Evaluating Digital Work for Tenure and Promotion: A Workshop for Evaluators and Candidates at the 2012 MLA Convention
Workshop Leaders: Alison Byerly, Middlebury Coll.; Stephen Olsen, MLA; Katherine A. Rowe, Bryn Mawr Coll.; Susan Schreibman, Trinity Coll. Dublin; Victoria E. Szabo, Duke Univ.
This three-hour workshop offered facilitated discussion of a variety of digital projects in language and literature, focussing on case studies of actual digital projects. Our goal was to propose effective strategies for documenting, presenting, and evaluating a range of scholarly work with digital media, including the building of new scholarly infrastructure as well as the undertaking of new forms of scholarly investigation and communication. The workshop was limited to thirty participants and addressed the concerns of both members of review committees and of candidates coming up for review. A report on the workshop was published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Digital projects presented and discussed at the workshop as case studies:
- Introductory slides (EvaluatingDigitalScholarship2012.pdf)
- “The Hundredth Psalm to the Tune of ‘Green Sleeves’: Digital Approaches to Shakespeare’s Language of Genre” (description)
http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/mcpress/ShakespeareQuarterly_NewMedia/ - “DocuScope: Computer-aided Rhetorical Analysis” (description)
http://www.cmu.edu/hss/english/research/docuscope.html - “Just TV” (description)
http://justtv.wordpress.com/ - “In Transition: Selected Poems by the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven” (description)
http://www.lib.umd.edu/digital/transition/ - “Learning from YouTube (description)
http://vectors.usc.edu/projects/learningfromyoutube/
Digital work by workshop participants presented for discussion:
- The Swinburne Project, John A. Walsh, Indiana U
http://swinburnearchive.indiana.edu/swinburne/www/swinburne/ - Commons in a Box, Matthew Gold, NY City C of Technology
http://news.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2011/11/22/the-cuny-academic-commons-announces-the-commons-in-a-box-project/ - NANO: New American Notes Online, Sean Scanlan, NY City C of Technology
http://nanocrit.com/~nanocrit/
Resources for Evaluating and Supporting Work in Digital Media
Statements and Guidelines
- MLA Guidelines for Evaluating Work with Digital Media in the Modern Languages
http://www.mla.org/guidelines_evaluation_digital - Draft “Guidelines for Promotion and Tenure Committees in Judging Digital Work” drafted at the 2011 NINES/NEH Summer Institute on Evaluating Digital Scholarship
http://institutes.nines.org/docs/2011-documents/guidelines-for-promotion-and-tenure-committees-in-judging-digital-work/ - MLA Statement on Publication in Electronic Journals
http://www.mla.org/statement_on_publica - MLA Guidelines for Institutional Support of and Access to IT for Faculty Members and Students
http://www.mla.org/it_support - Special Considerations for Language and Literature: The AAUP Statement on Distance Education
http://www.mla.org/statement_aaup_distance_ed - MLA Minimal Guidelines for Authors of Web Pages
http://www.mla.org/web_guidelines - ADFL Policy Statement: “Evaluation of Nontraditional Fields”
http://www.adfl.org/resources/resources_guidelines.htm#evaluation
Reports and other Resources
- Profession 2011 features a special section on evaluating digital scholarship
http://www.mlajournals.org - Report of the MLA Task Force on Evaluating Scholarship for Tenure and Promotion
http://www.mla.org/tenure_promotion (see especially pp 11-12, 39-44) - How to Evaluate Digital Scholarship by Todd Presner, Director of the UCLA Center for Digital Humanities
http://idhmc.tamu.edu/commentpress/digital-scholarship/ - Report from the Ad Hoc Committee on the Future of Scholarly Publishing
http://www.mla.org/issues_scholarly_pub - Guiding Questions for Vetters of Scholarly Editions (see section on Electronic Editions)
http://www.mla.org/cse_guidelines#d0e354 - ACLS Report on Cyberinfrastructure for Humanities and Social Sciences
http://www.acls.org/uploadedFiles/Publications/Programs/Our_Cultural_Commonwealth.pdf - Anthologize.org A tool for creating e-books out of blog posts
http://www.anthologize.org