Scholar's web sites

From: Charles Rhyne (Charles.Rhyne@DIRECTORY.REED.EDU)
Date: Mon Aug 07 2000 - 17:29:05 CDT

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    Message-Id: <200008072241.PAA14010@dns.ccit.arizona.edu>
Date:         Mon, 7 Aug 2000 15:29:05 PDT
From: Charles Rhyne <mailto:Charles.Rhyne@DIRECTORY.REED.EDU>
Subject:      Scholar's web sites
To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU

    <pre> Colleagues,

    This message is addressed especially to college and university faculty, but I hope will be of interest to other IMAGELIB readers also.

    Most of the web is a black hole. This has persuaded many professionals to keep it at arms length, using it for temporar
     messages on list-serves and to access source material posted by research institutes, and major universities, but shunni g the web as an avenue for their own professional publication. Most of us recognize the advantage of the web in making aterial available quickly and to a large, diverse international audience. But the web also has certain long term advant ges for professional disciplines.

    When reading articles in professional journals, faculty and students must often accept the conclusions on faith or, more likely, suspend judgment, because the evidence on which the conclusions are based is too extensive and costly for print ublication. On the web, appendixes of this data, both text and images, can be made available easily and inexpensively. Think of having professional journals available not only in print but with the same articles on the web with full docume tation, both data and images. As many of you know, some professional societies are already publishing separate, scholar y material on their web sites.

    I have recently posted a web site that attempts to take advantage of a few of the web's advantages and I hope may encour ge other professionals to use the web as an avenue for making some of their own research available. I am think especial y of areas of our research that is not destined for print publication, but which would be valuable for faculty and stude ts and others.

    The web site I have recently posted attempts to serve as an example of one type of web site gradually being posted by in ividual scholars. Especially where material is not destined for print publication, such postings would be of value in m ny disciplines. The web site I have posted in an example of a site on which images provide the central content and wher
     they are of sufficient number and quality to serve as evidence, not just as illustration. There are captions and text b t the site is considered a supplement to texts already available in books, where 600 photos are simply too expensive to ublish. The web site was created with faculty and students in mind and requires an efficient internet connection, such a
     those generally available at colleges and universities.

    The site is available at <www.reed.edu/gettyarchitecture>.

    Every photograph is dated (not a common practice but surely desirable for all photographs intended as evidence, whatever the field), and the site includes the only annotated bibliography on its subject, again rare in print publication in spi e of the obvious value.

    Best wishes from, temporarily, sunny Portland.

    Charles S. Rhyne Professor Emeritus, Art History Reed College 3203 S.E. Woodstock Blvd. Portland, OR 97202-8199

    voice 503/771-1112 x7469 fax 503/788-6691 web http://www.reed.edu/~crhyne/

    </pre>

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