Digitizing projects. In the 9/5/03 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education (A37-38), Brock Read profiles Vernon Burton and his work on RiverWeb, a web-based research collection that "uses primary sources to place the geology and topography of the Mississippi River and its chief flood plain in the context of the region's cultural history" (A37). Making much use of scanners, Burton's team makes available a diverse collection of primary documents about the American Bottom region, near Cahokia. He also teaches a course in new kinds of historical research and assigns students to make web sites about primary documents. The article includes other examples from a range of American universities.

At an institution such as ours, professors would probably be much more likely to launch projects like these if there were clear models available, and perhaps a support group for talking over ideas and problems. We'd need a handful of projects successfully carried out, software tools in place, a set of assignment guidelines appropriate to a variety of disciplines, suggested timelines for assignments, clues about how to publicize a site, a rubric for evaluating, and so forth.

An interview with Burton. Notice also how the RiverWeb site will hold a collection of bookmarks for a reader as she makes her way through the site -- a sort of custom index to the site, though I believe it vanishes when you close the browser at the end of the visit. I suppose you could cut and paste the collection into your word processor and then paste it back on your next visit. It's a suggestive feature, even so. [0 & P]

The turning of the leaves. An article in the Sunday New York Times (Travel, 9/7/03, page 5) about web sites that encourage tourism by posting progress reports on autumn's turning of the leaves. Author Bob Tedeschi provides a link to a University of Illinois Extension site, The Miracle of Fall, that provides, among other things, regional updates on the color change. The site includes a page on the chemistry of turning leaves, a guide to selecting foliage trees for fall color, foliage cams, and other resources.

According to Tedeschi, other good sites include [url=Weather.Com[/url], though it may take a bit of searching to find their page; other sites are much more direct as they provide this resource. Tedeschi's article has several others, including one, Foliage Network, which gathers information from a network of about 500 spotters. I like this collaborative project especially.

These sites embody some of the basic virtues of the web: generosity, creating and sharing new knowledge, making old knowledge more widely available for a general audience, attractive and appropriate graphics, imaginative use of collaboration. I see no reason why a clever teacher and a lively group of students can't make something of use to others that has most or all of these virtues, while they learn about the subject of their particular course.

It's a shame that most student writing vanishes almost as soon as it is written. While you do have to practice writing in order to improve, it is still tempting to feel alienated from the practice when one's audience is so small and so peculiar as a classroom audience can be. [0 & P]

Workplace, continued. Following up on Friday's post about Halley Suitt's Harvard Business Review article on blogging in the workplace, see Rachel Osterman's article in the 9/5/03 E-Commerce Times. She points out the speed with which colleagues can communicate on an internal blog, some of the security risks, and the sales appeal of a good writer who breaks out of P.R. style to achieve an interesting voice. [0 & P]