The Internet as a Venue for Scholarly Interaction with the Public:
discussion points for H-German

In my contribution to the Oct. 9, 2004 GSA roundtable on intellectual
exchange in virtual space I will focus on the internet. Although film,
television and other news media reach mass audiences, they tend to be
more ephemeral and provide less opportunity for exchange--unless they
are archived on the internet. Even reviews of research in scholarly
journals have much greater potential for reaching a broader audience
when they are published on the internet.

I think scholars should make much more explicit and intentional use of
the internet in order to foster public knowledge of their research
results. I see three main ways this can happen:

1. We can publish our research (and our teaching, and even our students'
research) on the internet in appropriate formats. (These include:
"chunking," with clear source and publication information, enlivened by
graphics, with intuitive navigation, and being easily printable.)

See example web sites:
"German Propaganda Archive" http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/
by Randall Bytwerk, Professor of Communication Arts and Sciences, Calvin
College

"Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African"
http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/
Brycchan Carey, Lecturer in English Literature, Kingston University, UK

2. We can assess, on the internet, materials already available there, by:
a) participating in on-line forums (esp. those that are archived, like
H-German);
b) utilizing customer review features on sites like amazon.com, and
c) having annotated links on our own research pages.

This latter point is especially crucial, since search engines--the
primary means most people use to access information on the internet--use
links to rank pages. We need to transcend and "re-rank" search results,
so that over time search engines will "come into line."

3. We can attend to public inquiries about research we have published on
the internet. This would include:
a) monitoring which of our pages are accessed and how they were found
(what search terms, links from which pages).

· A student project about "Eva Braun" is one of my department's most
frequent "entry pages": see "final student projects" at
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/classes/33d/index.html, and
August user statistics at:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/stats/usage_200408.html#TOPENTRY.

b) responding to e-mail either personally or by making the requested
information available.

· Origin of Martin Niemöller's quotation "First they came for the
Communists…"
E-mail inquiries prompted me to create the page, which has evolved into
an on-line research project:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/niem.htm

· Contrast that with: Did the Nazis use the body fat of murdered Jews to
make soap?
(subject of a GSA talk I'll comment on--no reliable information on the web)


Harold Marcuse, UCSB

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