Enhancing Scholarly Communities by and through Digital Publishing

Enhancing Scholarly Communities by and through Digital Publishing

Naomi Silver, Anne Gere, Matt Burton, & Crystal VanKooten University of Michigan

• "It isn't that hard."

• --Cathy Davidson, HASTAC 2011 Keynote Address

•What follows is a story about how we might enhance the existing Digital Rhetoric and Writing Community through the creation of new sites for digital publication and communication.

A Digital Writing Story

Digitally Native Publication

Scholarly Communication

Digital Space?

Digital Writing

Scholarly Communities

• It takes many forms —

Digital Writing

Visual Rhetoric

Multimodal Composition

Video

Podcasts

Blogging

TweetingInteractive Media

The Web

Code

Slides

Games

Social Media

Photography

Graphic Design

Electronic Portfolios

eBooks

Mapping




Digital Space?

Digital Writing


A range of venues exist,

but not enough,

and none that make possible fully interactive long- and short-form publication.

Digitally Native Publications




Digital Space?

Digital Writing


•The fields of Rhetoric and Composition, Digital Rhetoric and Writing, and Digital Humanities offer several models of vibrant online scholarly communities.





Digital Space?

Digital Writing


Computers and Writing is an international conference that in 2011 drew over 500 Digital Rhetoric and Writing scholars to Ann Arbor.

••The conference backchannel and

afterlife in tweets and blogs comprise significant short- and medium-form modes of extending face-to-face scholarly communication.

But without curation and compilation, these intermediate modes of digital publication and conversation fade into the ether.

"Are You A Digital Humanist?"Town Hall, May 21, 2011Computers and Writing Conference

Cheryl Ball, Douglas Eyman, Alex Reid, Virginia Kuhn, Jentery Sayers, Julie Thompson Klein, and Katherine Hayles

"Are You A Digital Humanist?" The Conversation on Twitter

HASTAC: What is the digital humanities? Let the cage match begin. #cwcon /aw (11:58 AM)

koryching: #cwcon Funding opportunities as tactical reason to identify as digital humanist? (12:02 PM)

tekla _h: what is dh?, cont: a new age. #cwcon |Surprising to see resistance to the idea that all humanities will become dh. (12:03 PM)

digital_sextant: #cwcon #digitalhumanities is not just a label you put on someone who can make a website. Doug Eyman (12:10 PM)

Lizlosh: The answer to \Are you a digital humanist?\" on the panel seems to be \"I know you are but what am I\" #cwcon" (12:10 PM)

carl_whithaus: #cwcon v kuhn is right to argue that digital humanities comes from history (and rhetoric) as much as English (12:19PM)

DennisJerz: #th02 Cheryl Ball said she does not like the term. Multimodal vs multimodal --DH is \a funding term\". Rhetorically significant. #cwcon" (12:24PM)

Mkirschenbaum: #cwcon er, folks, the mandate for that piece was expressly to discuss DH *in* English depts! (12:31 PM)

HASTAC: #cwcon Hayles identifies 3 characteristics of digital humanist: Emphasis on collaboration; Crowdsourcing; geo-spacial projects (12:43 PM)

"Are You A Digital Humanist?"The Conversation Online

•The WIDE-EMU Unconference sought to extend the scholarly communication of Computers and Writing in a less structured venue.

•We used the opportunity it provided to seek feedback about what the Digital Rhetoric and Writing community felt was missing in digital publication and digital community spaces.

"When you say what books do

you want to read and write and in what format, I'm really interested in ebooks that are

more than just a pdf."

"As a digital scholar for whom interactivity forms part of the argument, and with some ideas I have for books right now, there's not really any place to design something in a

longer framework."

Unconference

Unconference

"There was a time in the Rhet-Comp blogging community when there were a few scholarship carnivals, but that's kind of gone away, and it feels like one of the lacks right now. You'd have a list of maybe 30 entries that are taking up various crumbs from the article and trying to respond and engage — I really miss it; I found

it really enriching."

HASTAC V presents one more opportunity for extending and enhancing scholarly communication and community.

The story continues. . .

HASTAC V Twitter Backchannel




Digital Space?

Digital Writing


An opportunity for a new digital space

A new born-digital writing/rhetoric imprint with UM Press

and...

A press-sponsored digital writing/rhetoric web space for sharing scholarly and educational materials.

Our questions —

1. What features and content would lead you to visit and contribute to a new digital resource focused on writing?

2. What sort of digital publishing/space would complement existing rhetoric/writing venues?

3. What features of existing web resources are

most attractive to you?

•Help shape this new digital community space —

•Let us know what you think by

• filling out our survey!

• http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BF3ZMFX

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BF3ZMFX



Education

Enhancing Scholarly Communities by and through Digital Publishing