Notes from the Production group conference call, Friday June 6, 2008

Present: Joe Raben

Geoffrey Rockwell

John Walsh

Julia Flanders

Wendell Piez

Stefan Sinclair

Discussion of proposed "Annals of Humanities Computing" section

JR: interested in having the journal escape time-boundedness: DHQ becomes a vital historical record

WP: need to cast the net broadly; this group not necessarily plugged into the right authors

JF: need to keep in mind the current DHQ audience/readership

GR: provide brief context for each contribution; also include images and non-textual materials

SS: good opportunity to push on ideas of commenting; possibly treat as a blog?

JW: new tech assistant coming in, will work on commenting mechanism, integration with XML

WP: blogging is a priority now; need to reflect our real level of activity

GR: Annals will need some better aggregation: tagging, search, timeline;

GR: possibly publish Annals as a blog, a collaborative "oral" or participatory history

JF: concerns about preserving edited/reviewed nature of articles

WP: summarizing: designate Joe and another, ask them to talk with Willard and network about contributions; after Oulu, fast-track blog infrastructure and prospectus for Annals;

SS: find the right balance so that people are more likely to contribute; don't set the threshold low; we want people to be thoughtful, do research, take time

Next step: formulate concrete proposal, agree on it via email; SS as possible collaborator with JR

Summary of the above

Our discussion focused on possible approaches to the Annals of Humanities Computing. After some discussion of desiderata, Geoffrey proposed that we might treat this section as a blog, to permit flexible forms of posting and to facilitate commentary: in other words, conceptualize the Annals as a collaborative "oral" or participatory history. Julia expressed concern about preserving the edited and reviewed nature of articles in this section; Stefan suggested that an appropriate balance would be to set the threshold so as to encourage contributions while at the same time encouraging thoughtful, well-researched pieces.

We agreed that Joe Raben and Stefan Sinclair would work together to develop a concrete proposal for this feature and circulate it to the editors via the production list.

Adding Web 2.0 features: followup

• JW asked SS to take a copy of Wordpress and give it the look/feel of DHQ; will follow up off line
• GR re: Taporware tools: could we use more of a toolbar version so as not to lose context; GR will write this and send to JW

-- JuliaFlanders - 06 Jun 2008