpretation; textual instability and problems in textual construction; the editing of Selected Works or Collected Works; material textuality; the interpretation and reproduction of bibliographic codes; electronic editing; radiant textuality; the uses of electronic archives. Please send 200-word abstract by 15 June 2008 to Jonathan Allison by email at jalliso@uky.edu or at the Department of English, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0027.

Link: http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3978345.ece

From colleague Erik Fleischer, an Empire-strikes-back story: "Although I believe that languages cannot be defined or prescribed by laws any more than gravity can be legally revoked, here's an interesting article: http://tec​hnology.ti​mesonline.​co.uk/tol/​news/tech_​and_web/ar​ticle39783​45.ece"

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Link: http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i38/38a01301.htm

After twenty years they've become a familiar part of the academic landscape: computer labs--computer rooms set up for classes—loaded with expensive software needed for specific courses. But will a new approach to computing services in some US universities make these computer labs obsolete?

According to an article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, North Carolina State University is setting up "virtual computer labs," where users access programs from their own computers, wherever they are. If they need to use a GIS program in History, or 3-D modeling program for Earth and Ocean Sciences, they connect to the campus's virtual lab from their laptop and use the program without even coming to campus.

Officials at NC State say they have no plans to close their computer labs, but they will no longer build new ones.

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The Google Book Search Bibliography, Version 2 is now available from Digital Scholarship.

This bibliography presents selected English-language articles and other works that are useful in understanding Google Book Search. It primarily focuses on the evolution of Google Book Search and the legal, library, and social issues associated with it. Where possible, links are provided to works that are freely available on the Internet, including e-prints in disciplinary archives and institutional repositories.

Note that e-prints and published articles may not be identical.

The New Humanities Initiative, currently under development at Binghamton University in NY, has caused a stir among both scientists and humanists, according to an article the New York Times.

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Link: http://www.bcbusinessmagazine.com/bcb/top-stories/2008/05/01/turning-page?page=0%2C0

From BC Business, an informative article on the province's book business, and the opportunities presented by e-book technology.

In 2007 e-books worth some US$32 million were sold by major publishers to American wholesalers – amounting to, perhaps, double that figure at retail levels (local figures are not available). It’s still not that impressive when compared to overall retail book sales of US $40 billion last year (again, in the U.S.), but 2008 could well be the year of the e-book breakthrough. Already, libraries are moving to electronic versions of books, and the Association of Book Publishers of B.C. is putting together a digital library of members’ books in partnership with several library consortia in the province. “It makes perfect sense to me,” says Margaret Reynolds, the association’s executive director, “as a way to get those non-fiction, reference-type books into the libraries.”

Read more...

Link: http://www.saanicharchives.ca

In a surprise announcement, Microsoft announced yesterday it was ending Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and taking down both sites next week. According to the announcement, "Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes. This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users."

Although Microsoft has already digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles, it's in search of a sustainable business model and a new strategy "to focus on verticals with high commercial intent, such as travel."

This news has caused a stir in the e-book world, with some bloggers like David Rothman describing the move as a blow to the e-book.

Link: http://eliza08.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/weekend-treat-top-business-cliches/

UVic Humanities Computing and Media Centre presents Version 2.0 of Transformer, a Unicode text transformation tool developed for rescuing old data and transforming text files of all descriptions.

This new version adds JavaScript capabilities to complement the original fast search/replace functionality, making it possible to do much more complex and sophisticated transformation operations on text.

Originally developed in 2006 as part of a project to rescue old DOS word-processor files from a Linguistics project, Transformer has since been used extensively on the Vancouver Island Colonial Correspondence project.

Find out more at the Transformer site...

Link: http://www.dhsi.org/

The Digital Humanities Summer Institute (May 26-30) at the University of Victoria provides an environment ideal to discuss, to learn about, and to advance skills in new computing technologies influencing the work of those in the Arts, Humanities and Library communities.

The institute takes place across a week of intensive coursework, seminar participation, and lectures. It brings together faculty, staff, and graduate student theorists, experimentalists, technologists, and administrators from different areas of the Arts, Humanities, Library and Archives communities and beyond to share ideas and methods, and to develop expertise in applying advanced technologies to activities that impact teaching, research, dissemination and preservation.

