Reviewing CW2K: F3 What's Next for WAC: New Media Scholarship in the Digital Age

In one of the most palpably enthusiastic sessions of the conference, Joseph Moxley and Jude Edminster discussed exciting possibilities of the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, a database that allows students to electronically publish their dissertations and theses in PDF files on the Web.

Moxley pointed out that storing students' research on the Web will make it accessible to a greater number of people, and in so doing will allow others to see what others are saying and doing and thus effect the generation of knowledge. He pointed out that the project, although it currently consists of many universities in the U.S., Germany and Australia needs to continue to gain support by faculty and students so that it can grow. Jude Edminster, who conducted a participant-observer study of an interdisciplinary project involving the Network, the University of South Florida and Microsoft Corporation, found that the Network allows greater access to student work by their peers; that publishing studies on the net may decrease the gatekeeping of print technology; that it increases the possibility that different kinds of texts, more multimedia in nature, may be produced, although electronic media will always have a dialogic existence with old media.

The session was remarkable not just for the new and exciting nature of the topic, but because the small audience size, while it meant that many missed out on the fascinating work being done in this area, also allowed for a real question and answer session that led to a fabulous discussion about intellectual property rights.

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