Just a brief follow-up to the bibliography idea we kicked off this past weekend:

The point of the project is to start to build some institutional memory around THATCamp as a whole. As sessions are proposed and conversations and discussions evolve, it could benefit us all to have a central repository of documentation about what has been said, discussed and proposed at other Camps. I consistently refer back to the GDoc Collection that was shared after THATCamp Prime last year, and capturing that documentation, centralizing it, organizing it (there are some librarians involved here right?!) and making it accessible seems to be a cause we all could support.

meta meta

How can you help?

1) Choose a previous THATCamp from this list.

2) Pick through the site and pull out any linked GDocs of notes from the sessions (be sure to check the comments on the session proposals).

3) Create a record for the document in the THATCamp Biblio Zotero Group. Do your due diligence as an ad-hoc cataloger and make sure you aren’t making repeat records.

Suggested Controlled Vocab/Fields:

• Item Type: [Document] for a GDoc. [Forum Post] for a Session Proposal. [Blog Post] for a blog post reflection after the Camp.
• Title: [Session Name] – THATCamp [Name][Year]
• Author: If you can see who owns the GDoc, make them the Author of Record. If not, use whomever proposed the panel in which the notes were produced.
• Abstract: Use your judgement. Pull a paragraph from the session proposal or write 1-2 quick sentences.
• Publisher: [THATCamp] or [THATCamp Press] if you’re feeling frisky.
• Date: Date document was created.
• URL: Include the link to the GDoc.
• Extra: Add any notes that might give the record context. See an example here.
• Tags: Use at least the [THATCamp Name] and [Year]. Any other tags you can come up with to contextualize and link it will be most helpful.

4) If you prefer, download the GDocs that you make records for as PDFs and hold onto them. We are going to find a way to make the documents live somewhere since you can’t attach them to the records in a Zotero Group.

5) If you have time, dig a little deeper and see if you can find related blog posts before or after the specific Camp you are cataloging. These only help to contextualize the work done over the weekend in the real life practices of the Campers. Make records for them too!

6) Share your work! Let other THATCampers, DHers, Librarian/catalogers, and students interested in digital humanities know about the THATCampiography. More hands make light work.

The hope is that with a collection like this, Camps of the future can build on the work that has already been done. For example, its been pretty standard that there is typically a session dedicated to sharing resources (for whatever purpose). Wouldn’t it be great if you could go directly to the THATCampiography, click the “Resources” tag and quickly dig through the past 4 years of resources that have been collated by Campers as most beneficial for this type of work?