1. Course Development: During this reporting period, Transcriptions offered or developed its second full year of courses:

• Fall 2000
  • Alan Liu, Engl. 236: Hyperliterature (Grad)
• Winter 2001
  • Alan Liu, Engl. 25: Literature & the Culture of Information
  • William Warner, Engl. 102: Enlightenment Communications in England and America
  • Chris Newfield, Engl. 197: American Literature and Business Culture
  • Carol Pasternack, Engl. 205C: Imperial Text (Grad)
• Spring 2001
  • Alan Liu, Engl. 165HL: Hyperliterature
  • William Warner, Engl. 197: Digitalizing Culture
  • William Warner, Engl. 235: Digitalizing Culture (Grad)

Liu's English 25 course was the first course offered by the project in formal lecture format at the lower-division level. It is intended to serve the dual purpose of providing a core course for English majors taking the new specialization in Literature and the Culture of Information (see below) and a general-education course for other students outside the English majors.

Courses were supported by Web-authoring workshops and technical-support drop-in hours run by graduate-student research assistants.

2. Transition to Continuing Projects After Development Phase of Transcriptions:

The Transcriptions team worked intensively during this reporting period on several fronts to put in place the descendant projects that will carry Transcriptions beyond its defined three-year development phase (ending this year) into the future. Faculty and research assistants met in an invigorating series of weekly meetings (see project log) devoted to brainstorming, technical briefings, and design critiques for the following initiatives:

• Undergraduate Specialization ("Literature and the Culture of Information," LCI):
  
  As described in the previous interim performance report 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 (LCI) (fielding 4-5 courses each year).
  
  The LCI specialization was launched during the present reporting period with the enrollment of interested students in Transcriptions courses and an information meeting.
  
  The Transcriptions team also prepared a proposal for the UCSB Division of the Humanities Special Research and Curricular Initiatives Funding competition. The proposal calls for a grant to assist future development of the LCI specialization. As detailed in the prospectus of the specialization, future plans call for:
  
  
  • New Faculty Hires: The English Dept. has just successfully recruited Prof. Rita Raley of the Univ. of Minnesota, who will join our faculty next year in a "digital humanities" position. Prof. Raley works in the fields of digital aesthetics and hypertext, global literature and theories of globalization, and Anglophone literature (including postcolonial literature and theory.
    
    
  • Colloquium Series: Building on the success of the Transcriptions Colloquium series, the LCI will create workshop or colloquium events in which visiting speakers meet with undergraduates
    
    
  • Field-Trip Events: "Field trips" organized for the LCI would 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.
    
    
  • Research/Editorial Teams: There will be two research teams (one in Winter quarter, one in Spring quarter) 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 (see below) 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).
    
    
• New Web Site (and convergence with other English Dept. digital initiatives):
  
  Development work is now underway to migrate the Transcriptions Web site into a new "Cultures of Information" 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 (early conceptual mock-up). 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 (early mock-up of course page).
  
  The two interfaces to the site will share common resources held in a database in the background that also allows the site to converge with other digital initiatives in the UCSB English Dept. In this regard, the most advanced technical work in Transcriptions during this reporting period followed upon the affiliation of the project with Alan Liu's Voice of the Shuttle (which is supported in part by a separate funding stream from UCSB). VoS is currently being redesigned as a dynamic site driven by a SQL Server database that will allow for greater customization by the user and simpler administration through Web forms by developers. Once moved into a database, the approximately 17,000+ links currently in VoS can be used to "power" Transcriptions and the new "Cultures of Information" Web site by feeding content into pages on an as-needed basis. (See VoS Developer's page outlining current work and prototypes of the new VoS).
  
  
• Participation in Univ. of California Digital Cultures Multi-Campus Research Group:
  
  As described in the previous interim performance report, 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 is 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 annual fellowship designed to bring a leading figure in the field of digital humanties to UCSB, 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. Digital Cultures 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.
  
  During the upcoming Digital Cultures summer institute in June 2001 on the theme of "Archive Cultures," the Transcriptions team will present their current projects during a morning workshop.

3. Colloquium Series: Transcriptions continued its successful colloquium series. In this reporting period, the following colloquia occurred:

• Dec 8, 2001: "Metacollege.com and the Digital Classroom: A Roundtable Discussion." Participants: Stephen Erickson (Metacollege.com); Robert Hamm (Digital Cultures Project Research Assistant); Alan Liu (Director, Transcriptions Project); Chris Schedler (Metacollege.com) ; William Warner (Director, The Digital Cultures Project). This round-table discussion had a double focus: an overview of the .com initiative Metacollege.com (founded by UCSB engineering Professor Sanjoy Banerjee) as well as a more general discussion of what the digital classroom is and should be.

4. Computing Studio Development: During this reporting period, the most significant new development in the hardware and software infrastructure for Transcriptions was the implementation of a secondary server for the SQL Server databases underlying the new technical initiatives of Transcriptions (see above). Transcriptions and its related project are thus now hosted from two servers run by the English department: a Web server and a database server from which SQL Server is linked dynamically to Web pages.

In addition, Transcriptions began the process of migrating its studio workstations from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. The project's main Web-authoring programs (Macromedia's Dreamwever and Ultradev) are also being upgraded to the latest 4.0 versions.

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. It also organizes information meetings for the new Literature and Culture of Information specialization. For graduate students and faculty within the English department, the project holds workshops and introductory sessions. For interested members of other UCSB departments, administrators, and visitors (including foreign visitors), the project holds briefing sessions. (See the online project log for publicity activities during the current reporting period.)

Following up on similar fund-raising presentations in the past, Alan Liu met with Nicole Kern Klanfer (UCSB Asst. Dean of Development), John McIntryre of the UCSB CEEM project, and Tim Schwartz (UCSB Asst. Dean, Development & External Affairs) to discuss fund-raising and future plans for a student internship program. In addition, Transcriptions mailed a funding request letter to English Dept. alumni and others during the present reporting period.

The Transcriptions team also prepared a proposal for the UCSB Division of the Humanities Special Research and Curricular Initiatives Funding competition (see above).