Future scholarship

Reading Anvis Santos "introducing media commons" give me an idea of the purpose of the new scholarship enhanced by the use of internet. In the next three posts, I will be writing on this insights from Santos and others from futureofthebook and some of the contibutions to biblical studies. This post is about general insights.

• It is undeniable that the digital age is here with us. The age is increasingly requiring the opening up of 'former scholarly world' to the scrutiny of the public. While it maybe doing so without the 'experts' themsleves agreeing to it, I believe the future of the book project is an initiative by the scholars to voluntary respond to this challenge before change can change them.
• Secondly, while digital is becoming the talk of the town, I want to see it as only a particular lense of reading given that it forms its own community. In other words, just like the many hermeneutical lenses within biblical studies, internet scholarship for me targets the community created by the new age. I therefore analyse its contibution as one among other reading and outreach lenses and to some extent as a site of resistance to the traditional form of scholarship- printing press.

Biblical studies has many faces though not clearly distinguishable as such; It has

1. common reader- maybe best known as the "congregations"
2. pastors- directly in contact with the common reader
3. students- who depending on interest may end up joining the pastors
4. academics- directly in conctact with the students and in some cases double the role of pastors.

These categories are not as clear cut as such because of some taking up multiple roles, this is only to give some framework. Whatever the case, Internet scholarship mostly benefits the students and academics (faculty) who aim at "scholarship, service and teaching."

The academics aim to produce teaching materials for students and materials that make reading of the bible easier for common readers- materials like bible commentaries or on particular bible topics. The students on the other hand continually undertake research via the internet, while the common reader belonging to the internet community browse the web for information or transfomation. -

• The greatest departure point that I see with the new scholarship is it aim of allowing the targeted community to be part of the scholarship from day one of the project "readers will be able to follow the development of an idea from its germination in a blog, though its drafting as an article". This is achieved by "leaving the network open to continual analysis and critique"- This is majorly for the benefit of students and faculty, and even one scholar and other scholar.
• Secondly, it is one way of realizing the dream of opening up communication between the academy and the wider reading public- however as Santos rightly says, this does not go without a challenge. As much as this kind of scholarship is aimed at creating commons, the fact is that there is still the expert and the learner. It is only the interraction that changes. But it needs a rethinking of how these roles would be defined or clealry cut. narrowing the gap between scholarship, service and teaching.-
• Thirdly, the interractive environment allow for many vioces as people all over the world, perspectives and fields post thier critical analysis and views. To the academic, it makes the work rich, full of new ideas and exciting :-)-
• Using tools like hyperlinks, the academic is able to quote from "multi mediated" materials. without too much worry about space- of course there are restrictions such as copyrights but not as much as printing as a lense of reading.

How does this benefit the students?(-: look out for the next post............