Dear all,
Many thanks to all who have participated in the Digitalclassicist community, and
welcome to those of you who have just joined the discussion list (feel free to
introduce yourselves if you feel sociable).
We have begun to draft an agenda, aims, and objectives for Digitalclassicist on
the website at http://purl.oclc.org/NET/digitalclassicist/ (*). In brief, the
Digital Classicist is a project and community for discussing issues, sharing
experiences, and offering advice on the subject of applying computer technology
to research in Classics and the ancient world.
(* Proper URL any day now...)
Beyond this, what should the aims of this community be? (a) In general? (b) In
the immediate term? Is the creation of an active community in itself a
necessary and sufficient goal? Are there other questions we should be asking,
or problems we should be tackling? Willard McCarty has suggested (in a message
that I shall forward to this list, with his permission) that a concrete
research goal might make the Digital Classicist into a project that will remain
useful even if the community peters out in time.
Concretely, we need to work out our mission brief, which in large art means
deciding and expressing our relationahip with the other major projects in this
area. The Stoa is a vitally important site that specialises in electronic
publication and hosts many projects, guides to good practice, and discussion
forums. The Digital Medievalist also maintains lists of projects and resources,
and runs a Wiki, one goal of which is the authoriship of a primer for
mediaevalists. It is essential that we work in concord with both these projects
and others--such as the Centre for Hellenic Studies; the Centre for the Study
of Ancient Documents in Oxford; the Ancient World Mapping Centre--and pool our
efforts to avoid duplication both of labour and of places that people go to
look for this sort of information. Our own references and guides, for example,
should cross-reference thoroughly to existing materials, and where such
resources are already comprehensive we should simply point to them rather than
reinventing the wheel. It seems to me an obvious move, in counterpart to this,
that when entries in the Wiki FAQ become adequate and stable, they be housed on
the Stoa's pages rather than sitting in the Wiki (although in some cases a
development version may remain to form form a new edition later).
Apologies for the lengthy email. I summarise:
Digitalclassicist is:
-- a community and forum for discussion
-- Wiki for development of FAQ and guides
-- listing of resources, projects, tools
-- research agenda?
Relationships:
-- Stoa - division of responsibilities
- development vs. hosting?
-- Digitalmedievalist - cross-referencing/shared resources
(I should also like, eventually, to begin a discussion on the structure of the
FAQ, but perhaps we had better not be having both conversations at once just
yet.)
Best,
--
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Gabriel BODARD
Inscriptions of Aphrodisias
Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London
Kay House
7, Arundel Street
London WC2R 3DX
Email: [log in to unmask]
Tel: +44 (0)20 78 48 13 88
Fax: +44 (0)20 78 48 29 80
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