Talk:Types of Digital Work
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We welcome additions and input to this page, and it would be great if you discuss any editing that you do here. Please leave your name.
Not so much an edit of the content as a suggestion for additional content:
While I do digital work--in a very real sense most of my day is spent working with, showing people how to use, or creating digital content, this work is not necessarily scholarly in the usual or, for that matter, unusual sense but is either a part of my primary duties (being a reference librarian) or service, For example, http://www.wiu.edu/users/libtheme/wort/wort.html is a web page I am making for library --still in progress--one of many such pages. http://ww w.wiu.edu/users/libtheme/fastfood2/ffn2home/ is project I did to support the Freshman Summer Reading program a couple of years back.
While the current page does respectfully address teaching, we ought to have a stronger section dealing with digital work as it relates to one's primary duty/assignment (often teaching in smaller schools (like mine)) and also service--which the page does not address at all. Some institutions, and I would argue many institutions, focus more on teaching, less on research. We should acknowledge that in such places tenure is not only given for scholarship--and at my institution ***cannot*** be gotten **only** for scholarship (per our contract)--but for (digital) teaching and (digital) service, as well.
Social Networks
I come from the library world, and new types of works are always being discussed, since its our bread and butter. I am wondering about works done on Social Networks such as Facebook or HASTAC website or even this Wiki. What actually constitutes a contribution to scholarship? Is it comments no matter the size? Is it pictures? Is it running the actual page? I am leading towards running the page(s). Also how to define a scholarly Social Network page vs. a hobby page? I would assume it would follow closely the path of Blogs since they are currently a more acceptable level of communication.
Guidelines for Editing
The purpose of this section is to explain my rationale for editing as was requested in the instructions. I would like to start out by saying I am absolutely biased about this undertaking, in the sense that it will only be possible to do something like this if we start out with a sense of mutual respect for what we do professionally. I heavily edited the first paragraph on digital publications because I thought the tone was not appropriate to encourage meaningful and thoughtful discussion. The opening sentence of the paragraph, for example, stated that digital publications were the least controversial type of digital work. This implies: a) that all digital work is somehow controversial, digital publications being "the least" controversial; and b) that we are not starting a comparison on a fair basis but rather an uninformed opinion that potentially offends colleagues gratuitously. I would like to reiterate I am biased because digital work amounts to 100% of what I do. I hope future contributions to this wiki will change the unfortunate tone with which this started.
