CLAGS Agenda

From Tangents Group

Here is the CLAGS Meeting Agenda from June 1

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Info & Agenda for meeting June 1-2, 2007

LGTBQ History Website Development.

MEETING INFO, FRIDAY, JUNE 1, SATURDAY& JUNE 2

Time: 10:15 am – 6 pm

Place: CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street, Room 6417

Supported by: The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies under a 2-year grant from the Arcus Foundation. Friday and Saturday breakfasts and lunches donated by Restaurant Florent.

BEFORE THE MEETING:

1. LGBT History

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history

[on Wikipedia create, add to, or modify some entry and study the “discussion” section of an entry]

2. Out of the Past: 400 Years of Lesbian and Gay History in America

http://www.pbs.org/outofthepast/

[PBS website and film; asks for and includes user responses]

3. The Pink and the Blue: Lesbian and Gay Life at Yale and in Connecticut, 1642-2004

http://www.yale.edu/lesbiangay/Pages/Archive/PNBNav.html

[curated by Jonathan Ned Katz; designed by Andrew Sloat; based on an exhibit at Yale in 2004]

4. GLBTQ.com

http://www.glbtq.com/

[a scholar-edited, scholar-written free online encyclopedia; not specifically a history site but good looking and worth studying for inspiration]

5. Stein, Marc, ed.

Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History in America (Scribers)

http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/

[This is a commercial electronic publication for which a user needs to get access through a library that subscribes to the electronic version, or has bought the hard copy edition. This is probably the single most professional reference source on U.S. LGBTQ history now in existence (2007). As such it is worth studying for what it suggests about the content and arrangement of our website. This book includes a preface, historical introduction, a 24-page chronology of U.S. lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender history, followed by an encyclopedic listing of alphabetical entries, for example: Actors and Actresses; Addams, Jane; Advertising; Advocate; African Americans; African American LGBTQ Organizations and Periodicals; African American Religion and Spirituality; African American Studies; AIDS and People with AIDS; AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP); etc. It ends with a list of contributors and their brief biographies and an index.]

AGENDA FOR FRIDAY, JUNE 1

1. Introductions.

2. The goal of this meeting: discussions to provide consensus of the group so that directors can make decisions informed by group input.

3. Overview of major topics we need to discuss each day of the meeting given that not everyone can attend both days.

4. “A Charter for this Web Site Project?” Jonathan Ned Katz, Acting Director

Group Discussion: facilitated by psychologist Robert Benton to answer the following questions:

5. What are our big, long-run visions and goals for this LGBTQ history website?

Can we agree

(1) that this history site will focus on change and stasis over time within particular, changing social contexts -- that time will be the essence of this site?

(2) that this site will focus on the activity of people over time, the events they created, the effects they produced?

(3) on the value of innovation in representing time and history on this website in ways different than in articles or books? What are the ways that history is creatively represented on websites and visually? Timelines. Stop motion still photography. Motion pictures: turning pages of a calendar. Clock. Hourglass. Numbers. Photos that place an event or person in a specific time. Other and new ways made possible by a website?

(4) that this site will include different levels of empirical data and interpretation, serving a popular audience, and that it will also attempt to foster complex, critical, analytical thinking about LGBTQ history?

(5) that this site will be designed as a teaching tool, and that volunteer scholar/teachers and their students may provide an important source of content?

6. What is our short-range, practical vision of the prototype that we will create in the next two years?

Discuss U.S. history as focus of prototype, including an on-site entry on transnational and other conceptual frameworks, and links with other LGBTQ history sites around the world.

7. Scholar/teacher-volunteered, -directed, -reviewed, -produced content as a major source. Discuss content components of prototype already volunteered:

Chicago LGBTQ history (D’Emilio, director)

African American LGBTQ history (Nyong’o, director)

Colonial American LGBTQ history (Katz, director)

Native American LGBTQ history (Williams, director; Williams will also contribute a timeline on the history of the LGBT rights movement in the U.S.)

Organizing in high schools, colleges, universities; and the portrayal of LGBTQ youth in the media (Ullman, director)

8. Solicit additional scholar-directed content based on (1) priorities established by advisors at this meeting and (2) the particular interests of scholar/teacher volunteers:

Lesbian history component?

Transgender history component?

Component on persons born female who passed as men?

Sodomy law history component?

Obscenity law history component?

Marriage in historical perspective component?

Gays in the military in historical perspective component?

The history of the essentialism/constructionism debate?

Other sources of content? (for example, republish old bibliographies on LGBTQ literature; reprint old medical journal articles; republish popular history essays; publish chapters deleted from published books.)

9. Who do we imagine will be the users of this site and what will each user-group be looking for?

Teachers? (How do we encourage teachers to use this site as a teaching tool in which their students research, write, and publish entries?)

Students? LGBTQ youths? LGBTQ elders? The general public? Scholars? Journalists? Others? If young people are a large potential audience for this site, should some material be labeled as sexually explicit or otherwise controversial or age inappropriate?

