Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Digital Openness and Biblical Studies (post-CARG post #1) ::
[Nb. this post should have gone up this morning Philly time, but my hotel had an Internet blackout, following the hot water drought the day before, so I am sending it off this evening!]
Following the much blogged about CARG Biblioblogger session at SBL, amid the buzz of a dozen other conversations (that we'd all have loved joining also) a group of us talked about the openness thing.
It wasn't world shattering. We haven't solved the funding of the Disseminary, or even recruited a dozen authors for them, nor have we all agreed to put our shoulders to any other wheel (though several of us are busy inventing "wheels")... But we did decide - at least that's my memory of it, do correct me or add what I've forgotten - that we need to create a climate in which openness in Biblical Studies is on the agenda.
By "openness" we mean (some or all of these things, and perhaps others):
[PS after writing the above I attended the CARG business meeting, the "openness" thing is on the list of possible sessions for 2006, I also (before that) had a chat to Kent Harold Richards, so my suggestion is that we wait a week or two til the CARG list is finalised, and only if "openness" is absent we move further in proposing a group... sorry, none of you was around to consult with!]
As I wrote the above I began to reflect more on the sort of summary statement we will need to propose such a group, and I am convinced that:
[The above paragraph should be rewritten in the light of the comment above, but what the one below expresses is still my view!}
I wish we'd had the time to work through all this yesterday!
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[Nb. this post should have gone up this morning Philly time, but my hotel had an Internet blackout, following the hot water drought the day before, so I am sending it off this evening!]
Following the much blogged about CARG Biblioblogger session at SBL, amid the buzz of a dozen other conversations (that we'd all have loved joining also) a group of us talked about the openness thing.
It wasn't world shattering. We haven't solved the funding of the Disseminary, or even recruited a dozen authors for them, nor have we all agreed to put our shoulders to any other wheel (though several of us are busy inventing "wheels")... But we did decide - at least that's my memory of it, do correct me or add what I've forgotten - that we need to create a climate in which openness in Biblical Studies is on the agenda.
By "openness" we mean (some or all of these things, and perhaps others):
- openness of access: the current (closed) "publishing environment" means that our output, monographs, articles etc. appear in costly forms that are difficult (at least for scholars outside Western academic institutions, in particular 2/3 world and independent scholars) to access. Note that this is of real interest to scholars, we publish to influence others, to propagate our ideas, to gain tenure or promotion - all of these goals are assisted if people can actually read our work!
- openness of creation: in software programming circles there is a buzz around "open source" projects, the success of Linux (Did you know Google's server clusters - about the nearest thing in the real world to Deep Thought" - run Linux?), Moodle (Did you know that Britain's largest university has chosen Moodle as its Learning Management System?) and other OS projects reinforces the sense that openness of creation is a good model to explore. What projects could Biblical Scholars contribute to that would be our Linuxes or Moodles?
- human openness: the "guild" model of scholarship and its practices (including for example the peer review system) have served Biblical Studies well, but they are - or have become - barriers to "outsiders". The guild has tried - SBL in particular, through travel grants, committees on Women in the Profession and the like - to break open this barrier, though with less than total success - see the discussion on the near absence of women at biblioblogger session and in particular Pilgrim at First and Lake's comments in her post "Why don't Women (Biblio-) Blog?" or ask yourself how many biblical scholars you have read or listened to recently who were born and who currently reside in South America, Asia or Africa...
[PS after writing the above I attended the CARG business meeting, the "openness" thing is on the list of possible sessions for 2006, I also (before that) had a chat to Kent Harold Richards, so my suggestion is that we wait a week or two til the CARG list is finalised, and only if "openness" is absent we move further in proposing a group... sorry, none of you was around to consult with!]
As I wrote the above I began to reflect more on the sort of summary statement we will need to propose such a group, and I am convinced that:
- much of this force behind this issue comes from the conjunction of a (historic?) societal move towards openness with the changes how we communicate and what is possible in a digitally mediated environment
- these questions inevitably arise (at SBL) in the CARG sessions precisely because the drive towards "openness" is founded on digital communications
- and that for some years (some of us) have been pushing the boundaries of what can accurately called "computer assisted research" to include such more cultural questions
[The above paragraph should be rewritten in the light of the comment above, but what the one below expresses is still my view!}
I wish we'd had the time to work through all this yesterday!
Filed in: carg biblioblog open.biblical.studies open.scholarship
¶ 2:57 PM
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