Its for sale , so it must be finished: Digital Projects in the scholarly Publishing World

Literature Review

David Sewell’s “Its For Sale, So it Must Be Finished: Digital Projects in the Scholarly Publishing World” made me curious right from the start. I was intrigued because I had not thought about the dilemma of defining ‘done’ before. The article was very interesting from the first sentence. I thoroughly enjoyed reading Sewell’s article and I was fascinated by it.
It actually made me think about the piece I contributed to the webpage for this seminar. When I wrote about it first, my knowledge was very vague but as I researched more and more it became clearer and my essay started to change. Even now, the subject is so dynamic that I could contribute every day with a new link to the subject and a new perspective, so I could never describe my essay as complete or finished. I consider this as a good thing, it can only make a subject better and more active.

I found that Sewell structured his article very well, he had headings and sub-headings throughout which made it easy to read and follow. The language of the article was also very understandable, no big computer terms were jumping out at me, which put me at ease from the beginning.

The article begins with a very simple and clear description of what it intends to explain to us as the reader. Sewell states that in “this article I describe how we defined the criteria for ‘done-ness’ in creating two very different projects”(sewell). The projects in which he explains are Herman Melville’s Typee manuscript and a conversion of the letterpress papers of George Washington into a digital edition.

He posed a question with an impossible answer but the article tries to explain the complexity that exists in answering this difficult question.
The two projects that he uses to explain are both very helpful and very interesting.

Sewell describes the term ‘done’ as curious, I think this depicted it very well as we want to know more and we are eager to learn more which is especially true when talking within the digital humanities sphere.

The question of when an article, journal or book is completed can be debated for years decades and centuries. The idea of something being ‘done’ without having any alterations in the future is daunting. A book goes through a rigorous process of editing and proof reading which is repeated more then twice until everyone is happy. Sewell claims that this process is different with digital objects, which is what makes the whole idea suspicious. If one says that their work is completed then the author will be inundated with questions by all involved. The essence of the internet surely means that it can be altered, links can be added and importantly sites can change to a new or different format.
Claiming that your work is officially complete could be seen as ‘cutting your own throat’ in a sense, no piece can be absolutely finished unless of course it is a sonnet or a song, as Sewell explains.
Questions such as ‘what happens if there is no possible completion’ then arise. Can we call anything complete?
Sewell makes the reader think about this, he gives great examples. When I finished reading this article I pondered on this subject for awhile as I was stunned at the fact I had never thought about it before, a simple question with a very complex answer. It interested me so I decided to have a ‘Google around’ the subject. Digital humanities is a very fascinating subject and the deeper you go the more it offers you which I myself have experienced whilst studying the subjiect. It is like an onion, just keep peeling.

Within the article, Sewell discusses George Landow and Paul Delany’s essay “Hypertext, Hypermedia and literary studies” which brings up a lot more questions on the topic. Essentially the argument within the essay seems to be that if you put a text on the internet it automatically becomes opened and unfinished. But would this then claim that journals and books are classified as finished? Which is not always so. When a book is published, reviews are written and maybe articles are written in contest or agreement with the book. In depth character and plot analysis are debated among readers and scholars. So, when a book is published it is not the end of that book. The book continues on, links are made and different versions of plot and character analysis arise offering a huge contribution to the understanding and opinion of a particular book or journal, it would be a shame not have the perspectives of others. Obviously there are books that have a beginning, middle and end but who knows what changes the future could offer. The internet makes this process easier, links can be made instantaneously and features can also be added. It is a hard question to answer, defining what is finished and unfinished. I think that the internet has highlighted the finished/unfinished question because works can be altered instantly.

The article sheds light on Rotunda, and importantly Sewell explains how they define done “ it is done when the press is prepared to offer it for purchase and customers are prepared to buy it”. This makes a lot of sense as I would not be happy buying an unfinished book or article or anything. I want the finished version, whatever that might be.

The examples that Sewell uses are perfect for explaining his argument. He explained in a easy and understandable manner. I found myself intrigued with Melville’s Typee and went onto the Rotunda website. What I found was fantastic, it showcases Melville’s process of revision in composing his first book. This is a fantastic resource for anyone. The computer based format suited this dynamic process perfectly and experiencing the whole process was superb.

The other example he used was the papers of George Washington digital edition (PGWDE) which Sewell claims is a very different project. It involved producing an online version of the papers . This caused just as much problems as Typee which was a born-digital project. I found this very interesting as well, and it too raised questions about the debate on finished and unfinished works.

The whole idea of finished and unfinished work is very interesting and this article has shown that. This debate is only going to get more fascinating. I believe that everything is unfinished. The word finished has two meanings, the obvious one being work that is made smooth and polished but the other being “having no more use, value or potential; washed up”. The latter definition makes the task of identifying finished and unfinished work easy because no work could ever be defined as having no more use and so all work would seem to be unfinished. Which from that definition is a good thing.
Sewell leaves the reader with a lot to think about, he explains his argument very well and left me wanting to know more.

or is it...............?

