The Digital Scholar

Even after I decided to leave academia to pursue librarianship, I continued to hold on to the idea that some day I would write my book. I loved the epic process of writing my dissertation, and I envisioned the day when a book with my name on it would sit on someone else’s bookshelf and collect dust. But with a full-time job and two young kids, that fantasy was simply going to have to remain on hold.

Finally, my chance arrived. My wife and I decided to move to a less expensive area to live, and as part of the deal I would stop working, manage the kids, and write my book. After coordinating our move, making sure the kids kept busy over the summer, and constantly pinching myself to make sure my good fortune was real, I jumped into researching and writing the first day my kids started school in the fall. I spent my days gathering research materials, compiling data, and taking notes. By the time spring rolled around, I had learned enough about my topic to start writing, and suddenly everything grounded to a halt.

How’s the Book Coming?

I wasn’t experiencing writer’s block, nor was I bored by the project. No, what stopped me cold was that I had spent almost a year working on a book, and anytime someone asked me, “How’s the book coming?”, all I could say was, “Good, but you know it’s a long, hard process.” For all the work I had been doing, I basically had nothing tangible to show for it. More than this, the reality of how difficult it was going to be to convince a publisher to take on an unpublished, unaffiliated writer was beginning to sink in. Was I going to spend three years or more of my life isolated in my library writing a book that had no guarantee of ever being published?

I decided to switch gears and instead to start a website where I could publish the results of my year’s work. I turned my attention to creating and designing a website called Early American Crime, and then I started writing. Now when family and friends asked me how my book was coming along, I could point them to my website and show them. After awhile people I didn’t even know started responding to my posts and asking me questions. I began meeting other website authors who linked to my website and wrote about similar topics. Publishers started sending me books to review. And I watched as my site statistics continued to rise at a significant rate every month.

After several months of creating posts for my website, I realized that I hadn’t abandoned my book after all, because now I had plenty of material to package together into a book. I also discovered that there are a multitude of options and outlets for publishing my potential book. I could publish it electronically. I could publish it for free or sell it for a price that I set. I could even become my own publisher by printing, marketing, and distributing it myself. Even more, the website I built would not only provide content for my book, but it could serve as a marketing platform for it as well. And the book, in turn, would become a medium for advertising my website.

Filling a Gap

Little did I know when I started my website that I was setting myself up to become a full participant in the future of publishing. I now understood the importance of interconnecting different writing mediums and how this practice was creating a publishing revolution.

Unfortunately, when I first started publishing on the web, there didn’t seem to be a lot of guidance for someone who wanted to publish a serious website like me. Most of the books and resources about creating websites and blogs were fairly technical in their approach or were focused on how to make money through blogging. I wasn’t against making money, but doing so certainly was not the sole purpose for creating my website. In getting my website up and running, I had to filter the information I found as I went along. All the while, I wished that there was some resource that could plainly tell me the best way to create a website with my scholarly needs in mind.

The Digital Scholar is my attempt to fill this gap. Through this website, I intend to offer what I have learned, and will continue to learn, in my experience as a digital scholar. The site will also provide a platform for discussing changes in the world of publishing and how scholars will need, and want, to adapt to it. The new world of publishing offers scholarly authors more control over the dissemination of their ideas than ever before. The Digital Scholar will show you how to find fulfillment through publishing and how to empower yourself to become the scholar you always wanted to become.

I would love to hear stories from other digital scholars about why they became one, how they came up with the idea to start their project, and what their goals are for publishing. Share your experience in the comments section for this post or contact me.

Tags: D-Scholar Profiles, Digital Scholar

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Digital Scholars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.Both comments and pings are currently closed.