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@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@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@sigcis.org http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members