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About the Author
Stan Katz teaches public and international affairs and directs the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies at the Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is a past president of the American Council of Learned Societies, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society for Legal History. He comments frequently on policy issues relating to higher education, particularly liberal education, and on the humanities and social sciences, philanthropy, scholarly relations with Cuba, and the interplay of civil society, constitutionalism, and democracy. And on his beloved Cubs.
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Can Humanities Scholars Collaborate?
Most people, including most university administrators, think that humanities scholars are necessarily, inevitably, loners -– that they work in splendid isolation. They require for support only good libraries, paper for taking notes (well, low-end computers and good access to the Internet) and perhaps some modest research travel funds. Humanists, we are told, work slowly as well as in isolation. They publish in low circulation journals or poorly disseminated books, and do not share much of their work prior to publication.
This stereotype is in comparison to natural scientists (or even social scientists), who are not very dependent upon books and serials, require expensive computing equipment and support, work in groups, and live in a preprint communication world, in which the final form of scholarly communication has mainly an archival function.
Both stereotypes are to a considerable extent reflective of reality, but the humanities version points to areas of genuine concern for anyone who thinks, as I do, that our scholarly practices need to change if we are to take advantage of emerging intellectual opportunities, mostly interdisciplinary, and the potential of enhanced scholarly collaboration and the incredible technological opportunities now available to us.
There are a great many things I could say in favor of modernizing the practices of humanities scholarship, but today I simply want to call attention to the development noted in The Chronicle last week on the remarkable collaboration between the late Roy Rosenzweig’s George Mason University Center for History and New Media (now led by Dan Cohen) and the Internet Archive. The CHNM has developed superb (free and downloadable) software called Zotero to enable scholars to organize their notes, bibliography, online articles, and Internet links so that they are easily searchable and retrievable. This in itself can help to revolutionize the way scholars work. But the additional enhancement is an arrangement with the Internet Archive is to post some or all of this work so that it can be available to other scholars.
For secretive individualists, which is to say old-fashioned humanists, this will sound like an invasion of privacy and an invitation to plagiarism. But to scholars who value accessibility, collaboration, and the early exchange of information and insight -– the future is available. And free on the Internet.
Posted at 03:04:23 PM on December 19, 2007 | All postings by Stan KatzComments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Dear Prof.Katz,
Hello from Asia, hoping this letter reaches you fine. I agree with your idea that only human touch of ideas and imagination can sustain the global economic and governmental destruction towards culture and civilized ways of thinking, often defending the loner intellectuals. May we take this fortunate moment to invite you and friends for an intellectual alliance at Garunar L’Universite Orientale Royale.
regards,
Kyaw Swa Win, commissioner
— Kyaw · Dec 20, 12:18 AM · #
Then there is the following irony:
Trying to “catch up” on the scholarship that has followed from my 1975 book, I find I cannot access journal articles from my home computer without paying for a wide range of internet sources. I am an “independent scholar” and my alumni place(Chicago ) will only allow this private pc. use to its current faculty and students. I may, of course, use institutional resources and travel to do so. This strikes me as bad practice if one wishes to advance the presence of the humanities in the larger society. Ironically , I cannot access my own articles on the net!
Perhaps some of your national organizations might apply itself to this problem. A membership society might be the answer for people without affiliation in higher education. I have already pointed this out to the Modern Languages Association, but movement there tends to be slow: I may be dead before anything moves!
Is this characteristic of the scholarly world in the U.
S.? One would think a more outgoing practice might benefit the institution’s communal standing. Or is one expected to apply for some sort of research grant to pay the cost of subscriptions?
— J. S. Kantrowitz · Dec 20, 02:05 PM · #
Mr. Kantrowitz (comment number 2, I believe) makes a very important point: access to already available information technology and electronic archives is commercially rather than humanistically driven. Only a desire to create profit-value makes us restrict access to electronic archives to large or rich institutions: the individual humanist and the masses at smaller or poorer institutions are excluded in order to create the exclusion required to create the sense of elite value that can then be exploited for profit, which, of course, gratifies the sense of pleasure of the commercially animated, over against the humanistically motivated.
