Discussion
Crediting work
I know it is just the way that the site is structured, but would it be possible to re-structure things so that the person who actually does the work of gathering and editing resources gets the credit on the front page of each collection? The superb transmedia collection pulled together by Laura Fleming is a case in point as it appears to be credited to Troy because of the way that the site is designed. It may seem a trivial matter, but i always think it is important to ensure that the right people are credited properly for work done.
Comments
Christina Cantrill
on Jun 20 2011
at 07:14
Thanks for writing
Hello John. Thank you for writing about this important topic. What is true is that the system is designed to have one author per resource or collection, which is where the challenge emerged here. I believe that Laura and Troy were intending to show shared authorship by having Laura develop the main resources for that collection and then have Troy pull the 4 of them together in a collection with a couple additional resources too. (Another way that people have gotten around this is to create a dual-identity as the author - see Ann Herrington and Charlie Moran collections or resources made by "Writing for Change" as examples of this.)
That said, being able to clearly show collaboration in the system is on the development road-map for sure -- it is a key 21c skill after all! That said, without that actual feature in place, different co-authors are thinking about how to negotiate this in different ways. Therefore I'm sure that Troy and Laura will take into consideration your concerns and they can decide what they think is best to do at this time.
Thanks for writing.
Christina
John Smith
on Jun 21 2011
at 00:21
Thank you both
Christina & Elyse,
You are both very kind to reply so fully and so positively. I raised the issue because I came across a blog post yesterday in which Troy was being praised highly for the quality of the transmedia collection. i had no problem with this because i know how much work there is involved in the preparation and editing of a collection such as this, but i just felt it a shame that the layout of the site meant that Laura would not get credit for the work she had done unless you delve into the collection itself (which is what we hope will happen of course), in which Troy has been very generous in his proper crediting of the work.
Best wishes,
John
Elyse Eidman-Aadahl (Admin ...
on Jun 20 2011
at 07:29
Not trivial at all
Hi John,
The issue you raise is not trivial at all; we would all want crediting and sourcing to be accurate and effective. In the case of Digital Is, the author area is populated by the profile of the person making the resource or collection. In this case, it looks like Laura made the resources and Troy pulled the collection together. This can be a problem if one person, say Troy, did the system work on behalf of another person. Then the visible profile will be of the person who worked in the system. In most cases, collections are built out of resources authored by many different people, so the curation of the collection is an explicit authoring step.
It may be that the authors feel the current design is accurate (that Laura made the resources and Troy made the collection). If this division is correct, but there is a desire to feature Laura more prominently, then the top level text could credit her more directly. If not accurate, and folks would want Laura's profile to show up for the collection, then Troy and Laura could request we make a change administratively.
Thanks for bringing this to the attention of the curators and administrators.
Elyse