&lt;i&gt;Dangerous Citizens&lt;/i&gt; Online: a case study of an author–press–library partnership

Helen Tartar,Neni Panourgiá,Rebecca Kennison

doi:10.1629/231456

Abstract

This essay traces how Neni Panourgia, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Fordham University Press and the Columbia Center for Digital Research and Scholarship worked together to produce an online book that strives not to replace but to augment the printed book it accompanies. The 'synaesthetic' reading experience provided by the online book enables readers to experience more fully the author's rich fieldwork materials and to customize their own reading of the various texts that make up the book, thereby gaining a better sense of the multiple levels of anthropological analysis. Moreover, the online book can remain openâ€ended, enabling ongoing updating. Particular attention is devoted to the challenges faced by the digital project and the aspects of the partnership that made the project a success.

Highlights

This essay traces how Neni Panourgiá, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University, Fordham University Press and the Columbia Center for Digital Research and Scholarship worked together to produce an online book that strives not to replace but to augment the printed book it accompanies
Late in October 2008, two of us – Helen Tartar and Rebecca Kennison – met in Rebecca’s office to discuss the talk Rebecca had invited Helen to give as part of a panel entitled ‘Future of the Book: Can the Endangered Monograph Survive?’2 With the future of the book very much on our minds, we turned at the end of that conversation to the possibility of Fordham University Press and Columbia University Libraries’ Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) working together on a project involving a Columbia author that would lend itself well to online treatment
Helen thought for a moment, exclaimed, “Have I got the book for you!”. She explained that Fordham was wrestling with the manuscript of Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State, by an anthropology professor at Columbia, Neni Panourgiá

Summary

The partners and the project

Sometimes the best collaborations come about as the result of chance or happy circumstance. Helen thought for a moment, exclaimed, “Have I got the book for you!” She explained that Fordham was wrestling with the manuscript of Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State, by an anthropology professor at Columbia, Neni Panourgiá. Even before the first meeting of all the partners in December 2008, Fordham had provided the CDRS team with unedited files so that they could begin to understand the complexity of the text. Knowing that to provide maximum flexibility in the online implementation they would need the book tagged in XML, the CDRS team sent these final files out to an XML vendor, Charlesworth China[4], who completed the work in October. Some final – and vital – components (such as the maps section and an interactive timeline) were not ready for the launch, in the finest online tradition of beta releases, the project went live on 2 December 2009

The challenges

Successes so far

Findings

Model partnership