a) this is a great idea! Do it! All scholarship should be open access and I can't recommend it highly enough for both the moral reasons and for the attention it brings to a work.
b) scholarly works can be tricky... if this is a book intended for scholars, don't expect anyone to do a lot of wiki updating (also see Yochai Benkler's experiment in this respect at www.benkler.org). Scholars already spend all their time freely editing, reading, re-reading, teaching, arguing and reviewing each other's works, so they are less likely to do so on a blog or wiki associated with the book. Scholars will eventually migrate to these platforms, but it will take longer than most of the rest of the world. Welcome to the cutting edge (i.e. what was cutting edge 7 years ago ;) ) b.2) but if its for students or film fans, it could be a fantastic resource, and you should definitely take all the advice proferred here and try to build community around the book. Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody has lots of good practical advice on this front. c) re: permissions, you probably have permissions for print, but not for digital re-distribution. if they are primarily film stills, claiming fair use is the best option. If they are film clips, or the whole film, then you may have a hard time on your hands. But stills analyzed by a film scholar is, to my mind, a clear case of fair use. As Jamie Boyle once explained fair use: "If you don't use it, it falls off." So exercise your fair use rights, in whichever jurisdiction! d) re: formats. I just had my book SISU'd: http://twobits.net/2008/10/15/oh-wow-sisu-rocks-two-bits/ It looks like a great tool, and it allows you to automagically generate all the other formats you might want, like pdf, which is equivalent to the binary... you want to make the source available as well. ck On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 09:43:13PM +0530, Nishant Shah wrote: > On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 12:16 PM, Udhay Shankar N <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > I have some thoughts around this, but am in the middle of a conference > > (in a break right now) so I'll just throw out this list of links for > > now: > > > Hi Udhay, I hope the conference went well. I would definitely want to hear > more of your ideas (maybe we can meet up for a coffee or something and I can > pick your brains :) ) and see what you might have to offer. The few times we > have talked, you have always given me new ways of looking at things and > perspectives which sometimes, I might not have encountered before. If you > have the time, maybe you can also meet up Ashish and have a conversation > there. > > > > > Thoughts about publishing and content: > > > > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html<http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/fosblog.html> > > http://playfullibrarian.blogspot.com/ > > http://thedigitalist.net/ > > > > I am familiar with the playfulllibrarian and the digitallist. But thanks for > bringing them up again. I am going to include them in my bibliography for > ashish to read. I will check out fosblog tonight and see what it has to > offer. > > > > > Actual acts of commission: > > > > http://craphound.com/content/ > > http://twobits.net/ > > > > Thanks for actually pointing out a couple of instances. I think this might > help Ashish and me the most in trying to figure out what it is that we are > grappling with. Because like all good customers, we are not particularly > sure about what it is that we want to do, but we are definitely sure about > what we don't want to do :) > > > > > Both Cory Doctorow and Chris Kelty are on silk. I hope they chime in > > on this thread. Additionally, maybe Gautam has some thoughts to share. > > > I am also hoping that Cory and Chris will have suggestions to make. They > have already made interventions in their own work about the digital book or > what it means to have a book online... and I would like to see if I can get > some advice there. Gautam... this is where we might be able to find ideas > for collaboration and working together institutionally :) > > > > > The theme I'd suggest is to take advantage of the inherently > > many-to-many nature of the medium to make the book a *conversation* > > rather than a discourse. > > > > http://www.cluetrain.com/ > > > > This is a question that we are trying to grapple with. Ashish, for example, > had an idea of developing a discussion based analysis and conditions of > multiple authorship. But we are still vague about it and it will take time > in trying to understand and concretise the idea. > > > > > Apologies if this is a rehash. > > > > Udhay > > -- > > ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com)) > > > > cheers > Nishant > > > -- > Nishant Shah > Doctoral Candidate, CSCS, Bangalore. > Director (Research), Centre for Internet and Society,( www.cis-india.org ) > Asia Awards Fellow, 2008-09 > # 0-9740074884 >
