[open-humanities] introduction and two projects

[Norma Leistiko]

David, I am so impressed with your mission. I am mostly a public librarian and answer all kinds of reference questions but do best with the sciences, but have a growing appreciation for linguistics.  I am going to continue looking through your site...just dipped in today.

Norma Leistiko
normaleistiko at me.com
Reference Librarian, on-call in
Portland Oregon area







On Jan 17, 2012, at 11:36 AM, David Clark wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> My name is David Clark, and I just joined the Open Humanities mailing list. I live in the US, in Arizona; I was introduced to the Open Knowledge Foundation through the Public Domain Review.
> 
> Over many years of studying and teaching English language and literature, I've developed some deep interests in Internet reference resources, uses of public domain materials, and ways that both (Internet references and the public domain) could be used to improve education (especially, given my own experience, English education -- that is, grammar & accessible linguistics, rhetoric, literature, and composition -- but also philosophy, history, etc.). Right now I'm trying to figure out how I might devote more time to this kind of work, and maybe even find a career that's somehow related.
> 
> I look forward to to getting involved with ongoing OFKN projects. I also have a couple of my own that I'd like to throw into the mix.
> 
> I just posted to the Incubator an idea for a Public Domain Reader that would also be a dynamic anthology-creation tool. Please take a look and share your thoughts if you have the chance.
> 
> I have another project already in the works, and I would appreciate any input you have on it, as well. The site's called deCopia. If you have a chance, please click through it and you should see what it's about. Essentially, it's an online database that names, describes, and thoroughly exemplifies patterns of syntax and style, as classified by the terminology of grammar, rhetoric, and literary studies. There is a lot of potential in this project, I think, as a tool for learners, teachers, writers, and researchers; as an effort to make scholarship in these fields (ancient and modern) accessible, meaningful, and useful to the public; as a treasury of English style; and as a unique site where we interact with language and literature in a way that is new and strange to most people -- but should not be. I've written up more in-depth descriptions of the site's purposes and potential on the homepage.
> 
> I knew absolutely nothing about web development a year ago. I've been trying to learn, and this is the first site I've built from the ground up (I wanted more functionality and more control than seemed available to me in relatively-codeless CMS's like Wordpress and Drupal); also, I'm still working more-than-full-time as a teacher -- so what you see now is just an early stage of the project. It could become a lot more. Here are a few future possibilities:
> 
> * Improved site construction could make it easier for people without any background to browse terms and examples and to learn.
> * There could be a blog featuring a specific grammatical, rhetorical, or literary pattern every week or so.
> * There ought to be a much better way for people to plug in their own passages and their own tags, to actively improve and expand the content.
> * There could be user accounts, allowing people to list and group, share and comment on passages and terms (much like the social networking aspects of the dictionary-site Wordnik).
> * The terminological entries (terms, definitions, explanations), which are now quite incomplete, could be researched and improved, incorporating classical and contemporary scholarship.
> * With added content, the site could even become a kind of online grammar textbook; it wouldn't take much to craft an online grammar textbook significantly better (more complete, flexible, useful, and up-to-date with modern linguistics) than any I've seen so far, and better suited to creative grammar, rather than just corrective grammar.
> * Since seeing all those terms at once might be overwhelming to students, teachers could create custom databases for their classes, so that their students would access the site through their class ID and the terminology would be limited to what they're learning.
> 
> There's a start. All those possibilities aside, I hope the site speaks for itself, at least a little, and maybe you'll understand what I'm trying to do.
> 
> Concerning either project, I'm eager to talk about any ideas you have, or listen to suggestions about how to get some support so that the sites could really work.
> 
> Sincerely,
> David Clark
> _______________________________________________
> open-humanities mailing list
> open-humanities at lists.okfn.org
> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-humanities

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