My Presentation:)

Beware: Judgement needed!
The problem with using the internet as a source of information




So what's the problem?...
The problem with the internet as a source of information is simply we forget that the judgement is left to us.
We read and read and….read but forget that not everything is true, we tend to act like a fool in love…
New problem?...nope but
Today, the internet is more freely available and so it is easier to get your message out so the level of inaccurate and sometimes dangerous information available has risen.
This can be seen with the rise of people self-diagnosing themselves from the internet

Self- Diagnosing from Dr. Google..
The internet is filled with medical and health sites so its not surprising that self-diagnosing is on the rise.
Using the internet for general information is one thing that can easily be corrected but…when used for medical reasons and incorrect, the consequences can be life-threatening and not as easily corrected.
Many people are just happy that they can access information any where at anytime and so forget that judgement is needed on whether the site is reliable. The internet is like an un-moderated message board that needs our judgement.
Some medical websites endorse unproven therapies and medicines which can be dangerous.


Studies done in this area....
Microsoft carried out a study investigating the rise of ‘cyberchondria’
In this study they ‘analysed the internet behaviour of a million surfers around the world and carried out a survey of more than 500microsoft employees, to discover how the internet is giving many of us an acute case of the heebie-jeebies’.
They concluded that the problem started with bias ‘nobody is excited to write about caffeine withdrawal and its role in headaches, but Brain tumours- that's more interesting’.
Search engines are not savvy about bias- they are programmed to generate results relevant on the query, not the person making it. Many people are forgetting this and putting themselves in danger.


And because there is a disproportionate level of attention given to scary diseases people diagnose themselves with rare diseases.
For example; Microsoft searched ‘Headache’ and a quarter of the documents thrown up by the web points to a brain tumour which they state is mercifully rare, developing in fewer than one in 50,000 people.
People seem to think they have a medical degree just because they can search for symptoms or conditions on the internet, which can lead to the wrong diagnosis and the wrong treatment which is serious.


PEW also carried out research and revealed that 8 of 10 people use the internet for medical or health reasons and about the same proportion (75%) do not check the source of that information or the date it was created.
I can stat a website that says anything, a medical degree is not needed to give faulty advice or endorse unproven therapies.
The fact that people are willing to use the internet for their health shows just how much they rely on the internet and how willing they are to trust it without checking who is behind it or even the date it was created, even with something as important as ones health.


Diagnosis is complex, GP’s train for years to do this and many academics also do. They become experts in medicine or Romantic literature by researching it for years
But the internet is open to everyone with a connection and access so there are many people writing about areas that they know little about whether medicine or poetry we must carry our judgement into the cyber world with us and not believe everything we read.
The internet ranges from scholarship pages to the most haphazard pages and the problem is many people lose their judgement on the way and seem to believe that ‘it must be true, I read it on the internet’.


Solutions?
Ignoring the internet as a source is not the answer as this would involve missing out on the great scholarship pages that do exist such as the ‘Blake Archive’ and JSTOR etc.
One solution used by many is only trusting the .EDU sites but this leads to the assumption that people who went to university are brighter then people who didn't, which is not always the case.
Another solution is simply teach people to judge for themselves whether a webpage is reliable or not before allowing all trust with the page.
Thus: making people less vulnerable to shoddy work and harmful medical sites
Teaching to evaluate claims of authority instead of sheltering under .EDU

Conclusion
Internet search engines have some of the answers but it should be used in conjunction with a doctors advice, rather than in place of it.
Just as the internet should be used in conjunction with a lecture or class or whatever, instead of in place of it.

‘knowledge is power, but nothing beats years of clinical experience-yet’


The End

Blogs And Blogging: Text and Practice

From: A Companion to digital literary studies

Blogs and Blogging: Text and Practice
By
Aimee Morrison

Aimee Morrison’s “ Blogs and Blogging: text and practice” was my favorite article that I have read so far from the Companion of digital literary studies. I had to plough through the others, reading and re-reading and painfully looking up every reference and word, but, Morrison relieved me of these duties and I was able to read her article with ease. In comparison to the other essays I read I found that it was more comprehensible in particular with Liu’s article which took me hours to get through. She introduces her points and then proceeds to explain them in an understandable way for the reader; I did not find myself drifting off on different subjects like I did with Liu’s article.



In her article she explains the art of Blogging which I found very interesting. Morrison gives the reader a history of the blog as we know it today and describes the Blog in comparison to the web page and made me understand the ‘Blog world’ more. I am new to the blog world so it was helpful and interesting to read about what I was getting myself into, in many ways it made me feel as though I was missing out on this new instrument which was the same way I felt just before I signed up to face book and now I cannot live without it.

