AADB:How to help

This page is the instructions for how to help for the project. For information on the framework of the project see AADB:About. If you want to help us meet those scholarly and public resource goals,her are a few suggestions:

The most important way to currently help the Adaptation and Appropriation database is to help create records. Without a critical mass of items in the database, the project won't be able to create lists and relationships between records. Currently there are three types of records on the database that help populate a number of different fields. Here are a discussion of how to create those records and why they are important for the database's infrastructure. Currently only registered users can edit. Though, currently records don't receive a review before going live, the limit number of contributors allow for direct monitoring of all edits. Eventually as the community grows, we will use the edit review features available through MediaWiki and Semantic Mediawiki software plugins.

Publications

Records of academic publications are the most important records currently being developed in our database. As an academic bibliography designed to help researchers assess the scholarship around adaptation studies, the goal is to bridge conversations between different scholarly works and their relevant impact. To create these kinds of records use Form:Publication. If you have questions about the form, or found a missing data item, please report them to AADB:Bugs.

If you are interested in creating a classroom assignment that asks students to summarize and assess adaptation scholarship or websites for inclusion in our database see AADB:In the classroom.

Creative works

Records for creative works capture the relationship of a derivative work to earlier works. These provide the foundation for the lists that each source work has, attributing the relationship between the source and it's derivative cultural texts. Please make sure to only included derivative-source relationships mentioned in scholarship or a credible source within the database should be included in these records. To create a record use Form:Creative work. If you have questions about the form, or found a missing data item, please report them to AADB:Bugs.

Eventually, these pages will also include literature surveys that assess the relative scholarship discussing the work as part of adaptation. However, such writing and tertiary work requires considerable scholarly input, and has already solicited considerable scholarship in traditional publishing circles (for instance see The Tyger chapter Roger Whitson and Jason Whittaker's recent book on William Blake's afterlife).

If you would like your students to be involved in writing literature surveys, or would like to learn more, see AADB:In the classroom.

Authors

The third kind of record currently available on the database is an author record. These records provide information about the authors of works so that lists of creative works and publications can be easily assessed. Also, the pages gather contact information and connections to external webpages that might be of use to anyone researching the author. To create a record use Form:Author. If you have questions about the form, or found a missing data item, please report them to AADB:Bugs.

The project is very much in it's early stages, only just beginning to demonstrate the potential of creating linked data around the information captured in Adaptation and Appropriation scholarship. If you are interested in giving feedback to the project, their are two ways: first, the Bugs portal allows us to work out kinks in the data structure. Much of the original data structures were adapted from systems created for the another academic wiki WikiPapers. Of course humanities scholarship sometimes needs different types of information, so we would gladly take input and feedback on the bugs page for refining the data structure.

Secondly, you could join our team, whether on the actual team building the system and managing different sub-communities of adaptation scholarship or in an advisory position on the advisory board. Because this is a digital humanities project it requires significant scholarly input and feedback to make it useful for the larger academic community. If you are interested in joining, contact the project manager Alex Stinson via the communication venues on his user page.