[Members] Call for submissions -- SIGCIS Member Contributions series

Mon Jul 26 15:00:37 PDT 2010

Hello Julie (and the other SIGCIS members),

SIGCIS has never adopted a language policy for any of the relevant SIGCIS
areas (email list, member contributions, syllabus repository, etc).

We are committed to being a truly international group, including our system
of regional Vice Chairs. Also most histories of computing outside the US are
written in languages other than English - even though science is
increasingly published in English the same is not true for history. So
there's a strong argument to be inclusive.

On the other hand pretty much everything we have done so far has been in
English, which is the de facto international academic language. (I write
this with particular apologies to my French friends). A resource page full
of items titled in English, Danish, German, French, Japanese, Russian, etc.
would be confusing for everyone.

So your suggestion that we include non-English language items in the member
contributions area together with English language abstracts seems like a
good one. We would also need two versions of the title: in English and in
the original language. This avoids discriminating against other languages,
while still allowing an easy overview of the contents of the repository to
anyone able to read English.

Tom

From: julie hugsted [mailto:jhugsted at gmail.com] 
Sent: Monday, July 26, 2010 4:20 AM
To: Thomas Haigh
Cc: members at sigcis.org
Subject: Re: [Members] Call for submissions -- SIGCIS Member Contributions
series

I am always happy to recieve these very including invitations to
contributions. - Thank you, Tom.

Since I have still not contributed with any texts, I have wondered why not -
and I have wondered if others might have the same reasons not to contribute.

I experience that SIGCIS as community, as well as the individual members
that I have had contact with, are very open and appreciate new work, new
perspectives and not least new members. Therefore I conclude, that the
reason is not group dynamic.

Nevertheless, I have still not contributed with any texts, and for me, the
reason is lingual. - I am currently working on my first text in English on
the matters of computer history. Apart from this I have written my masters
thesis that is in Danish. I work on translation from time to time, but it
takes much time that I currently do not have - or choose to have for
translations when the alternative is creating new work.

I have thought of publishing my thesis on a personal website that I am
working on, but there is no guarantee that a Dane (or a Norwegian or Swede
that might understand written Danish) would find this personal site. I know
that many SIGCIS members have personal websites with texts in their mother
tongue - I appreciate this, but it takes much time and effort to track down
all open documents from all SIGCIS members that write in different sorts of
languages. - I could also imagine that some works simply stay at home in the
desk drawer because it can seem futile to create a website if you only have
a few texts and they are in your mother tongue. 

Why I write this? I think that others might also have done some good work in
their mother tongue and for one or more reasons have not translated it. I
believe that time and lingual abbilities are some of the major reasons.
Since their is no way of creating time or making everyone translating
everything at once, I suggest to make a part of the SIGCIS page for
non-English member contributions, perhaps with an English abstract.

In this way I believe

 - We ensure that these works are shared among people who know the same
languages.

 - It will strenthen the local communties of computer historians

 - Positive responses on the works might motivate authors to translate their
work

 - It would be possible to select works that the local communties will
translate in cooperation with each other - or try to raise money for
translations

All these things are easier to do together, when you have a community, when
you have a group. Even if you do not understand everything that everyone
else write. 

Well, that was some ideas from me - I have no complaints about the way
SIGCIS work, I have just been wondering about ways to make good even better
in a way that I view as practical, easy and reasonable. It can seem as if I
problematize something rather small, but I believe that creating a part of
the SIGCIS page for non-English member contributions might help us preserve
and share work that might otherwise be forgotten/dissappear. 

Let me know what you think,

All the best

Julie

2010/7/22 Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org>

The Special Interest Group for Computing, Information, and Society (SIGCIS)
serves as a foundation for the community development efforts within the
history of computing. The discipline as a whole is enriched when scholars
share their work with their colleagues.  In aid of this goal, SIGCIS invites
members to submit their written work to the Member Contributions section of
the site.
The Member Contributions area is intended to be a place for historians of
computing to post work that does not fit into traditional categories such as
the book or published journal article. Technical report series and similar
online venues are common in the sciences but rare in historical disciplines.

Member Contributions could include the following:

. Conference presentations that are not destined for publication in their
current form, but you feel merit broader consideration.
. Works in progress, such as the drafts of book chapters or articles.
. Material too lengthy or detailed to be included within a journal
publication, such as one finds in traditional technical report series.
. Masters' or Ph.D. theses.
. Review essays, reports on conferences or exhibitions, etc.

Though not peer reviewed, Member Contributions should meet normal academic
standards for rigor and factual accuracy.

SIGCIS does not claim copyright over these items and will not attempt to
restrict subsequent publication of this material elsewhere. However, please
do not submit works to which you no longer hold the copyright (e.g. articles
published in journals) without permission of the copyright holder.

If you have material you would like to be included in the Member
Contributions series on the SIGCIS website please contact the SIGCIS
Secretary using the email address secretary at sigcis.org. The preferred
submission format is an Adobe PDF file. Include an abstract of no more than
200 words. Accepted submissions will receive a serial number in the format
SIGCIS_MC_1234 and will be added to the SIGCIS website.

_______________________________________________
Members mailing list
Members at sigcis.org
http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/attachments/20100726/cfa06cdc/attachment-0001.htm>