Mr. Kantrowitz’s proposal that large member associations such as MLA provide opportunities for members to have access to electronic databases and archives is, of course, a superb one. However, more than because MLA moves slowly, the proposal, if realized, would disrupt the current means of creating elite value of the databases. If MLA had a real or decent way for individuals to access all the major databases through membership, then some (many?) large universities with “research” pretensions could reasonably consider dropping institutional subscriptions, or otherwise altering the status quo contractual relations governing the use of these databases.
The pleasures of the commercial class prevails, and, like any other class of persons, the class is comprised of many status quo members. The real issue seems to be the need to transform these pleasures. Let us hope that we do not have to count on or wait for the next generation, since I, with Mr. Kantrowitz, want the pleasure of free and open (or at least free and open to those who can manage a membership and perhaps some extra charge in a society such as MLA) use of major databases and archives today, not a day after which Mr. Kantrowitz has died.
— Jesse Swan · Dec 21, 08:41 AM · #
Great article, Stan. At HASTAC (“haystack”: Humanities, Arts, Science and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), we are networking the work of thousands of scholars in the humanities who, in fact, are collaborating with one another. The recent HASTAC/MacArthur Digital Media and Learning Competition, for example, was open only two months and saw over 1000 applications, almost all from complex collaborative teams of scholars not only working together but using new digital tools to enhance their collaborative work and offer those same possibilities to others. We’re in the midst of a seachange. On the other hand, I think humanists have long worked collaboratively on edited collections, on projects, panels, conferences, and many of the things of our profession that haven’t really “counted” as professional achievements in the same way that a single-author article or book counts. So part of the problem might not be the solitary scholar (everyone I know seems frantically, collectively busy these days) but our reward system which has not changed along with a highly collaborative and engaged way that many of us work. Thanks for writing!
— Cathy Davidson · Dec 21, 10:18 AM · #
Zotero is a great example of collaborating for the public good. It’s also a remarkable tool, and making citations sharable (as you can with social bookmarking sites) is a great step forward. Any sense that humanists work alone and in isolation is contradicted, in a way, by cited works. Obviously, collaboration has always been the rule, though it hasn’t required people being in physical proximity.
As for databases and libraries, it is a shame that research tools now available through the Internet are limited because of licenses to those affiliated with the institution – even though being physically present is no longer necessary. (Libraries spend a fortune on these, by the way.) It’s interesting that this is changing in the sciences. PubMed is a fabulous tool for medical research, and it’s free to all. If the president signs the funding bill just passed by congress, it will include a mandate that all research funded by the NIH becomes part of the public record (after a few months of exclusivity for the journals that publish it).
It’s too bad that there is less of a movement to do the same for the “useful Arts.” However, I do encourage authors in the humanities to either retain copyright or to sign agreements with publishers that allow for self-archiving of articles online. If you retain your rights, you needn’t be in the position of not being able to access your own work or share it with other scholars.
— barbara fister · Dec 21, 01:44 PM · #
It’s interesting to see how people at “think tanks,” and those in “policy” fields do often collaborate on publications. It seems to work for them. The examples above—while wonderful ones—seem to exemplify the melding of “content” and “media” or “means”: it will be great to see collaboration on content and content (e.g., in different disciplines of the humanities). But I agree that the rewards system would have to recognize the value of such endeavor. This discussion is a good start. Thanks for initiating it!
— Naomi F. Collins, Ph.D. · Dec 22, 10:23 AM · #
Having installed many of the computer systems that “enable” collaborations, I find myself split. On the one hand, there is a big boost in creativity as new systems lubricate forms of connection hithertofore difficult and expensive if not impossible to establish; on the other hand, that initial big boost in creativity is rapidly followed by a long term overall decline in creativity as familiarity replaces amazed discovery of the novel. Truth is, systems that further only more connection, by not also furthering more and better isolation, reduce as much creativity as they produce. We need systems for better, easier, more thorough, more high quality isolation too.
— Richard Tabor Greene · Dec 23, 04:29 AM · #
Would it require a revolution in the tenure and promotion process of the humanities in order for this vision to become a reality? What would it take to convince history departments that traditionally rely upon the monograph as the measure for tenure to change their ways? Would a co-authored book only count as half a monograph?
— PhDinHistory · Jan 1, 10:16 PM · #