biblio: Community Service: Collaborative technologies and the development of scholarly communities in the arts and humanities

Communities are defined by the way in which their constituents convey knowledge, both with each other (individually) and with other communities (collectively). ICT has brought a whole new dimension to the way in which scholars communicate in every aspect of their working lives. The current generation of research students alone has witnessed a mushrooming in the use of email as well as an exponentially widened availability of blogs, wikis, videoconferencing, Access Grid, and a variety of e-publications. This has conditioned the university environment in ways that could not have been predicted ten years ago, and brought a new fluidity to the way in which research is done.

Starting from research done by the authors, this paper will look at some existing exploitation of such collaborative technologies. In 2004/5 the authors undertook site visits to each of the AHRC’s 19 Research Centres to see how they had exploited ICT within their work. Using this research, the paper will begin to assess how these methods shape the knowledge transfer process, and thus scholarly communities. Such questions are complex, yet go beyond merely technological considerations, which can be (but are not necessarily) more straightforward. How, for example, can a simple electronic newsletter or e-journal help to build up a subject group in a particular discipline? Developing existing familiarity with basic networking tools such as these is critical to preparing scholars for more advanced developments: this paper will sketch out the form this knowledge development might take. More advanced methods such as CMS based Wiki structures present further issues. What new activities do such technologies make possible, and what challenges do they present? And above all, what is the impact of their contribution to the development of new ways of sharing knowledge?