One particular point I found interesting was that there was only 23 blogs at one time and the only people who really used them were the computer wizards. These blogs were easy to track but now there is more than 75,000 new blogs everyday which makes this task rather hard. After reading this fact I proceeded to look up on the Internet to see if anyone had actually counted the Blogs and to my surprise there were many websites. This can be linked in with Liu’s article as he argues that we are weary at first about new media but when we get used of it being around we begin to use it more and more, and as we see with the growth of the blogosphere, we eventually welcomed the blog and in 2006 the blog-tracking website was indexing more than 54 million blogs globally. This is a very big leap from 23 blogs. Morrison made me wonder about the points in Alan Liu’s article as I questioned this ‘blogosphere’ as a new media encounter. Will there be a day when we look back and wonder how ever did we survive without the blog? How did people get their message out?
Blogging was just as strange to us as writing was to Plato and silent reading was to Augustine (Liu) and we too treated the blog with suspicion but now its part of everyday life just like writing and silent reading is. The blogosphere is now part of the mainstream media world so the boundaries of these two mediums have crossed or overrun. For example on sky news there is an hourly update of the most researched story on the Internet and more often than not there is a blog by someone or some organization making the news reports. This can be seen with the story that Morrison includes in her article about Julie Powell’s online saga to cook every recipe in Julia Child's seminal Mastering the Art of French cooking in one year. This story is now becoming a movie which again is another media chain the Blog is becoming part of. To me this is very interesting because Liu’s article started to make more sense to me. This new media that he talked about is now not pagan to us and we have accepted it in some shape or form with the help of simple to use software such as CMS which lowered the technical barrier to the Blogger.

Morrison also writes about people now losing their jobs over this new found phenomena and about the various types of Blogs that exist such as the political and personal etc. Although she does mention authority and blogging in literary studies she does not go into it much which is a very interesting topic to pursue for future studies.
Also with the upsurge of blogs, the Internet is now full of opinion and very hard to find fact, Morrison failed to discuss this which is also another interesting subject for further studies.

Morrison explained the Blogosphere very well for me and it made sense of a world that I was not used to. I learnt a lot from her article about what a blog is or is not and what it can do and cannot do. It made me think about blogging more. This article is a good read for both the Blogger and the non blogger.

Imagining The New Media Encounter

From: A Companion to Digital literary studies
Imagining the new media Encounter
BY
Alan Liu


When I sat down to read Alan Liu’s article “Imagining the New Media Encounter” I did not expect what I was going to meet. Since it was just the introduction I figured how hard can it be, but I was wrong. Within the first few pages it felt foreign to me and made me feel as though I was out of my depth. The article is essentially about this ‘encounter’ between the literary and the digital age, though, Liu makes this very hard to figure out in the midst of his techno talk, and his numerous references and words that were alien to me. It took me about 3 or 4 attempts at reading it to fully understand some of his points and when you overcome all the obstacles that he puts in the way of the reader, Liu does make interesting points about this ‘Media encounter’. One point I found attention-grabbing was his explanation of the meeting of the digital world as an ‘encounter’. The encounter that he describes in the article is a “thick, unpredictable zone of contact-- more borderland then border line” This caught my eye when I was reading it and is an interesting way of explaining it. Liu explains that the border between literature and digital has now been “so breached by shared technological, communicational, and computational protocols that we might best think in terms of an encounter rather than a border”. In the article he takes us back to the depiction of someone first encountering the art of writing. This, today, is taken for granted in our society because we have always had it, but it is strange to think that this normal form of communicating was once a very strange and ‘pagan’ thing to people who had never seen such an advent, we take it for granted that there will always be a pen and paper somewhere. In his reference to Augustine’s account of coming upon Ambrose engaged in the new practice of silent reading, this too was an unusual event but today this is part of our society that we think nothing of. He uses these encounters as a way of showing the reader that at first we are weary about new media but eventually when we begin to trust it and then become accustomed to it, just like we done with reading and writing.
We thought we knew what ‘writing was but now “encoding” makes us wonder’ and the same apply to reading and now “browsing”. His perspective on this is very interesting. I never really thought about the contrast of our generation encountering a website for the first time in comparison with the past generation encountering silent reading or writing for the first time.
The article is by no means user friendly as Liu makes it hard for the reader to make since of his work without looking up a dictionary or in my case the internet. I found myself on the internet more than reading about his argument. I did learn about more things when looking them up on the internet. In short I did not think that Liu wrote this for a universal audience, in fact I felt that it was his own diary entry for his own use. It is a very heavy read for people who may not be well up in this techno talk.
If Liu explained what he meant with his references then maybe, and this is a big maybe, then the article might have been more accessible. I ploughed my way through it with a lot of help from Mr. Google. Though he did not get his point across in the best possible way, I did learn from it and it works relatively ok as an introduction to the companion even though he seems to squash everything into his conclusion at the end of the article.
I think this sums up the article:
‘Studying old media is to help us appreciate what it now means to encode, browse, simulate, etc’