Updated for THATCamp CHNM session on Sat June 8th, 2013, 11am – 12:30pm

Here’s the deal: I’ll teach two key stages of creating a book with open-source WordPress tools, and in turn, will ask participants to post an idea or comment on our open-access book-in-progress, Web Writing: Why & How for Teaching & Learning, sponsored by Trinity College (CT). Sign up to receive free temporary admin account for hands-on PressBooks tutorial.

See demonstration of two tools in WordPress workflow: CommentPressBooks.trinfocafe.org

• CommentPress for developmental editing of draft texts at book, page, and paragraph-level
• PressBooks for publishing across multiple formats (web, PDF, Kindle and ePub readers)

Both tools can run on self-hosted WordPress sites (not WordPress.com), see basics here

See how it works page for system requirements, how to install back-end, and comparisons

Hands-on tutorial with PressBooks temp admin accounts to upload content & create your own book

What works, and what could be improved, with PressBooks? Login & share thoughts on notepad

How can authors and publishers work together to use these tools? See Anvil Academic example

Invitation: shape direction of Web Writing book by sharing essay idea or commenting on others

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Original session proposal, June 5th: This scholarly communication session idea expands on Sarah Werner’s proposal on building a repository of publishing contracts, and Joan Troyano’s suggestion to brainstorm new ways to publish humanities scholarship. Can we make a deal to learn from one another? In the spirit of legendary game show host Monty Hall, choose one of these doors to see what you can win at this session:

Door #1: Negotiating with Publishers about Paywalls and Open Access: I have more questions than answers on this topic, and would love to learn more from others’ experiences (see Sarah Werner, Working with a Contributor’s Contract). But in my view, scholars need better negotiating skills as publishers  continue to reposition themselves with respect to the web, and that means (1) understand the motivations of other parties and (2) know your next best option than the one you’re facing at that particular moment. A THATCamp discussion with rich examples might benefit from by my public dialogues with open-access publishers Anvil Academic and my recent exchange with Michigan Publishing/University of Michigan Press, in addition to correspondence, contracts, and reflections in the “how this book evolved” section of Writing History in the Digital Age (co-edited with Kristen Nawrotzki).

Door #2: Hands-on Tutorial with PressBooks: Looking for better digital publishing tools? Hugh McGuire and colleagues recently released the open-source PressBooks plugin for WordPress Multisite, which transforms your content into polished publications for multiple readers: PDF for print, web-book for online reading, Mobi for Kindle, ePUB for iBooks, Nook, etc. My colleagues Carlos Espinosa (Trinfo Cafe) and Korey Jackson (Anvil Academic) and I created a WordPress-based publishing workflow demonstration site at CommentPressBooks.trinfocafe.org. If THATCampers desire hands-on access, I can instantly create sub-site admin accounts and a 5-minute tutorial on creating your own publication in PressBooks, to compare with related tools such as Anthologize.

Door #3: Take a chance on the Mystery Door* (It’s a surprise, just like the game show. Read more about the related Monty Hall Problem.)

So what’s the deal? If you choose any of the doors above, then you agree to post a comment on a book-in-progress, Web Writing: Why & How for Liberal Arts Teaching and Learning. This freely accessible, open peer-review volume explores why & how faculty and students use web-based authoring, annotating, and publishing tools in the liberal arts. My editorial team and I are particularly interested in works that blend the “why & how” by making effective use of the open web platform to blend thoughtful insights with illustrative examples (including links, screenshots, images, etc.). The book’s sponsor, the Center for Teaching and Learning at Trinity College, will award $300 subventions to 5 outstanding proposals, with preference given to authors in greater financial need (e.g. students or faculty not in full-time, tenure-track positions). If you’re a prospective contributor, or just an interested reader, post a comment on our Call for Ideas & Essay Proposals page before June 15th. Full drafts are not due until August 15th, 2013. Learn about our editorial process and timeline for the Fall 2013 open peer review and freely-accessible digital publication, possibly with a scholarly press. See more at WebWriting.trincoll.edu

*Void where prohibited by law. Gambling is not necessarily endorsed by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History & New Media, except for spending ridiculous numbers of hours to prepare and submit grant proposals that have very long odds of being funded.

This is a call for help and contributions for a project that (if I get some collaborators) might be part of the maker challenge or might be something that lays the groundwork for a future project.

One of the tricky things about agreeing to and negotiating contracts for publishing something is an unfamiliarity with the options available. Unless you’ve done a lot of publishing, you might not have a sense even of what an author’s contract looks like. Even if you have published a lot, you might not know what a specific publisher offers—are you going to agree to write a contribution to a book only to discover that the publisher demands that you sign over your copyright and isn’t willing to negotiate? (That’s not a hypothetical example, by the way.) I’ve written about negotiating a new contributor’s contract; my experience of doing that and sharing the process suggests there’s a real hunger for advice on what contracts look like and what our options are for publishing.

What I’d like to see is a site where people can upload and share their contracts. There are possibly legal issues to sort through—I’m pretty sure that most contracts aren’t proprietary and therefore we can share them publicly, but I’m also pretty sure that most publishers might not like that. There are technical issues to sort through—what sort of platform is best for a project like this, allowing for public uploads of documents and controlled options for tagging and searching? And there are sustainability issues—this might be a project that is best run by an organization rather than an individual.

I’d love it if there were some THATCampers who wanted to think through these issues with me and to build a prototype of what it might look like. And I’d really love it if there were THATCampers who would be willing to contribute their contracts to it. (If you do contribute your contract, you probably want to black out your name and your publication’s name, but you’ll need to leave the publisher’s name visible.) If you want to contribute your contract, you can leave a link to it below or email it to me (<a href=”mailto:sarah.werner@gmail.com“>sarah.werner at gmail.com</a>)

The graphical world wide web has now been in existence for  over 20 years. Some of the earliest digital humanities sites are almost as old. While some of these sites are tied to people or organizations who update them in one form or another, many are not as funding ran out or creators moved on. We can all think of sites that we’ve run across that are, at a minimum, not up to today’s visual and user experience expectations, and at worst, are simple unusable by some or even all of today’s users.

Since we know that many old sites don’t fade away (though they might blink in and out), but linger on virtually forever (unless they were on GeoCities), what might we do with some of these abandoned or no-longer-funded projects going forward beyond just hoping that the Internet Archive takes some snapshots of them?  How might we build on the work that has already been done, and do so in a way that is more than just an aesthetic facelift for these sites? Is it worth considering ways that we might make such previous work more accessible (both in terms of accommodations and in terms of something that more people would want to use) and usable?

I proposed a session at THATCamp AHA2012 on this topic where we began to list the issues involved.  This time, however, I’m proposing a session where we come up with a design plan for a team that would work on rescuing (updating) older digital humanities sites, and a specific list of skill sets and tools that would be needed to do so. [In the latter category, I know questions of copyright/permissions are a substantial issue to resolve, as are those relating to the technical aspects of how the material was stored and presented, and how a site might be maintained going forward.]

Ideally, the session would bring together people interested in the project, would identify some potential test cases, and even discuss potential grants or other funding sources.

Anyone else interested in designing a digital SWAT team for rescuing old sites?