7.0149 FTP Archive for Humanities Course Materials (1/49)
Elaine Brennan (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 2 Sep 1993 14:28:34 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 7, No. 0149. Thursday, 2 Sep 1993.
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1993 10:52:47 -0500 (EDT)
From: mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca (W. McCarty)
Subject: training graduate students
Humanist 7.0146 anticipates a project I have underway, which I was not
planning to announce for a few days yet, but the question has been
raised, so I will.
I am now in the process of setting up an anonymous-ftp archive at
Toronto for documentation of courses in humanities computing at all
levels. Syllabi, reading lists, bibliographies, handouts, and other
materials easily convertible to plain-ASCII text files qualify. This
includes announcements, blurbs, and adverts for courses, workshops,
and the like, but the primary intention is to document in as much
detail as possible the contents of actual courses.
At the moment I have all of my own materials (for graduate courses and
faculty seminars); some from King's College, London; a collection
brought together for the Consortium for Computers in the Humanities
(Canada); and a few other bits and pieces. I have been promised a
large collection of syllabi from U.S. institutions.
This pre-announcement constitutes an invitation for anyone with such
materials to submit them to me for anon-ftp posting -- WITH ONE VERY
IMPORTANT CONDITION. My condition is that these materials be properly
edited for the electronic, online medium. Such editing is not onerous,
except in the great volumes a collector might face. It means, for
example, more than simply converting WordPerfect documents to DOS
files, since WP does not do a very good job with DOS-file formatting.
So, I energetically request that anyone with such materials put them
into shape, then look at them with an ASCII editor (such as DOS Edit),
make whatever changes are required, then send these to me by e-mail.
Why should we bother? I can think of four reasons at the moment:
1. to assist our colleagues who are attempting to get humanities
computing courses going (those of us who have done it know how
much work and experimentation is involved);
2. to allow us teachers to survey what has been done and so to
benefit from each other's ideas, thus to bring into focus what
humanities computing is as a teachable subject;
3. to develop a means for "distance education" in the area;
4. to lead the other disciplines in large-scale sharing of
pedagogical materials.
To my mind these are noble goals.
So, if you please, let the disciplined flood commence!
Willard McCarty
mccarty@epas.utoronto.ca