still busy...

[katster]

trying to make up for lost time.

Anyway, this is the abstract I'll be turning in today in my Information Users and Society course today. http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~katster/classwork/is204/abstract.php

If you wouldn't mind looking over it and telling me what y'all think, I'd be much obliged.

now, to bed with a katster!

Comments

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

Language editing, mostly:

Research used to be a tedious and somewhat serendipitous task. One wandered into the Bancroft Library or the San Francisco History Archive and requested a box number, which was brought to one's workspace. It was then a tedious task of sorting through the box for the morsel of information that would help support one's arguments.

Research used to be a tedious and somewhat serendipitous task. One wandered into the Bancroft Library or the San Francisco History Archive and requested a box number, which was brought to one's workspace. There was then the tedious process of sorting through the box for useful morsels of information.

Databases are, of course, not a new concept. However, it does make it simpler for one to do this kind of work.

Databases, while not a new concept, are one of the more effective methods of simplifying this process.

Of course, once you have a database of what is in what boxes, then why not put the actual texts into the database?

A relatively recent development, though, is computerised databases capable of storing and indexing entire texts, rather than just indexes of what is in which box.

The two biggest examples of this phenomenon are Project Gutenberg (http://promo.net/pg/) and the Perseus Digital Library (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/). A few days from now, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will open its (virtual) campus to anybody who cares to come look. MIT is calling this project OpenCourseWare (http://web.mit.edu/ocw/).

"And a few days from now, ..."

In my paper, I would like to examine the impact these projects had or will have.

"have had, and continue to have"

For example, what does it mean that anybody in the world can access the lectures of MIT professors? What impact does having primary sources for Greek and Roman history online for both scholars and history students?

What impact does having primary sources for Greek and Roman history online have, for both scholars and history students?

Why is it important for a society to have the classics online? While I may not have enough room in a full paper to discuss all these things, this topic is along the lines in which I would like to go.