Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 13, No. 528.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Mark Davies <mdavies@ilstu.edu> (63)
Subject: Peer evaluation of web-based scholarly materials
[2] From: Raquel Wandelli <wandelli@cce.ufsc.br> (28)
Subject: En: mail-listings
[3] From: "alessandroponti@libero.it" (24)
<alessandroponti@libero.it>
Subject: opinions on Dante in Hell?
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2000 17:08:59 -0500
From: Mark Davies <mdavies@ilstu.edu>
Subject: Peer evaluation of web-based scholarly materials
We are in the process of revising the promotion and evaluation procedures
in all of the departments at Illinois State University, and I have been
asked by a committee to get input from individuals at other institutions
concerning how non-peer-reviewed, web-based materials could/should be
evaluated by the institution.
Perhaps I can provide some concrete examples of the type of issues that the
committee is looking at. In my case, I have created several online corpora
that have been used by researchers and students at other
institutions. These include a "Polyglot Bible"
(http://mdavies.for.ilstu.edu/bible) that allows users to search for a word
in the entire Gospel of Luke in one of thirty languages and see all of the
hits, along with (most importantly) the parallel passages for other related
languages (eg. Gothic, Old English, Icelandic, German, etc), which allows
cross-linguistic comparison. (A more expanded version of this is also
available for just Latin, Old Spanish, and Modern Spanish
(http://mdavies.for.ilstu.edu/bible/span3.htm), and includes nearly the
entire Bible).
More important for the type of issues the committee is looking at, I have
created a searchable, web-based corpus of 3,000,000 words of historical
Spanish texts (1200s-1900s) (http://mdavies.for.ilstu.edu/corpus), and I
will soon start work on a web-based 100,000,000 word corpus of historical
Spanish, based in large part on other available electronic corpora, but
with enhanced search features and tied in with other linguistic tools (word
frequencies, dictionaries, bibliographical information, etc). In each
case, the materials have been used by many researchers and students at
other institutions.
In the evaluation of materials such as these, the committee wants to know
what the procedures and policies are at other institutions. For example:
1a) In general terms, are materials that are not peer-reviewed at the
outset (but rather are simple something that a researcher has created and
puts on the web, and only later receives some type of external validation)
considered for promotion and evaluation?
1b) If so, at what level are they considered -- that of books, journal
articles, book reviews, or potentially any of these levels, depending on
the quality of the materials?
2a) Since they are not peer-reviewed at the outset, is the faculty member
expected to provide documentation to show how they have been used and
accepted by peers at other institutions?
2b) If so, what form would this documentation take -- logfiles showing the
number of hits, email from many different users, comments from a selected
set of peers, etc.
3) Many of these materials would be used by both researchers _and_ students
at other institutions -- probably much more than a journal article, which
would be primarily used by other researchers. Therefore, how can one avoid
"double-dipping", by including these materials in both the "scholarly" and
the "teaching" categories, for those institutions that organize things
thusly? In other words, would developers need to document and prove that
one or the other groups (scholars / students) are the main users of the
resource?
I would very much appreciate your comments on any of these questions
(mdavies@ilstu.edu). Although I will most likely just be summarizing the
responses for presentation to the committee, please feel free to indicate
if you would like your comments to be anonymous.
Thanks in advance for your help.
Mark Davies
=======================================
Mark Davies, Associate Professor, Spanish Linguistics
Dept. of Foreign Languages, Illinois State University
Normal, IL 61790-4300
Voice:309/438-7975 email:mdavies@ilstu.edu
Fax:309/438-8038 http://mdavies.for.ilstu.edu/personal/
=======================================
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 5 Apr 2000 23:23:29 -0300
From: Raquel Wandelli <wandelli@cce.ufsc.br>
Subject: En: mail-listings
Greetings colleagues,
I am a member of the Studies Group of Computing, Lingüistic and Literature
in Federal University of the Santa Catarina, Brazil, and I would like to
develop a research about intersubjectivity trhough the Internet.
I think that the Net is not only valid for its database nature, but also
as the way of an exchange of information, and 'spreading the word' about
different cultural events and opinions as well. In regard to this, I am
very much interested in e-lists phenomenon, especially those specialized
for various fields interests such as philosophy, postmodernism,
linguistics,etc.
Does someone of you know how e-mailing lists started? Where can I find
'the history' of mail-listing? If someone already has done research in the
subject or has the knowledge of books dealing with the matter, I would
like to exchange ideas.
thank you,
Raquel Wandelli
UFSC-NUPILL
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 7 Apr 2000 14:48:52 +0200
From: "alessandroponti@libero.it" <alessandroponti@libero.it>
I would like to know what Humanists think about W.WELLIVER's book "Dante
in Hell. The <<De Vulgari Eloquentia>>". Unfortunately I have not read
it and I do not know anything more about it. Actually, I only read a
quotation of it on a commentary of Dante's DVE: <<the De Vulgari
Eloquentia is an infernal work, where lying and the torture of the
reader are the order of the day>>. What do you think about this strange
sentence?
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