Happy birthday OAC

[NIKOS GOUSGOUNIS]

2 years of life of OAC, around 5000 members and still ...nothing is going on as before ...Any ideas ? 

[Stacy A A Hope]

Paul, this is a brilliant idea. I have been thinking if the OAC should have a Job group, where people can post openings for projects for which they need experts, volunteers, interns, consultants, researchers, etc. I will probably raise this at another time again. However, I think linking with OAC members to come up with a research project/publication is a fantastic idea.

Also, whilst I am here, please look out for a new book review, which will be out on Friday. Any people interested in reviews can contact me by messaging me privately, or going to the Book Reviews Site.





Paul Wren said:

By a "collaborative research effort," I am referring to a group of people here on the OAC forming a team, identifying an interesting research question to pursue, and then using the OAC as the electronic platform to coordinate efforts, post interim data, discuss issues, co-write drafts, etc.

 

I haven't thought it through completely-- identifying a methodology for using OAC to coordinate a geographically separated research group would be an interesting challenge in itself.

 

I don't know if the research group would want to create two Ning groups: A private one for work within the team, and a public one, where members of the OAC could see the research in progress and even comment.

 

Here's one example:

In archaeology, there are are a lot of data available from excavations.  A lot of interesting questions can be posed that would allow for original research that would be built upon these existing data.   I could imagine working with other archaeologists to attack such a problem, and none one of us would need to go into the field to collect data, nor would we ever need to meet in person.  The OAC could be our conference and work room.

 

Just thinkin' out loud...

 

Paul

[Keith Hart]

These are interesting ideas, Nathan. Would it possible to start a project like this on a small scale? How big a task would it be? What size of team involved? We have discussed collaborative projects of this sort beofre, but it always comes down to the number of bodies required and the pay off at the end.

Nathan Dobson said:

Also just thinking out loud -

People are busy fighting copyright laws to make books freely available online but there are already a few out there with relevance to anthropology. I was wondering if we could tap into this somehow. For a start we could have a list but there might be more we can do.

It doesn't seem possible to search something like "Capital" using the search on google books and get, for example, an accurate list of all the mentions of "solidarity" but I was thinking along these lines... all the times that Locke writes about _. Some sort of index.

[Nathan Dobson]

Yeah I was just following Fran's great turn of phrase to "throw it out there and see if it sticks..." but I will be thinking about it when I get some time as I think it has legs... 

Anyone got one of those automatic page turners hanging around so that we can scan loads of anthropology books?