Welcome
Purpose:
- To develop a range of mechanisms that will provide more comprehensive documentation of existing digital projects in the Slavic, East European and Eurasian field, and, where possible, more extensive participation in future academic and commercial initiatives;
- To provide all members of the AAASS with a single location where they can obtain or exchange information and advice on digital Slavic issues;
- To serve as a sand-box to test out and explore possible alternatives to the current digital presence/organization of B&D and AAASS websites.
Scope: The DPS is interested in participating in all types of digital projects and initiatives related to Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia, including "new model" (born-digital) scholarship, multimedia (texts, images, audio), data, and primary source archives and repositories. Geographic coverage of projects includes those taking place in Russia, Europe, and Eurasia, as well as in North America.
Activity: The DPS will assess the need for, and feasibility of, the following activities, and, where appropriate, propose ways of engaging in them.
- Exploring the fate of the existing online inventory of current digital projects in the Slavic, East European and Eurasian field in the humanities and social sciences. Conducting user-surveys, exploring new navigation functionality, and seeking to provide a new non-institution-based home (preferably online, possibly as a feature within the context of the new DPS website or Digital Slavist). The goal is to broaden focus of and participation in Inventory by opening it up to contributions by scholars (e.g. Slavic medievalists’ interested in digital issues), not just librarians. Discuss who should be responsible for this product: DPS or a committee like ABSEES (which already keeps track of bibliographic citations to books and articles, and seems like the natural place for having citations to Slavic digital projects).
- Fostering systematic and informed participation in future initiatives by:
- developing a process for the B& D committee to make formal, consensus-based recommendations on digital projects to commercial and other information providers;
- establishing contacts with representatives in library and professional organizations with digital interests, such the Digital Library Federation, CLIR, Association of Research Libraries, ACRL E-Text Discussion Group, Association for Computing in the Humanities, Text Encoding Initiative, etc;
- furthering contacts with commercial vendors in the Slavic field and elsewhere.
- Increasing the range of digital information opportunities for Slavic librarians by:
- identifying research & publication topics for examination by committee members and other colleagues
- identifying and documenting websites, listservs, and other resources on digital issues;
- providing updates on new digital developments at annual conferences;
- creating and maintaining a website to consolidate all of the above
- Increasing the range of digital training opportunities for Slavic librarians by :
- organizing annual panels or roundtables to foster understanding of digital issues;
- sponsoring more extended digital workshops at meetings like the University of Illinois' Slavic Librarians' Workshop
- working with members of the Slavic and East European library community to produce and update an online training FAQ that covers practical problems and solutions arising from in-house digitization projects and services (including observation of standards, archiving requirements, copyright issues, software issues, delivery issues, methods of on-demand conversion of print material to e-formats, etc.)
- Complementing national efforts to establish digital repositories by:
- investigating and supporting the creation of Slavic digital archives on the national level (either at general repositories, or at major Slavic institutions)
- investigating and advocating models of data storage and data sharing at individual institutions.
- Figuring out ways to make sure that Slavic library issues/resources are best used and appropriately integrated into information that goes out to all members of the AAASS via organization’s publications by working to insure that a member of DPS always serves on the AAASS Communications Committee.
- Testing and providing possible alternatives to the current digital presence/organization of B&D and AAASS websites. DPS will explore CMS and Wiki functionality/products, using DPS website or Digital Slavist as a sandbox. The goal is for DPS to come up with a new model, one that is not server-based, not institution-based, not individual-dependent – and one that allows multiple contributors (e.g. changing members of various subcommittees always responsible for particular section of the site and can change it themselves). This would not only standardize the online look of the B&D and AAASS websites, but be a permanent contribution to the way both of these organizations actually function.
- Broadening the membership base and level of participation in Digital Slavist by re-organizing this site into a clearing house for/portal to all things Slavic, digital, and scholarly (not just on the how-to’s of digitization). Explore wiki vs. CMS functionality, add blogs on best practices in teaching (e.g. teaching Slavic studies via YouTube); on resources (e.g. Russian State Library’s dissertation database); and on appropriately scholarly Slavic websites (such as the kind listed in the “In Our Libraries” column of NewsNet). These blogs could in turn provide material for stories in NewsNet which are of larger issues to the field.
Members: If you have any comments or suggestions, please send an email to Dr. Ernest Zitser or Patricia Thurston, the Subcommittee's Chairs, or to any other committee member. For questions about, or any suggested changes to the website, contact Michael Brewer.
- Patricia Thurston (Yale) 2009-2011, Co-Chair
- Erik Zitser (Duke U.) 2007-2011, Co-Chair
- Alena Aissing (University of Florida) 2008-2009
- Anna Rakityanskaya (Harvard U.) 2008-2010
- Jon Guillian (U. of Kansas) 2008-2010