Future Plans for the Specialization
(last revised: 3/24/01 )

New Faculty Hires

The English Department is currently seeking to hire additional professors in the field of "digital humanities." If successful, the search will place in the department as many as two new faculty in the field by 2001-2002. (See job description)

Colloquia, Student Research Teams, Student Internships

One of the most innovative aspects of the new "Literature and the Culture of Information" specialization will be its attempt to meet the English Department's mandate that majors electing a specialization be provided with an outside-the-classroom, network- and community-building, "value-added" experience. Transcriptions is taking this mandate as an opportunity to think creatively and to build on its past success in assembling students and faculty in collaborative research teams. The plan is to create undergraduate/graduate/faculty teams whose research activities bridge between the academy and the outside world. Specifically, funding is being requested for the following four closely related initiatives:

• Colloquium Series: An exciting aspect of Transcriptions has been its colloquium series, which has introduced faculty and graduate students in the English department to scholars and entrepreneurs in different fields related to information technology. (See http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/colloquia.shtml) For the new specialization, Transcriptions is planning to continue the series in a way that actively includes undergraduates. Transcriptions will bring onto campus interesting industry, media, or academic authorities and mount events specifically designed to bring them into dialogue with undergraduates. (Also relevant: the new University of California system-wide Digital Cultures Project headquartered in the UCSB English Dept.)
  
  
• Field-Trip Events: Transcriptions "field trips" would realize a long-coveted ambition of the project: to bring UCSB students off-campus to explore the offices and labs of Southern California information-technology and media companies. In addition, field trips would be organized to various facilities in non-humanities disciplines within UCSB itself. Currently, for example, Transcriptions plans to approach the following off-campus and campus facilities to set up field trips: Computer Motion, Metacollege.com, Panasonic Speech Recognition Laboratory, UCLA Media Arts Dept., UC Irvine Art Dept.
  
  
• Research/Editorial Teams: There will be two research teams (one in Winter, one in Spring) consisting of a faculty adviser, a graduate-student supervisor, and two undergraduate research assistants selected from those enrolled in or interested in the specialization. The teams would follow up on the activities described above by conducting interviews and research related to the speakers, projects, and issues featured in the Colloquia and Field Trip series. In addition, the teams would research other issues related to courses in the specialization or the general topic of information culture. The results of the research would be edited by the team for inclusion in the Transcriptions/VoS/English Dept. database and thus on Web sites produced by that database. For example, a research team would interview an authority in the industry about speech-recognition technology, do research in the field of speech-recognition as a whole, produce an edited transcript of the interview and a precis of the field, create a set of annotated links to online resources, and "publish" the results through the database on the Web sites of Transcriptions, related courses, and VoS (Voice of the Shuttle).
  
  
• Planning for Student Internships: With the assistance of the UCSB Development Office, Transcriptions has in the past year consulted off-campus company executives and the UCSB CEEM program to explore the possibility of a summer student internship program for graduate students and undergraduates. (The feasibility of such a program is supported by the de facto record of the English Dept. during the past several years in placing some of its high-tech students in industry.) Because of the complexity involved in setting up internships, however, Transcriptions does not anticipate being able to roll out such a program next year. Instead, it is requesting the equivalent of "planning and feasibility-study" funding to lay the groundwork. If funded, the Transcriptions director would set up visits to businesses in Santa Barbara and the Southern California region and map out (in cooperation with Career Counseling) a support apparatus for humanities high-tech interns akin to the engineering-cum-entrepreneurial workshops now available through CEEM.
  
  
• Culture of Information Web Site: Development work is now underway to migrate existing resources on the topic of "culture of information" in the Transcriptions Web site into a new site with two interfaces. One interface would be for the general public, and would feature content and news about the culture of information in general. The other interface would be specifically for students and instructors in the specialization in Literature and the Culture of Information, featuring news, announcements, special articles, student publications, etc., pertinent to the specialization. (The two interfaces to the site will share common resources held in a database in the background.) There will also be an e-mail list for faculty and students in the specialization.

"Culture of Information" Web (CI-Web) Development

Development is currently underway on a new Web site that will consolidate existing Transcriptions Project online resources with new materials in a "Culture of Information" (CI-Web) site. The CI site will have two complementary interfaces:

• Literature and the Culture of Information Specialization
  This interface will be the home site of the Literature and the Culture of Information specialization at UCSB, with links to program information, courses, etc. There will also be elements of general news and features related to the topic of information culture (related to below). The target audience will be current and prospective students in the specialization.
  
  
• Culture of Information
  This interface will package the resources created by faculty, research assistants, and students in the Literature and the Culture of Information specialization for the general public. There will be a magazine-style page with news, featured topics or resources, interviews, etc., on information culture.

For a sneak preview of early work on the new CI-Web, see CI-Web development.

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