1. Course Development: At the beginning of this reporting period, Transcriptions capped its first full-year roster of courses with a Spring 2000 course: Techno-Gothic: Imagining the Cyborg (undergrad) (William Warner)
http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/warner/english122tg/

During spring and summer 2000, the project began preparing for courses to be offered in academic year 2000-2001. Specifically, instructors and research assistants created the Web site for Alan Liu's fall course on Hyperliterature; initiated the Web site for Christopher Newfield's winter course on Business Culture; and met in a highly productive meeting to discuss using information technology in the first of the project's large lecture courses scheduled for the winter (English 25, The Culture of Information). In addition, a survey of information-technology classroom around campus was taken.

Transcriptions also began in this reporting period to complement its practical development of information-technology assisted instruction with conceptual work on the strategies and underlying assumptions of such instruction. In March 2000, Alan Liu gave a presentation on the instructional use of information technology at the UCSB Science-Humanities Forum on "The Classroom of the Future." Liu is currently following up by organizing a panel at the inaugural conference of the new UC Digital Cultures Project (headed by William Warner) on "The Classroom of the Future." (For the inception of the Digital Cultures Project and its relation to Transcriptions, see section 6 of the Feb. 29, 2000 interim performance report.)

2. Web-Site Development: Consequent to the implementation of the full Transcriptions Web site a year ago (see section 2 of the Feb. 29, 2000 interim performance report), work on the site has continued. The most significant new developments are the following:

• Transcriptions extended its database technology to create a new resource: a Bookshelf of the works that are helping to shape the intellectual direction of the project—works in a variety of media that developers in the project or speakers in its colloquium series have been reading (or creating). Searchable citations accompanied by annotations or commentary.
• Transcriptions purchased a copy of each work in the catalogue of Eastgate, Inc., to start a library of hypertext fiction, poetry, and theory (in preparation for two courses on the topic in 2000-2001). To take full advantage of the library, the project created a fully catalogued and annotated Guide to Hypertext Literature to aid instructors and students in this new field of literature.

3. Colloquium Series: Transcriptions continued its successful colloquium series (see sect. 3 of the previous interim performance report for an explanation of the series). In this reporting period, the following colloquia occurred:

• Barbara Cohen, Director, UC Irvine HumaniTech: Computer Resources for Faculty Research and Teaching, "A Chat with Barbara Cohen"
• M. D. Coverley (pen name of Marjorie C. Luesebrink) MFA, Hypertext Fiction Artist & Professor of English, Irvine Valley C., "The Crimson Orb: Technology and Women on the WWW"
• Harry Reese, Prof. of Art Studio, UCSB, "The Trailing Edge of Technology: A Field Trip to Professor Reese's Studio"
• Rita Raley, Asst. Professor of English, University of Minnesota
  • Lecture: "How to Make Things with Words: Hypertext and Literary Value"
  • Workshop: "Taxonomies of Hypertext Fiction" Reading: Espen Aarseth, "Introduction: Ergodic Literature" (available online at the site for his Cybertext book)

5. Publicity, Dissemination, and Fund-Raising: Transcriptions continues to publicize and disseminate its work as it proceeds. For students, the project produces descriptive materials, flyers, and posters that explain its idea and advertise its courses. For graduate students and faculty within the English department, the project holds workshops and introductory sessions. For interested members of other UCSB departments as well as for administrators, the project held briefing sessions. (Presentations about Transcriptions during the current reporting period are recorded in the online project log.) In addition, project faculty often field questions and correspondence from instructors, students, and others elsewhere around the world.

Following up on similar fund-raising presentations in the past, Alan Liu and William Warner presented Transcriptions and its current funding needs during this reporting period to a group of local executives in the business, software, and media fields. The event was organized by David Marshall, Dean of Humanities at UCSB, and the UCSB Office of Development. (This event is leading to follow-up events involving the CEEM project on campus that allows businesses to collaborate with university engineering programs.)

6. Long-Term Initiatives:As described in the previous interim performance report, Transcriptions has taken two key steps in extending and expanding its work beyond its NEH-funded incubation period:

(1) Transcriptions has become part of the restructured undergraduate major in English at UCSB. The major was recently revised to include elective "specializations" or tracks in particular areas. Transcriptions is using the courses it has developed to start a specialization in Literature and the Culture of Information (fielding 4-5 courses each year).

(2) Transcriptions has helped initiate a new UC-system "Digital Cultures Project " Multi-Campus Research Group (MRG). Proposed to the UC Office of the President by Transcriptions member William Warner (who will be principal investigator), The Digital Cultures Project was approved in January 2000 and funded by the UC system (with additional funding from UCSB) at the level of approximately $80,000 per year for an initial five-year term. The project will knit together humanities faculty and graduate students from all the UC campuses (except UC San Francisco) in the following activities: an annual summer institute (seminars led by distinguished scholars in the field of humanities computing), an annual conference, an annual graduate-student conference, an ongoing inter-campus research and teaching information network, and a casebook series on the use of information technology specifically in humanities teaching and research (to be edited by the Transcriptions PI, Alan Liu, who serves on the steering committee of the new project). Digital Cultures will also explore the possibility of inter-campus, information-technology-assisted courses. The project will be headquartered at UCSB and will utilize the precedents, resources, and equipment developed by Transcriptions. (For more information, see http://dc-mrg.english.ucsb.edu/) The launching of the Digital Cultures Project advances and supersedes the more limited, original plan for Transcriptions to create an interdisciplinary program in information culture at UCSB.

As a consequence of these long-term initiatives, Transcriptions is currently working intensively to reposition itself as a permanent entity with a changed role—one that will continue after the project has ceased to be a pilot program. (See Plans below)

Plans for Third Year of the Project, 2000-2001 (Final Development Year): Besides the activities described in the previous interim performance report, Transcriptions will be devoting much of its energy in its final year as a NEH-sponsored pilot program to building a new, permanent role for itself in relation to the other information-technology projects it has helped start. The current Transcriptions Web site will continue to exist in the future as a record of the project, but it will not be further developed. Instead, work is underway to create a new "Culture of Information" Web site that would serve as a portal to projects, courses, and other resources at UCSB and elsewhere related to research and teaching in information cultures past and present. Existing Transcriptions materials will be copied into the new site and become part of a database-driven Web system. The goal of the site redesign will be to recognize the changed role of Transcriptions as a continuing (rather than demonstration) resource.