It is my eighteenth blog. As per Hindu rituals, 18 is definitely an auspicious number. However, today the date is September 5, 2009. On one hand, it is a Teacher's Day in India which commemorate the birthday a highly illustrious of son of India, Sarvapali Radhakrishnan but on the other hand, today, during this samvat, it is the first Shradhas. The Hindus do not start anything on this day but I am doing it.
The idea of making this blog had already germinated few days back. I am adding a new blog title after regular intervals. Is there any game plan behind it? No. It is Zotero behind it. Zotero is a add on available on Firefox. It was blogs on HNN at www.hnn.us which directed my attention towards this add on. I learnt about digital history and soon I learnt about Zotero being highly promoted by digital history exponents. I was bit reluctant to use it but while for one up-gradation, a selected it and it was there on the browsing window. I am not fully conversant with it. However, it has given me a facility which I always sought during my visits to library. I believe who are in the field of teaching and research, they know one thing, that when you come across a book, even if you are not searching for it, but find it interesting, then it should be the right thing to do to make a note of it and go through it at the first available opportunity. If you get a book, make sure that you go through it at the earliest or it will remain untouched on the shelf. Something similar happens on internet. You explore internet for a particular piece of information. While digging out the information using search engines, blog search, books, articles etc. which ever mode or paradigm you have used to undertake research on internet, you come across many sites or piece of information which attract you and you feel that the information can be useful at some time if it is not of immediate interest for you. However, if you try to find the information at a later stage, you may never get back to the same site or same target. It is something which happens in a library. You leave a book on the shelf to get it latter. You go back to locate it, you do not find it. You talk to the librarian, they show reluctance in locating it. Well I know, it does not happen in American and European universities but it happens in India and I have stopped going to library because of that. However, coming back to internet browsing for find information on the task at hand, I used to make word copy and that generally became unmanageable because while you are browsing, you are not able to categories the collection of data when you just stumble upon it without the desire to reaching it. In case of Zotero, a facility is there to click the new folder icon, name it depending upon the content of information and then click photoshot and within in less than a minute, you have a record on your hard disc. You may access it later even without going on line. It has become a practice or rather a habit with me.
Now the folders on Zotero are increasing everyday. However, there are some folders which get entries regularly. Some of the folders have so many entries that they give me a set of data which can be a raw material for making a blog. I have made some blogs because of such a collection. I never thought of making those blogs. I made a folder on Zotero. The heading which I gave to the blog turned out to be such a heading that when I sought to categorize a piece of information which I have come across with intend on the internet, I opened the Zotero and the category itself appealed to me and I added that link to that folder. Soon, some folders become more use able. I did not have intention of adding to them. But the new information which I located could be added under that category. Soon I found that some of the folders have a large number of entries. Then, I found that it could be a good material for a blog and I started a blog for that. The best examples of such creations are the History in News Blog and Crime-proceedings. I do not have much knowledge about Crime reporting. But, the news items which I have started collecting after making a note of Arushi Double murder case in a separate folder, suddenly collected so many news items, that I just created the blog out of it. Similarly, I never thought of History in News title. It was just on the spur of a movement, I read a news item online. I found that it was related to history. I wanted to keep in record a link. Instead of adding it to daily news item folder, I just made a new folder as History in News. And that gradually itself evolved into a blueprint of a blog and definitely that blog is getting regular entries.
Why This Blog:
Well, for a year or two, I have found that whenever I seek information about something, there was usually a search result which took me to the Wikipedia. Now it has become a norm with me that I open a search result sheet as well as Wikipedia sheet also. I am regular contributor to wikipedia also. But the search result has shown that there are numerous fields on which there is some information on wikipedia also. For the last three months, I am visiting Wikipedia more frequently. Now on Wikipedia, I prefer to look into discussion tab as well as external links before reaching a decision to gather any information from that source. Such an activity sometimes take you to numerous other links. In addition to that, the internal links, which is a policy of Wikipedia content development, are also checked. This has helped me to explore wikiepdia more and more and there is lot more on Wikipedia which I have yet to learn to explore. Anyhow, if you get sucked into such point to point diversion, you can not complete your task. So, what I did then? The same thing which I have mentioned above. I made a folder on Zotero and called it Wiki Article. But the story did not end there. Even then, there was need to further categorize and classify the information which I was collecting. Hence, there is a folder American Wiki. I teach American history in my college therefore it is there otherwise I do not have passport even and I have not even moved out Punjab of India. Then, as per the requirement of my subject, there is a folder, Wiki Historians. Then, again, there are some more folders. Now addition to that, I located a button on Wikipedia which is 'Random Article'. Now, nearly for two months, I play with that button. Most of the time, the articles which comes before you are stub articles. Secondly, they are either about music albums, sportsmen or communes in France, or a village in Poland and so on. But after every ten to fifteen clicks, there comes an article which attracts your attention. I created another folder titled 'Explore wikipedia'. Soon, it was receiving two to three links every day. It is now a long list there. Now, there was enough raw material there and the idea of creating a blog about the articles as gathered from Wikipedia had already there at place. But I did not make the blog. Actually I was thinking about the name of the blog. I was actually thinking about naming the blog as Exploration of Wikipedia. Then I thought on Magellan on Wikipedia. Then I thought of Random Wikipedia. None of the titles appealed to me. In the meantime, every day, I was adding new articles from the wikipedia to Zotero. Secondly, I was also making edits to the contents. I am locating some incongruities also. I am confronting too bold editors also. I am reading the discussions also. Suddenly, I came across this word Digital Curation. I has appealed to me so much that I have created this blog. But, by this time, Exploring Wikipedia had also been selected as a term to be used. It actually reflects the actual nature of the activity which has created this blog. I did not want to loose it. On the other hand, I can not claim to call myself digital expert and a curator. However, somewhere the nature of activity has affinity with something which is digital and some thing which is generally considered as a task of a curator. So, name was there and terms for url were there now. The idea and desire for this blog was already there for sometime. Actually I had thought of launching it after September 15. But the term Digital curator has attracted me and somewhere acted as a solution to my dilemma. As far as the Shradha factor is concerned, well, this aspect of Hindu life, or these ethics and moral of Hindu life is a topic which now I just do not want to discuss. I will keep on learning about them because it is part of my study for teaching social history. But I am not going to pinned down by rituals, superstitions, and morality as professed by Hindus. Well, the blog is there. Soon, I will start making the entries and check this post for mistakes as I am just writing whatsoever coming out here. I had thought out of the policy statement when I was planning to launch it as Explore Wikipedia or something like that. On the whole, I am near to what I had thought of writing.
Now, it is Random Articles, Comments on discussions, incongruities, bold editors, new learning from Wikipedia. The rest of policy statements will be outline gradually.