Link: http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/English/index_flash.html

Since May is Museum Month, you might want to take a tour of the Virtual Museum of Canada

The Virtual Museum is a consortium of Canadian museums, coordinated by the Canadian Heritage Information Network, a special operating agency of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

There's an extensive range of exhibits, from the haunting "A Journey Into Time Immemorial," based on First Nations traditional knowledge and content, to L. M. Montgomery's personal scrapbooks and book covers.

From free firewalls to mp3 organizers, BBC's flagship technology program, >Click, highlights some of the Web's best free software and applications, "a smattering of reliable goodies amongst the tens of thousands of freebies on offer"

A professor at Michigan State University has created a free online video game to help students learn Chinese. The multi-player role-playing game, Zon/New Chengo, allows users to choose Mandarin phrases to converse with other characters in the game about exchanging money, buying breakfast, and other activities visitors to China would experience.

Link: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social_media_u_take_a_class_in.php

Social media. Web 2.0. You know what these things are and you take advantage of them every day on the net. Whether you're socializing on Facebook, updating Twitter, or just adding a new bookmark to Ma.gnolia, social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. However, that doesn't mean that it's something that everyone innately understands or knows how to use - especially when it comes to using it for marketing, PR, or other business-related purposes. That's why many of today's colleges and universities are now offering "social media" classes as an option for their students.

From Geoffrey Rockwell and Stefan Sinclair at McMaster University, Canada, a provocative experiment, using TAPoR text analysis tools, to compare Obama and Wright’s recent speeches on race. According to Geoffrey's blog, he and Stefan wanted "to find a way of writ[ing] interpretative essays that are based on computer-assisted text analysis and exhibit their evidence appropriately without ending up being all about the tools. We are striving for a rhetoric that doesn’t hide text analysis methods and tools, but is still about interpretation."

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Link: http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10950394

A small frisson of pleasure this morning to discover I'd anticipated the Economist on the topic of digital nomads in March this year.

The current edition has a special report on digital nomadism and its effects--anticipated and unanticipated. Among these, the impact of digital nomadism on families, on cities and public places, and on the traditional workplace.

The Economist also provides an excellent selection of external links for more information about the phenomenon.

Humans have always migrated and travelled, without necessarily living nomadic lives. The nomadism now emerging is different from, and involves much more than, merely making journeys. A modern nomad is as likely to be a teenager in Oslo, Tokyo or suburban America as a jet-setting chief executive. He or she may never have left his or her city, stepped into an aeroplane or changed address. Indeed, how far he moves is completely irrelevant. Even if an urban nomad confines himself to a small perimeter, he nonetheless has a new and surprisingly different relationship to time, to place and to other people. “Permanent connectivity, not motion, is the critical thing,” says Manuel Castells, a sociologist at the Annenberg School for Communication, a part of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Read more...

Link: http://web.uvic.ca/~editeur/

Atelier international/ International Workshop University of Victoria, Faculty of Humanities, DSB 112 28-29 May 2008

Histoire du livre, histoire du texte, histoire des disciplines: traditions et croisées bibliographiques

Bibliographical Trends and Traditions: History of the Book, History of the Text, History of Knowledge

An interdisciplinary event open to all / Une rencontre pluri-disciplinaire ouverte à tous.

Contact / information: Hélène Cazes, hcazes@uvic.ca

Program/ programme http://web.uvic.ca/~editeur/

For more information visit Editeur/Editor

Link: http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/what-can-you-do-with-texts-that-are-in-a-digital-format

For researchers who wonder what all the mark-up and encoding fuss is about (surely high-quality digital page images are enough for scholars?), the excellent Digital Scholarship in the Humanities blog has a terrific posting explaining the many ways digital formats can support humanities scholarship.

Read more...

Two recent articles discuss the pleasures and perils of using social networks like Facebook to connect with students.

Full disclosure: I've had my own Facebook account now for almost two years. I use it to stay in touch with far-flung family members. Occasionally when one of my students comes across it, there's a sense of mutual embarrassment. I suspect we've just begun to work out the ramifications of public, social, and private space online as we do in the physical world.

