About the Compendium
The idea for such a Compendium came from Dr. Geoffrey Rockwell then head of the Humanities Computing Center at McMaster University and currently Associate Professor of Humanities Computing and Multimedia in the Department of Communication Studies and Multimedia. Dr. Rockwell is now the lead designer of the Compendium. Based on his ideas, the Compendium was included in the original application to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada as the principal means for the project team to make the results of its work available in an accessible, interesting way to the general public.
In this regard, our thinking about the Compendium was influenced, in part, by Arjun Appadurai's (2000) discussion of globalization and the research imagination. He pointed out that activists and the general public, particularly in developing countries, are alienated from the vocabulary used by what he called "the university-policy nexus" to describe global problems, projects and policies. He called for a "new architecture for producing and sharing knowledge about globalization [which] could provide the foundations of a pedagogy that closes this gap and helps to democratise the flow of knowledge about globalization itself" (Ibid., 17). The Compendium is thus our vehicle to globalize the knowledge we have gained about the complex relationships between globalization and autonomy."
Technical Infrastructure
With the funding of the project, Professor Rockwell together with his colleague, Dr. Andrew Mactavish, assumed responsibility for designing the infrastructure for the publication. The objective was to come up with a structure that would permit us to deliver the contents of the Compendium in the various formats mentioned in the application. We were also interested in a design that met the highest standards available for representing online research, that permitted us maximal opportunities for expressing our work, and that minimized the possibility of obsolescence in the short and medium terms.
To these ends, we became a member of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), which began as a research effort cooperatively organized by three scholarly societies (the Association for Computers and the Humanities, the Association for Computational Linguistics, and the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing). It was funded initially by substantial research grants from the US National Endowment for the Humanities, the European Union, SSHRCC, the Mellon Foundation, and others. Starting in 1987, the TEI had developed detailed guidelines for "the encoding of all kinds of textual material of all kinds in all languages from all times." In 2000, responsibility for managing and continuing to develop these standards was given over to a non-profit corporation, the TEI Consortium.
Following these guidelines, Professors Rockwell and Mactavish, working with Alex Stevens and Lian Yan, a programmer with the TAPoR Project developed Document Type Definitions or DTDs for the various component parts of the Compendium from the TEI Guidelines, P4. All Compendium documents were to be coded in TEI-conformant Extensible Markup Language or (XML), a language designed to describe data rather than to display data, the function of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this regard, they were advised early on in the process by Professor Stephen Ramsay, a specialist in humanities computing from the University of Georgia. In January 2005, the DTDs for the Compendium were reviewed by Julia Flanders, Associate Director for Textbase Development at Computing and Information Services of Brown University. This review permitted us to finalize the DTDs and to move toward publication of the Compendium.
Structure of the Compendium
A. Research Summaries
Research Summaries are a tool to make the findings of our research available in digest form to a wide audience. Each one describes the nature of the research in question, its importance, how the research was carried out, the main findings, and the implications of those findings for globalization and autonomy.
B. Glossary
The glossary contains brief articles that provide key information on important persons, organizations, events, places, and concepts. These articles provide background for the research summaries in the Compendium, while also offering an encyclopedia of information on globalization and autonomy.
C. Bibliography
This searchable database provides a compilation of all the bibliographical items utilized by researchers in the project in the academic volumes plus collections of other items on globalization and autonomy compiled by team researchers. As such, it is a comprehensive database of writing on globalization and autonomy issues.
D. Research Articles
Designed for those interested in more technical issues examined in an academic way, these articles address globalization and autonomy relationships and questions that are not covered in the academic volumes published by UBC Press.
E. Position Papers
Position Papers are a tool for discussing aspects of our research on globalization and autonomy that will be of interest to a broad and general public. They may offer a commentary on a contemporary issue related to globalization and autonomy being debated and discussed in various parts of the world, a review of a popular book on globalization and autonomy issues, or a discussion of a technological innovation or an historical event important for understanding a contemporary issue or problem.
Notable Properties of the Compendium
The Compendium has several characteristics that will enhance its credibility and its potential to address the objectives for which it is being created.
A. Peer Review
Every research and glossary article is peer reviewed in a double blind process. Where possible, reviewers are chosen from a discipline other than that of the author of the article. The peer review process is run by the Academic Editors of the project.
In addition, in the Memorandum of Agreement that the project has signed with the University of British Columbia Press, the Compendium will be peer-reviewed as an entity in its own right in conjunction with the academic volumes of the project. This review will contain two components. First, the synergy between the chapters in the academic volumes and the research summaries (and accompanying glossary terms) in the Compendium will be evaluated. Second, the technical workings and design of the Compendium based on the TEI guidelines will be reviewed and evaluated.
B. High and Low Bandwidth Versions
Given our stated objective to work toward the globalization of our own knowledge of globalization and autonomy, we have designed a website that will permit the delivery of the publication to those with only low bandwidth Internet access. These features will be built into both the overall design of the website and the way in which parts of the publication can be viewed and downloaded.
C. Dynamic Linkages
The research summaries, research articles, and position papers are dynamically linked to the glossary articles and to the bibliographic database. For example, if a research summary, article, position paper, or a glossary article makes reference to the key concept of "diaspora," the reader will be able to click on the term and the glossary article will appear in a separate window. Similarly, bibliographical references in research articles, position papers, and glossary articles will be linked to the bibliographical database.
D. Oversight and Management
The design and development team of the Compendium includes:
Geoffrey Rockwell: Compendium Project Manager and Lead Designer
www.geoffreyrockwell.com
Andrew Mactavish: Assistant Designer
Lian Yan: Programmer
William Coleman: Academic Editor
Nancy Johnson: Academic Editor
Rebecca Sandiford: Managing Editor
(January 1, 2004 - September 2005)
Audrey Carr: Usability Study and Web Design
Matt Patey: Student Assistant
Andrew MacDonald: Student Assistant
Jeremy Greenspan: Student Assistant
Kate MacKeracher: Student Assistant
Joanna Dacko: Graphic and Web Design
Alex Stevens: Initial Web and XML Design
Julia Flanders: Consultant
Stephen Ramsay: Consultant
Works Cited
Appadurai, Arjun. 2000. Grassroots globalization and the research imagination. Public Culture 12(1):1-19.