[1] From: John Slatin <jslatin@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU> (32)
Subject: Re: 9.543 CD-ROM dissertations
[2] From: Patrick John Coppock <patcop@alfa.avh.unit.no> (88)
Subject: Re: 9.543 CD-ROM dissertations
[3] From: "Dr. Joel Goldfield" <joel@funrsc.fairfield.edu> (19)
Subject: Re: 9.543 CD-ROM dissertations
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 11:33:38 -0600
From: John Slatin <jslatin@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU>
Subject: Re: 9.543 CD-ROM dissertations
Jeff Schwartz wrote:
The CD-ROM medium is extremely expensive to produce (how
>does this student have access to a CD recorder?) and is likely to be
>short-lived (a new high density CD-ROM format, which will be incompatible
>with existing hardware, is in the works and will ship this year).
>We should not be talking about CD-ROM, but about hypertext and multimedia.
>Whatever this student is doing, it would be better presented as a set of
>html documents, a Storyspace program, or a Hypercard stack. It is
>important not to fetishize the medium. Content must be the object of
>judgement, not the sophistication of the presentation. What will this text
>do that could not be done in a book, and is its content as valuable to the
>scholarly community as that of a conventional dis?
>
A couple of points: first, it's no longer all that expensive to produce a
CD-ROM, at least not for the basic mastering. Recordable CD-ROM drives are
now available for $1000 or less. And, at least on some campuses, there are
campus facilities that own CD-ROM burners which make them available to other
members of the campus community at little or no cost.
Also, I must say it seems misleading to talk as though Storysapce and
HyperCard MUST be more reliable, more durable, than current CD-ROM format.
I use both environments, and like them very much; but there's nothing to
prevent their file formats from becoming unreadable in future revisions of
the operating system-- and of course HyperCard's ALWAYS been unreadable on
the PC side of the world. (Storyspace now exists in both Windows and Mac
versions; the files are compatible to a limited extent, but it's much better
if (for now at least) you treat diskettes as mere transportation rather
than as places to do any work).
Professor John M. Slatin
Director, Computer Writing & Research Lab
Div. of Rhetoric and Composition and Dept. of English
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX 78712
jslatin@mail.utexas.edu http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 11:22:34 +0100
From: Patrick John Coppock <patcop@alfa.avh.unit.no>
Subject: Re: 9.543 CD-ROM dissertations
John Slatin wrote:
>Leslie Jarmon, in the College of Communications, is the first Ph.D.
>candidate at UT Austin to receive approval for a CD-ROM based dissertation.
>
>I also have a graduate student who plans to submit a CD-ROM as a
>*supplement* to her disertation, which concerns interface design and
>electronic document design..
and Jeff Schwartz wrote in the same "bag":
>Whatever this student is doing, it would be better presented as a set of
>html documents, a Storyspace program, or a Hypercard stack. It is
>important not to fetishize the medium. Content must be the object of
>judgement, not the sophistication of the presentation. What will this text
>do that could not be done in a book, and is its content as valuable to the
>scholarly community as that of a conventional dis?
These two postings reflect two sides of the same coin, and in my view, the
very horns of the dilemma that we face in the humanities today. In my
experience, using multi-/hypermedia tools for academic publications is
still so difficult and time-consuming (in terms of lack of integration of
the various technologies necessary for integrating all the various media,
getting things on-line etc) that one very easily falls into the trap of
having to spend a lot of time doing things (learning the technology which
is changing at a high rate all the time at the moment, scanning images (or
alternatively searching the Web for images), formatting/ converting
documents, making diagrams, recording and integrating sound and video,
worrying about interface concerns etc, etc) that in fact divert time,
attention and energy from writing, thinking, and working with other people
on developing and refining ideas related to the real content matter of what
one is working on during the "writing" process.