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Link: http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3004/web-surfing-in-the-classroom-sound-familiar

Over at the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog, Yale Law School professor Ian Ayres praises the University of Chicago Law School’s decision to eliminate Internet access in some classrooms. But more importantly, he recounts an amusing sketch from the Yale’s “Law Revue” skit night, which is worth sharing in full:

One of the skits had a group of students sitting at desks, facing the audience, listening to a professor drone on.

All of the students were looking at laptops except for one, who had a deck of cards and was playing solitaire. The professor was outraged and demanded that the student explain why she was playing cards. When she answered “My laptop is broken,” I remember there was simultaneously a roar of laughter from the student body and a gasp from the professors around me. In this one moment, we learned that something new was happening in class.

This work is an open-access introduction to programming in Python, aimed at working historians (and other humanists) with little previous experience. Introductory lessons teach you how to

1. install Zotero, the Python programming language and other useful tools
2. read and write data files
3. save web pages and automatically extract information from them
4. count word frequencies
5. remove stop words
6. automatically refine searches
7. make n-gram dictionaries
8. create keyword-in-context (KWIC) displays
9. make tag clouds, and
10. harvest sets of hyperlinks

The Programming Historian is a work-in-progress. We are constantly adding new material, much of it driven by reader request. Upcoming topics will include indexing, scraping projects, simple spiders, mashups and much more.

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has launched a new website called A Nation’s Chronicle: The Canada Gazette:

“Often referred to as ‘the official newspaper of the Government of Canada,’ the Canada Gazette has been an important instrument in the Canadian democratic process for more than 160 years. It has served to inform Canadians of the operations of government and to involve them actively in the legislative process. With this site, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), in co-operation with the Canada Gazette Directorate, Public Works and Government of Services Canada, will make the Gazette available online, in its entirety, for the first time (…)”

Approximately 30% (almost 300,000 pages) of the total Canada Gazette content is now online. This includes:

1. Part I - 1983-1997
2. Part II - 1950-1976, 1983-1997
3. Part III - 1985-1997

Link: http://themedium.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/09/in-this-weeks-magazine-lexicographical-longing/

The future is here, and the immortal O.E.D., the one that lives in bound pages last published micrographically in 1991, is obsolete — at least according to the folks who publish it. As of now, Oxford University Press has no official plans to publish a new print edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

If news of the recent devasting earthquake in China has left you feeling shaky and you own a Mac laptop, SeisMac--a free program that turns your computer into a personal seismic station--may be just for you.

SeisMac uses the acceleration sensor inside your laptop to register vibrations; the program was developed with support from such blue chip institutions as the National Science Foundation and the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology, a consortium of almost 100 universities.

Link: http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/05/14/sync

From today's Inside Higher Ed, news of Blackboard's Facebook (Backboard Sync) application that brings Blackboard's service to Facebook.

Blackboard, the course management giant, is hoping that a Facebook application will help it reach students even when they’re trying to avoid studying. Deploying a central fact of students’ work life into Facebook could be tricky business, but the social networking behemoth did start out as a college-oriented site complete with a popular course-schedule display, after all. The application, called Blackboard Sync, certainly raises questions about what a course-enabled Facebook would do: Send constant News Feed updates that “Adam received a B+ in Introduction to Statistics” or “Robyn dropped out of Intermediate Microeconomics"? Add the ability to “poke” one’s professor? Remind students not to forget their homework?

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/05/10/dlmpthree110.xml

You may remember 1998 for the Good Friday agreement that kick-started peace in Northern Ireland; for the Monica Lewinsky scandal; for the Pokemon craze; for France's 3-0 thrashing of Brazil in the World Cup final. You probably don't remember it for the launch of the MP3 player. But you should, because without the gloriously named MPMan F10, the world would be a poorer place.

For nineteenth century researchers, wondering about digital resources in their area, Jerome McGann, Director of NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship), has a welcoming and informative message (see below).

According to the NINES website:

N I N E S stands for a Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship, a scholarly organization in British and American nineteenth-century studies supported by a software development group assembling a suite of critical and editorial tools for digital scholarship.

In NINES you can:

1. search and browse more than 175,000 peer-reviewed texts, images, and citations in 19th-century studies
2. build your own collections of documents, articles, images, and ephemera;
3. organize, add keywords, and annotate your work;
4. discover lines of critical inquiry related to your own;
5. and (coming soon!) create syllabi, annotated bibliographies, illustrated essays, and timelines.

