Untitled - witz cultural

317RECONFICURINGLITERARYEDUCATIONlarge number of digital reference materials, such as encyclopedias, dictionaries,bibliographies, and collections of scholar\ artides. Ironically, that partofthe institution specifically dedicated to storing, preserving, and dispensingbooks and other physical information media, such as microfilm and microfiche,has made an especially well thought-out application of digital media.Thus far I have discussed only colleges and universities as educationalinstitutions, but museums are also educational institutions, and their useof digital resources often shows dependence on the print paradigm. Twoexamples from small museum websites demonstrate the high cost in lostopporfunities when one fails to conceive an innovative technology in its ownterms. In the first, a small historical museum in a region of the United Statesonce dominated by the logging industry created a website as part of its mandateto play a greater role in the cultural life of its community. Featuring anexhibition of what life was like in old logging days, it encouraged visitors torecord their handwritten comments in a guestbook. Visitors responded bywriting that their fathers had worked in the logging industry, or they rememberedit as part of their own childhoods. What's wrong herel Having conceivedits website as a printed book, the museum has blinded itself to the possibilities of the new technology. In particular, by assuming that a website is essentiallyabook, its creators suppressed various innovative capacities that wouldhave well served their project and mission. Working with the flawed assumptionthat the website is fundamentally aparticular kind of book-in this case,a print exhibition catalogue placed in the gallery with a guest book next to itfor handwritten comments-the website's developers made several unfortunatecorollary assumptions. They took it for granted, for example, that theprinted book's separation of author and audience is the right way to conceptualizethe relationship between website and user. But is itl Since one of thepurposes of this site involves building a sense of community and creating acommunity memory why not take advantage ofvisitors' comments by addingthem to the website, inviting people to expand upon them, provide familyinformation, photographs, and the likel Why not use the fundamental characteristicsoflinked digital information resources (hypertext) to "growthe site")Why not use a dynamic site to create or enhance a sense of community amongits constituentsl A dynamic, fluid textuality, such as that found on websites,can change and easily adapt to its users, taking advantage of the modularityand capacity for change ofdigital text. But it cannot do so ifits developers andhome institution only think of it as a book-wonderful as books are.Another example: a small anthropological museum at a MidwesternAmerican university created a website with elegant graphic design obviously