10. User-created content component of prototype: an experiment in history by the people.

The Wikipedia model v. the GLBTQ.com model. Combining both models as an experiment that is reevaluated as we see what happens. The quality control/credibility issue . How important is quality control if user-created content is distinguished on the site from scholar-reviewed, fact-checked content? Can we encourage user-created corrections and expansions? How to respond to homophobic, obscene, factually incorrect, irrelevant, illegal, and otherwise problematic user-created content? How can we encourage users of the site to interact with it, comment on entries, discuss its mission, etc.? (See “Discussion” section of entries on Wikipedia.)

11. Discuss the first day’s proceedings and agenda for the following day.

AGENDA FOR SATURDAY, JUNE 2

1. Review, discuss, evaluate previous day’s meeting. Add to, modify agenda for second day.

2. Staffing and Structure of this Web Site Project under the sponsorship of CLAGS and a two-year grant from the Arcus Foundation.

Director of CLAGS

CLAGS Website Project Coordinator

CLAGS Development Director/Fundraiser for Project

CLAGS Accountant for Project

CLAGS Board of Directors

Directors of Site (2 or 3 volunteers at this meeting?)

Volunteer Directors of Particular Content Components

What future staffing will be needed?

New scholar volunteer directors of content.

Volunteer Editors, Copy Editors, Fact Checkers, Researchers

Volunteer Directors of Volunteers, Publicity, and Public Relations

Volunteer Website Manager (webmaster)

Volunteer Consultants

Financial Planning and Fundraising Consultant

Legal Consultant

Technical Planning Consultant

Active Advisory Board

Honorary Board

3. Discuss charter as public mission statement for site.

4. What can we learn from other models that can be applied to this history site?

Are there one or more volunteers who will survey, study, list, & report on good and bad features of existing LGBTQ history websites; other history websites; other suggestive websites; and other models such as historical encyclopedias and dictionaries, and history museums? If volunteers are not forthcoming at the meeting, mandate site directors to seek reports on existing web sites and other models.

5. Creating and maintaining interest in the site.

How can this website be made exciting, and maintained as such? Can scholar/teacher directors of particular content components plan to add new material on a regular basis? Can we plan to solicit and encourage material (1) that touches on the history of current topics in the news: e.g., same-sex marriage and gays in the military; (2) about famous or controversial LGBTQ people; (3) referring to significant anniversaries (e.g., the 100 birthday of Lincoln Kirstein); (5) include stories of particular people; (6) solicit visual and aural, as well as written content; (7) ask on the site for content on particular topics.

6. Site functions.

Mandate site directors to ask meeting participants and other advisors about what functions they would like the site to include, based on this sample list:

Home

Mission

Credits

Help <how to use site; site guide, sitemap>

Contribute <audio materials, copy editing, data, documents, editing, fact checking, financial support, research, suggestions, visual materials, written materials>

Discuss <the site; an entry>

Contact

Links <to archives, relevant websites, blogs>

News <current events, upcoming events, new on the site>

Featured <points users to changing, featured content>

Timeline <by year, month, day, decade, century, period, etc. Include major events in LGBTQ history along with major events in American history>

Search <by time (year, month, day, decade, century, period, etc.) names of events/actions, peoples’ names, identity groups, organization names, places, written texts, pictures, audio, documents, bibliographies, biographies, keywords, etc.>

Issues <in LGBTQ History; essentialism/constructionism; lesbian v. gay history; national v. transnational history, sexuality v. gender, etc.>

Map <of U.S. as way to get to place designated info>

Learn/Teach <learning module/program, teaching module/program>

Visit Counter <?>

7. Content solicitation.

Mandate site directors to solicit written, visual, and aural content. For example: (1) original, unpublished research by scholars; (2) out-of-print content from book and article writers; (3) visual materials from collectors of advertisements, art, book illustrations, book jackets, movie stills, photographs, postcards, posters, sheet music, stamps, tchockies; archives; historical societies; individuals (for example, photo albums that visualize a way of life); volunteer artists, photographers.

8. Financing the site.

Mandate the site directors to solicit a financial planner and/or marketing expert to volunteer to study whether this site could become at least partially self-supporting by including some sort of inoffensive advertising, or by developing some other commercial spin-off. Do people at the meeting object to advertising on the site? Do people at the meeting know of wealthy individuals, or people in corporations or foundations that might get excited about this project?

9. Domain name.

Mandate site directors to develop criteria for choosing a domain name for the site and to recommend one to the Advisory Board. For example, explore: how important a .org” domain name is, a unique made-up name (like Google), a short name, a descriptive name? Develop criteria for names to avoid: e.g., names that will date or exclude; long names. Consider negotiating to buy an already existing domain name.

10. Criteria for evaluating prototype.

Mandate site directors to develop criteria for evaluating the success of the online prototype at the end of year one and year two.

11. Contact list.

Meeting participants and other contributors to the site should sign up to connect with each other via Internet by joining our Google Group listserve at: http://groups.google.com/group/lgbtq-history

12. Last comments or questions?

Donations

Donations allow the Tangents Group to continue its work and keeps this site online. If you would like to sponsor a specific page, please include the topic in the comment on the donation.