Here's Jerome McGann's posting to the North American Society for the Study of Romanticism Listserv

Read more »

Link: http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/index.php?page=Blog

From Helma Dik, Dept. of Classics, University of Chicago.

I am very happy to announce that we now have a new version of the Perseus Latin texts under PhiloLogic.

http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/PERSEUS/ Click "Latin Texts and Translations"

Latin texts, specifically, available through the search form at http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/efts/PERSEUS/latin.html

Googling "Perseus under Philologic" will get you to the site easily.

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According to Koïchiro Matsuura, director-general of UNESCO: “Languages are indeed essential to the identity of groups and individuals and to their peaceful coexistence. They constitute a strategic factor of progress towards sustainable development and a harmonious relationship between the global and the local context.”

In recognition of the importance of languages, the UN declared 2008 International Year of Languages.

For an overview of the state of language teaching in the US, see Inside Higher Ed's recent article, "But Where Does That Leave French?" The article gives in interesting (and interested) overview of shifts in language demand in the US, predicting an increase in demand for the "more populous of the world’s languages." Written by H. Stephen Straight, professor of anthropology and of linguistics, and vice provost for undergraduate education and international affairs at the State University of New York, the article contains links to reports and statistical information about language demand in US schools and universities.

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The organizing committee of CaSTA 2008 invites proposals from Canadian and international scholars and practitioners working in any area of technical or textual studies addressing the conference theme, “New Directions in Text Analysis.” This will be the sixth annual CaSTA conference, held in association with TAPoR (the Text Analysis Portal). The two days of the conference (17-18 October) will feature keynote and plenary addresses, papers, panels, and posters on a wide range of topics related to the future of digital text analysis. Presentations might address such topics as:

• changing notions of what constitutes a text
• the relationship of the material text (its physical manifestation) to the ideal text (the text as an abstraction of words in a particular combination)
• editing and publishing digital texts for a changing readership
• new media and digital textual scholarship
• new tools and methodologies for text analysis
• digital texts and analysis in the scholarly mainstream
• working with graduate students and research teams

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Link: http://www.commoncraft.com/podcasting

It's that time of year when many of us start thinking about enhancing next year's courses. And with podcasting's increasing popularity--to say nothing of our students' omnipresent mp3 players--podcasting can provide an easy and inexpensive way to pass along course material.

By far the best introduction to podcasting comes from CommonCraft, who create elegantly simple videos that demysify not just podcasting, but a range of other Web 2.0 applications like blogging, social bookmarking, Twitter...

To learn more about podcasting (and those other applications), visit the CommonCraft site here:

Parker has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

The African Partnerships Network at UVic, the Victoria International Development Education Association (VIDEA) and UVic's Office of Community-Based Research are pleased to invite you to a talk by Paulo Wangoola.

Paulo Wangoola, the Nabyama of Mpambo, is a practical visionary who brings a story of a unique way forward for Afrika, a vision of hope and some magic from the ageless traditions of Afrikan indigenous thought.

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Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/technology/04link.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&oref=slogin

Thanks to colleague Kim Blank for forwarding me this article from the New York Times that looks at the respective websites of Obama and Clinton, suggesting the websites are a political replay of those Mac/PC ads.

According to design experts, the candidates have left a clear blueprint of their personal style — perhaps even a window into their souls — through the Web sites they have created to raise money, recruit volunteers and generally meet-and-greet online.

If, like me, you're one of those people who can recite lengthy poems and prose passages from memory-- thanks to the rigors of an unreconstructed education--rejoice! A new study has found that it may be possible to train people to be more intelligent, increasing the brainpower they had at birth, and the key is carefully trained memory.

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According to a report to be published in tomorrow's New Scientist, blogs, maps, photo sites and instant messaging systems were better at providing warnings, help and lists of how individuals were affected than traditional sources.

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Let's take a moment of silence to mark the passing of culture.ca

According to a message on culture.ca's homepage, this online portal to Canadian culture has been discontinued since April 1.

