Draft: January 19, 2001
There are numerous examples of electronic publishing projects mostly replicas of the print media. What we lack are models of how Internet based scholarship might transform an entire discipline, and how the broader structure of digital libraries might be constructed. In his article "Proposing a Knowledge Exchange Model for Scholarly Communication" John Willinsky proposes that each major research university support a discipline based knowledge base, and by doing so, we will eventually create a rich infrastructure of scholarly communication freely available to the world of learning. The ETANA Project stands as a working model of this concept. Vanderbilt University's Library and Divinity School along with other university and society publishers will establish ETANA as the definitive site for the study of the ancient Near East.
The OpenArchive movement proposes that digital libraries might offer standardized metadata to harvest search engines, so that the user can gather relevant information from a variety of host content sites regardless of their discipline. Some OpenArchive sites are multi-disciplinary sites such as article repositories at Cal Tech, MIT, and E-Scholarship at the University of California, while other OpenArchive repositories are discipline based article archives such as the Physics Archive.
The ETANA project (Electronic Tools and Ancient Near Eastern Archives) will serve as a model of how a discipline specific content site in ancient Near Eastern Studies can be constructed to become the dominant site for that discipline sponsored by both scholarly societies and universities. ETANA will take a leadership role in developing standards specific to this discipline, test altruistic funding models, (see Wilinsky) utilize OpenArchive metadata standards and create discipline specific harvest engines to work with these metadata. ETANA will create a structure whereby scholarship can be accessible from data capture to finished scholarship on a single site. It will host data capture and access, core texts and born digital publications in an environment of rights management, appropriate levels of peer review, and archival permanence. ETANA encompasses the primary portal in ancient Near Eastern Studies ABZU, and the multiple rich image databases being created in this discipline.
Scholarship is enhanced by technological innovations that facilitate communication and expedite the efficient sharing of research and ideas. No less than other disciplines, the study of the ancient Near East promises to be enriched significantly by the development of a singular, far-reaching resource for research that would be widely accessible to professionals and amateurs alike. To that end, ETANA brings together a consortium of universities and academic societies in order to develop and maintain a comprehensive, unified Internet site for the study of the ancient Near East. As its founding partners, the consortium includes The American Oriental Society, The American Schools of Oriental Research, The American Theological Library Association, Case Western Reserve University, The Cobb Institute of Archaeology, The Oriental Institute at the University 0f Chicago, The Society of Biblical Literature, The University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University Divinity School, and the Heard Library at Vanderbilt University.
ETANA will function with five primary impetuses 1) to provide for the rapid sharing of scholarly material by developing an accessible venue for the dissemination of new scholarly material and archaeological data; 2) to provide for the easy searching and harvesting of metadata by merging with ABZU to create a comprehensive portal; 3) to provide a resource for digital archival research by converting core ancient Near Eastern monographs to digital, searchable formats and interfacing with a reservoir of high definition images of ancient Near Eastern artifacts (for example, tablets, papyri, ostraca, etc…); 4)to provide for the digital publication of new texts by developing an infrastructure for "born-digital" publication and merging the publications of its founding societies and those of other participating academic publishers into a unified, searchable database; 5) to provide for the development of the discipline by helping to shape emerging standards for the collection and publication of data and promoting the training of scholars in the use the Internet database for their work. Finally, in all of these areas, ETANA will structure itself to maintain its data and services in perpetuity.
ETANA fosters the scholarly discourse in four ways. First, ETANA increases the speed with which materials and ideas can be disseminated. Often, scholars must wait years for research (particularly archaeological research) to be made available to the wider academic community. As an electronic repository, ETANA will provide a place whereby scholars can upload very recently collected data, images, and other materials for use and review by others. Such review, prior to interpretation, will enhance the quality of final publications. Likewise, students and faculty will have ready access to raw data to enhance the teaching process.
Second, by electronically publishing and posting materials, ETANA significantly reduces the cost of making research resources widely accessible. ETANA will leverage technology investment to extend what societies can do individually and where the commercial sector is unprepared to invest. Smaller libraries, which currently do not have access to core ancient Near Eastern texts due to budgetary restrictions and the scarcity of certain monographs, could soon make these materials available to their users at little cost. Moreover, by providing digital access to these texts at a lesser cost, publishers, whose monographs are cost-prohibitive for many individuals and institutions, might increase the market for various texts that generally only receive a small readership. ETANA will test new concepts of altruistic funding models based on John Wilinshy's concept of a "circle of gifts".
Third, ETANA provides a common, unified research site. Currently, scholars must consult a multiplicity of sources and sites to do comprehensive research in the study of the ancient Near East. As a comprehensive portal ETANA will be the premiere Internet resource, providing "one-stop" researching, enabling its users to search and harvest data from various other sites and resources. As a common place for scholars, ETANA will provide a singular venue where posted scholarly research can receive a greater hearing than in various other places.
Finally, the ebb and flow of financial resources, the change of personnel, and the inevitable evolution of technology have resulted in the impermanence of many Internet sites and publishing resources. The voids left by these sites have caused serious harm to ancient Near Eastern scholarship. From the outset, ETANA will structure itself so that the availability of its archives and the maintenance of its services will transcend the participation of any of its partners. In order to foster this permanence, ETANA will not only develop new technologies, but ETANA will also actively encourage the training of new ancient Near Eastern scholars in the use (i.e., the collection, posting, and searching of data) of the database in order to cultivate an interest and an investment in its maintenance by the scholarly community.