digital digs - Latest Comments in wasting memory and bandwidth on humanities scholarship

Re: wasting memory and bandwidth on humanities scholarship

Alex Reid — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:35:23 -0000

These are good points. I do think there are some models for reputation systems, like that at slashdot, that might be customized for use in evaluating scholarly work. I think the most interesting thing and the most challenging thing is that we will have to change the way that we work somewhat, especially in the humanities.
We are so accustomed to doing solo research, and this approach will ask us to work more socially. I think we will still write individual articles but we might be called upon more to respond to one another and evaluate one another. We do these things in one way or another, even if we do them just in our heads as we read articles, but here you would have to evaluate in a more active way.

Re: wasting memory and bandwidth on humanities scholarship

Amanda French — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:12:59 -0000

What's interesting is that the Internets have already figured out ways to assure quality: reviews, ratings, rankings, Diggs, all that. Comments, even. And I'm still struck by the genius of the extra layer of review on sites like Amazon and IMDB where you can RATE THE RATING. Genius. I'm past understanding why we don't, as you say, just put all the scholarship out there and let people rank it. And rank the rankings.
I especially think that every university should take responsibility for publishing all its own faculty's content. An institutional repository, if you will, but with the explicit purpose of distribution. Harvard made an important first step the other day.

Re: wasting memory and bandwidth on humanities scholarship

Anne-Marie — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:51:45 -0000

this is fantastic. I spend most of my time teaching new students to navigate through information -- and it seems to me that so man y of these technology changes push us to do what we should have been doing already anyway. Peer review has never been a guarantee of quality, and to tell students that the equation is that simple has always been a disservice. I know this is obvious - but I help so many students who are looking for a "peer reviewed" article to fulfill an assignment's requirements - who have no idea why or even what they're looking for. I love the idea of pushing beyond that to more complex analyses of quality and utility.