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McGill University Montreal, Quebec

The DOCAM (Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage) Research Alliance and Media@McGill invite submissions of abstracts for the presentation of papers at the inaugural Media in Motion Symposium. The interdisciplinary event aims to bring together graduate students across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences in order to explore the many facets of media art preservation. To that end, submissions related to the conference theme, ”The Challenge of Preservation in the Digital Age,” are strongly encouraged. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Students' academic writing shows the influence of text messaging and social network postings, according to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, in partnership with the College Board's National Commission on Writing.

For NYT coverage, read here:

According to a recent US study, there are surprising correlations between the usually derided RateMyProfessors.com and IDEA (the student evaluation system used at about 275 US colleges).

# Student rankings on the ease of courses were consistent in both systems and correlated with grades

# Professors’ rankings for “clarity” and “helpfulness” on RateMyProfessors.com correlated with overall rankings for course excellence on IDEA

# The similarities were such that, the journal article says, they offer “preliminary support for the validity of the evaluations on RateMyProfessors.com

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Link: http://blog.humlab.umu.se/

The Humanities Faculty at Umeå University, Sweden, advertises seven two-year postdoctoral positions, and one of these positions targets the digital humanities. This position is part of a large-scale initiative to strengthen research in the humanities and information technology at Umeå University.

The intended focus is the digital humanities as a field and more overarching issues such as the development from humanities computing to digital humanities, cyberinfrastructure for the humanities, studio spaces in the digital humanities/related areas, creative technology-supported practice in the humanities, critical making, or interdisciplinary collaboration in/through the digital humanities. Projects may be influenced by science and technology studies, design studies and other relevant approaches and disciplinary backgrounds are encouraged. Apart from the primary focus on the digital humanities, projects may relate to the following research areas: participatory media, digital cultural heritage, digital art, critical perspectives and electronic literature.

The applicant should have a Ph.D. in a relevant discipline, and the Ph.D. must be no older than three years (at the date of the application deadline). The applicant should not have had a postdoctoral position prior to this one.

Read more

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AskPhilosophers.org - Philosophy For Everyone

Philosophy is usually reserved for the upper echelons of academia. You learn a little about it in college and it’s quickly forgotten. However, now and then, no doubt, a philosophical question will strike. So where do you go to get your answer? AskPhilosophers.

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Maryland's Upcoming Digital Diasporas Conference (April 30-May 2)

In conjunction with Digital Diasporas, our upcoming conference on digital humanities and African American/African Diaspora Studies, we will be running several workshops of interest. Registration for all workshops is managed through the conference registration form, available on the conference Web site:

Up to now, my appreciation of digital art has fallen into two dutiful categories: useful art, the kind of sticky website combination of visual, textual, useful applied art you find in websites that keep you coming back; The second kind, what I privately think of as "geek art," beautiful (in its own way) but with a limited, coded, coterie audience to marvel at technique (OMG who knew Flash/Java/etc. could do that?).

I'm old enough to realize I'm channeling Wiliam Morris: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. " But this weekend, I was moved by two websites where the message and the new medium come together seamlessly.

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Planning to spring-clean your website, or put some zip into your powerpoint presentations? Here are five free tools that will make these chores a pleasure (I've tried them all myself) and they're also easy-to-use

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An academic article about CAT (Computer-Assisted Translation) by Pablo Muñoz Sánchez gives an overview of current electronic tools available for translators, a profession enjoying increasing popularity. It's a useful introduction to computer-assisted translation, particularly for those unfamiliar with the broad range of digital tools now available.

And still on the topic of translation, if you haven't already tried the electronic magazine, Words Without Borders: the Online Magazine for International Literature, take a peek.

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From a new Canadian business publication, Unlimited, an article by Leah Vanderjagt (a librarian at a Canadian university) plays with what Google and librarians have in common:

we buy information, we help you find information, and we loan you information. In my experience, we try to do these things using every useful technological tool at our disposal. We buy e-books, instant-message you through a search, check blog feeds to keep an eye on innovations at other libraries. New technologies have not changed the fundamental function of libraries; they constantly change how libraries approach their core mission. The mission we share with Google. We live in this chaotic information environment, too. Read more

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Link: http://elearning.uvic.ca/showcase/moodle/

There's still time to sign up for the Moodle Course Showcase: Engaging Students Online on April 16

Your UVic colleagues invite you to explore this question and exchange ideas at the Moodle Course Showcase.

