{"id":672,"date":"2011-02-24T07:14:23","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T14:14:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/?p=672"},"modified":"2011-02-24T09:03:46","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T16:03:46","slug":"multimedia-ebooks-thatcamp-se-session-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/miriamposner.com\/blog\/multimedia-ebooks-thatcamp-se-session-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Multimedia ebooks (THATCamp SE session idea)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of us at the Emory Library are deep in the throes of organizing THATCamp Southeast<\/a>, an “unconference” on technology and the humanities. It’ll be on March 4, 5, and 6, and we’re expecting about a hundred people. At THATCamps, everyone posts session ideas in advance. Then, on the day of the camp, we all decide together which sessions will actually be held. Here’s the idea I posted<\/a>: <\/em><\/p>\n

As part of my job, I speak to a lot of grad students about what tech projects they’d like to see happen. Increasingly, students are describing something like this: “I work with a text that I know better than anyone else. I’d like the ability to add video, text, and audio annotation to the text — like a multimedia annotated edition.”<\/p>\n

The technology to make this happen does<\/em> exist<\/a>. A recent Chronicle<\/em> article<\/a> describes something similar, and this company is working on “books”<\/a> that are perhaps even more advanced than my students are imagining.<\/p>\n

The problem is, as far as I can tell, creating these multimedia ebooks requires comfort with XML. Much as I’d like for every grad student to possess this knowledge, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.<\/p>\n

So in this session, I’d love to hear ideas for ways to create multimedia ebooks that might be accessible to the tech-curious grad student who is nonetheless not prepared to invest the time in learning XML. Perhaps these techniques already exist, or perhaps we need to build them ourselves.<\/p>\n

Some notes:<\/p>\n