Faculty of Arts and Design
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Item The challenge of designing a collaborative reference source for Southern African Literature(Taylor & Francis, 2012-10-08) Stewart, Graham Douglas JamesFinding the right balance between editorial control and the widest possible participation by contributors is a critical challenge for the editors of the ESAACH Wiki. The Wiki is the online collaborative reference repository of the Encyclopaedia of South African Arts, Culture and Heritage (ESAACH). The Verbal Arts section of the ESAACH Wiki was developed in the first phase of the project, and now comprises an extensive set of reference entries, compiled over a twelve year period. With its roots in a Southern African literary history project started in the 1990s, over four thousand entries have now been published on the Wiki, with the intention of utilising commons-based peer production to continue its development as a one-stop reference website of Southern African literature. User analysis shows that the ESAACH Wiki is extensively searched by Internet users looking for information on Southern African literature. This article considers how best to open up the resource to a wider group of contributors. Participation may range from a traditional print editorial model at one extreme to an open, un- moderated model at the other. Selected South African literary and biographical reference sources were compared to determine the most appropriate guidelines for an ESAACH entry.Item Tribe of colours - reclaiming identity via the Web(Faculty of Arts and Design and Art for Humanity, Durban University of Technology, 2010) Stewart, Graham Douglas James; McNulty, NiallNow in the second year of its development, the Encyclopaedia of South African Arts, Culture and Heritage (ESAACH) is both traditional encyclopaedia and hypertext web. Published volumes will emerge from the collaborative writing space provided within the wiki database. “You and I a tribe of colours” - by tapping into the collaborative spirit of social networking, ESAACH is emerging as a communal knowledge base that is far more than the sum of its parts. ESAACH is intended as a work of reclamation scholarship to address the dearth of reference material in South African arts, culture and heritage studies, and flights a number of concepts of importance in knowledge production for social transformation - notions that represent a fundamental shift in perspective: “panoramic, inclusive, democratic, and non-canonical”. An encyclopaedia, by its very nature, can never be complete. An online encyclopaedia never needs to be complete. Users can continually add entries or edit existing ones while an open-source community, (e.g. Media wiki) is continually improving and developing the management framework. An active community that has bought into ownership of the encyclopaedia, and has an interest in maintaining and growing its content, ensures its sustainability. This paper reports on work in progress, outlining the founding principles of the encyclopaedia and presenting the current state of the development and usage of the Verbal Arts section of the wiki. Later phases of the project include the Performing Arts, Visual Arts and Heritage.Item Mirage of us. A reflection on the role of the Web in widening access to references on Southern African arts, culture and heritage(Tydskrif Vir Letterkunde, 2010) Stewart, Graham Douglas JamesThis article outlines the broad aims of the Encyclopaedia of South African Arts, Culture and Heritage (ESAACH) Project then goes on to consider the ESAACH Website as a networked resource that speaks to the project’s vision of accessibility and participation. The wiki architecture is highly accessible to users and contributors alike. In addition to its robust structure as a reference work, a wiki encyclopaedia facilitates networked social collaboration uniquely suited to the co-operative principles of the project. Subject area specialists will exercise editorial control over the content of the wiki, and work with the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors and peer reviewers to assess contributions, recommend editorial corrections, and select articles, essays and entries for inclusion in the printed volumes of the encyclopaedia. The paper surveys existing Web-based reference sources on Southern African literature, arts and culture; provides an account of the evolution of the Verbal Arts section of the ESAACH wiki; and discusses the prototype ESAACH wiki.