The showcase provides instructors with opportunities to share pedagogic practices, and discuss how they designed activities and kept students engaged online in their courses over the past year. Join us to explore examples of a wide range of teaching approaches and objectives as well as a few lessons learned along the way.

RSVP on this Showcase web site and you become eligible automatically for our door prizes (including 2 iPod shuffles)!

Date: April 16, 2008

Time: 1:30-3:30PM

Location: Learning and Teaching Centre (HHB 110, 116 & 128)

For more information, visit the Moodle Showcase site at http://elearning.uvic.ca/showcase/moodle/

Friday, May 9, 1:30-5:00

Part of the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan

The process of digitization project planning is essential for endeavors large and small. Every project to digitize medieval primary sources, whether undertaken by major libraries or by individual scholars, must take into account issues of legality (can I post these digital images on the web?), equipment (can I use a flatbed scanner, or should I use a camera?), specifications (300 or 600 dpi? And what's dpi??) and metadata standards (what's metadata?).

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Link: http://communications.uvic.ca/releases/tip.php?date=08022008#889

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News just in that Humanities colleagues, John Lutz and Ray Siemens have been awarded SSHRC SRG grants for digitally-enabled research projects. Congratulations!

John Lutz and Patrick Dunae, History, Turning Space Inside Out: Racial Space in Victorian Canada

Ray Siemens, English, A Prototype for the Electronic Scholarly Edition, Developed with the Devonshire Manuscript

The Humanities SRG preparation workshop will take place next Tuesday at 1pm in Cle C305b. Please let Claire Carlin (ccarlin@uvic.ca) know if you plan to attend, if you haven’t already done so. Dr. Rosemary Ommer and Brenda Driedger of Research Services will provide grantscrafting tips to go along with the packets Claire has prepared for you.

Proposal Submission Deadline: 05/30/2008

Full Chapters Due: 10/31/2008

A book edited by Willie van Peer, University of Munich, Germany

Sonia Zyngier, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Vander Viana, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Introduction

We live at a time of enormous realignments in the use of media. Each day more information can be retrieved from the Internet. The world is not one of knowing how to access and manage information rather than storing and processing it. In the area of literature, ever more information on literary production is being disseminated and retrieved in electronic form. This has considerable consequences for the form and use of such information. It also has consequences for learning and research environments at educational institutions.

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Link: http://eigentaste.berkeley.edu/user/index.php

An engaging procrastination tool from Ken Goldberg, an engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, and Tavi Nathanson, a Berkeley computer-science student. Jester--based on a computer algorithm that Berkeley patented in 2003--is a website that claims to personalize jokes for your particular sense of humour. You begin by rating several jokes on a scale ranging from "less funny" to "more funny," and the algorithm uses your responses to deliver your kind of humour.

Not quite a procrastination tool, because when I stopped smiling, I started to wonder if we could use a similar tool to find out, for example, our students' favorite medium for learning.

Caveat Lector: if your sense of humour doesn't run to "how many feminists/men does it take to change a lightbulb" (one of the calibrating jokes) or the word sh*t, you'll probably feel better if you skip this one.

Yes, according to a number of experts. Possibly, say pedagogical mavens who worry that PowerPoint undermines active learning. Definitely, yawns anyone who's ever sat through an interminable slideware read-over, disguised as a lecture or presentation.

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The University of Victoria-based online project that invites students to ‘solve’ mysteries plucked from Canada’s rich history while developing their research skills has been declared a vintage resource. The Great Unsolved Mysteries in Canadian History Project is the recipient of a 2008 MERLOT Classics award as an “exemplary” online learning resource. It’s the second time the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT), headquartered at California State University, has honoured the project.

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From the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies, Learning Toolbox 2008: Top 100 tools.

The list is divided into Personal Tools-- "to manage your own personal learning" and Authoring Tools--"to create, host, deliver or manage learning/performance support solutions".

Lots of familiar applications here, like Moodle, Google Docs, Wordpress, Audacity. Worth bookmarking for quick access to the well tried and true.

So many podcasts, so little time... This week's pick of the podcasts (March 21, 2008): Kierkegaard, Thinking About Science, and Demanding Books on Demand.