This will obviously have serious consequences with regard to the quality of
the content in many such products. A one-person publication of this kind
will often lack sophistication (here I mean in terms of content quality/
legitimacy/ authority in relation to the field(s) of scientific discourse
the content matter is addressing) relative to publication vi the in many
ways "simpler" medium of representation of the conventional book), since it
is difficult for one person to develop sufficient expertise in all the
technological tools necessary to do everything well. Now, as we all know,
publishers of conventional books, and the academic community in general
have over time developed (whether these are ideal or not is of course
another matter) systems of norms for how writing should be done, for
evaluating writing products, for criticising and refining products that are
to be published etc. There is also a fairly well-defined and refined market
for the various kinds of materials that are published in more conventional
ways which acts both as a distribution medium and as a quality filter.
With new multi-/ hypermedia products we are still a long way from this kind
of situation, and we still more or less completely lack systems of norms to
base new ways of working, new kinds of evaluations etc. on. Obviously form
is related to content in some way, but how does this relationship work i
hypermedia documents? The dilemma then, is how to develop new systems of
cultural norms that will allow us to make truly qualified judgements about
such things? Obviously people have to begin using new media for publication
if they want to gain experiences that can be fed back into the community in
order for new systems of norms to develop and thus to maintain and continue
developing standards of content. At the same time there are still very many
central cultural institutions (amongst others very large numbers of
universities, professional organisations of writers, critics, publishers
etc etc) who basically still are complete novices in relation to all this,
not only with regard to the technology per se, but also with regard to
which tools ought to be made widely accessible for staff and students to
develop new forms of "writing" and communication, and especially with
regard to how best to evaluate and rate the content of such complex
hypermedia documents.
One way to increase the focus on content and to decrease the focus on form/
medium is obviously to work towards more collaboration and distribution of
responsibilities in the publishing process between people with different
kinds of expertise and to learn from one another. Another is to work
towards development of more functional tools for end users. A third is to
develop better understandings within the humanities in general of precisely
the kinds of issues mentioned by Jeff Slatin and Jeff Schwartz above,
namely:
[the quality and effect of]
- interface design and
- electronic document design
and the relationships between these issues and more general ones such as:
_ what will these texts [in reality] do that could not be done in a book?
- how to determine whether the content is as valuable to the scholarly
community as that of a conventional dis? [a very difficult question]
Patrick
______________________________________________________________
Patrick J. Coppock tel. +47 73 59 08 71 (office)
The Norwegian University of tel. +47 73 59 88 70 (lab)
Technology and Science tel. +47 72 55 50 91 (home)
Dept. of Applied Linguistics fax: +47 73 59 81 50
N-7055 Dragvoll, Norway e-mail: patcop@alfa.avh.unit.no
coppack@bo.nettuno.it
WWW http://www.hf.unit.no/anv/wwwpages/PJCHome2.html
"A person divides people into buyers and sellers, and forgets
that buyers are also sellers. Will his grammar change if I
remind him of this?" L. Wittgenstein, 22.11.1931
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 14:47:31 -0500
From: "Dr. Joel Goldfield" <joel@funrsc.fairfield.edu>
Subject: Re: 9.543 CD-ROM dissertations
While some very useful, provocative observations and thoughts have
been posted about multimedia elements in Ph.D. dissertations, I thought
some details should be corrected regarding the following statements
before misleading conclusions are expressed:
=-====
"The CD-ROM medium is extremely expensive to produce (how
does this student have access to a CD recorder?) and is likely to be
short-lived (a new high density CD-ROM format, which will be incompatible
with existing hardware, is in the works and will ship this year)."
1) CD Rom's are very cheap to produce if there is already a CD recorder
in place. They cost under $1,000 now. Most CD recorders now come with
good management & recording software. It's the labor time that would
ordinarily lead to a high cost.
2) The media themselves cost about $10 per disc
3) I've read some of the specs on the new "video CD's" or "VCDs," etc. Their
playback drives will be retro-compatible with existing CD-ROM drives.
However, the VCD's will not play back on existing CD-ROM drives.
Regards,
Joel Goldfield
Fairfield University