Link: http://truth.uvic.ca/

The annual TRUTH (Teaching and Research using Technology in the Humanities) symposium will be held on April 7, 2008. The focus this year is on Applied Linguistics and Technology, and the Guest Speaker will be Dr. Trude Heift, Associate Professor, Linguistics Dept., SFU.

The symposium is free, but the organizers would like you to sign up ahead of time to help planning.

Full information on the program can be found at http://truth.uvic.ca/

Link: http://www.sshrc.ca/web/apply/program_descriptions/rdi_e.asp

Many digital humanists across Canada have discovered that the SSHRC RDI (Research Development Initiatives) grant is a useful way to move larger projects along. RDI gives grants twice a year, and the next deadline is April 7, 2008.

Here's the program description:

Developing high-quality research depends on establishing and promoting environments necessary for the generation of new knowledge and for experimentation in new methods, approaches and ideas. Such development requires theoretical and methodological experimentation in the early stages of the research process. Accordingly, the Research Development Initiatives (RDI) program supports research that both assesses and elicits the changing directions of research and the evolution of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The program provides short-term support that enables grant holders to develop their research to a point where they are able to submit fully developed proposals to other programs with the aim of producing and effectively disseminating advanced research findings.

For full information, go to the SSHRC RDI site.

Link: http://eliza08.wordpress.com/2008/03/14/new-models-of-social-research-in-the-humanities/

In a recent blog ("Signs that social scholarship is catching on in the humanities"), blogger Lisa Spiro, director of the Digital Media Center at Rice University’s Fondren Library, argues that social scholarship in the humanities--by which she means "the practice of scholarship in which the use of social tools is an integral part of the research and publishing process”--is growing.

To support her claim, she cites individual commitment by scholars to Open Access, and Open Access Publishing outlets, the availability of tools (like Seasr in the US, and TAPoR in Canada) to support collaboration, new forms of peer review, support for collaboration by funding agencies, and a new emphasis by universities on community as part of the graduate student education.

Read Spiro's full blog here

Link: http://hcmc.uvic.ca/blogs/media/blogs/cmc/greekmyths.ppt

As promised. I will be sending out a more detailed announcement to the departments on Friday. Thanks for your interest!

March 16th, 1:30 - 4:30

HCMC/CALL Facility, Cle A051

The Humanities Computing and Media Centre (HCMC) is hosting its second annual project showcase.

UVic Humanities faculty and staff are recognized worldwide for their innovative use of technology in research, teaching and learning. At the showcase, they will discuss and demonstrate their projects, and welcome you to explore on your own.

A panel discussion on the pros and cons of Moodle (contrasted with WebCT/Blackboard) will also take place. Invited panelists from UVic and abroad will share their expertise, experience and opinions. The format is informal, and all are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Find out why Moodle is growing quickly as an alternative classroom management system (and how educators are using it).

To learn more about the projects and the panel discussion, visit the showcase web site at http://hcmc.uvic.ca/showcase/index.php.

Nibbles and drinks will be served.

For more information, please contact Scott Gerrity (ext. 8787, sgerrity@uvic.ca).

Hello everyone!

It was nice meeting you all. Here is the link to the article I told you about: http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/NetWorks/NW44/Blake.htm LANGUAGE LEARNING AT A DISTANCE: SPANISH WITHOUT WALLS.

The article shows the results of the research on learning Spanish online (based on the online course "SPANISH WITHOUT WALLS")

The authors found out that distance-learning students perform better on discrete grammar tests than their classroom counterparts enrolled in a traditional classroom format. They also discuss possible reasons for this difference along with student attitudes toward distance-learning language courses.

From your experience, how do you think, what are the other advantages of online language materials?

Julia.

Hello everyone,

As a reminder, there are two events coming up:

1. Landsdowne Lecture by Dr. Marie-Josee Hamel on Wed, Feb 28, at 4:30 in Clearihue A 303.

"Developing a lexical resource for learners of French"

2. Our next meeting is also on Wed, Feb 28, but at 6:30 at Martin's Pub/Place on 3838 Cadboro Bay.

You just go down on Sinclair to the bottom of the hill and it is in that little village to your left. Inside Martin's place, go upstairs to the private room which we have booked.

See you then!

Ulf