This contribution reflects on the value of plurality in the 'network with a thousand entrances' suggested by McCarty (http://goo.gl/H3HAfs), and others, in association with approaching time-honoured annotative and commentary practices of much-engaged texts. The question is how this approach aligns with tensions, today, surrounding the multiplicity of endeavour associated with modeling practices of annotation by practitioners of the digital humanities. Our work, hence, surveys annotative practice across its reflection in contemporary praxis, from the MIT annotation studio whitepaper (http://goo.gl/8NBdnf) through the work of the Open Annotation Collaboration (http://www.openannotation.org), and manifest in multiple tools facilitating annotation across the web up to and including widespread application in social knowledge creation suites like Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web annotation)

In 2012-2013 a team led by Ray Siemens at the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL), University of Victoria, in collaboration with Implementing New Knowledge Environments (INKE), developed three annotated bibliographies under the rubric of social knowledge creation. The items for the bibliographies were gathered and annotated by members of the Electronic Textual Cultures Lab (ETCL) to form this tripartite document as a resource for students and researchers involved in the iNKE team and well beyond, iincluding at digital humanities seminars in Bern (June 2013) and Leipzig (July 2013).

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This article reports on the ongoing social edition-building process.  Using the social edition of the Devonshire Manuscript as a case study, the authors assess the scholarly potential of editing in public with contributions and feedback from the existing knowledge communities surrounding Wikibooks, Wikipedia, Twitter, and other social media spaces. Working at the intersection of academic and social media culture, they share the feedback of their advisory board, Twitter followers, and Wikipedia editors.  

This annotated bibliography responds to and contextualizes the growing 'Open' movements and recent institutional reorientation towards social, public-facing scholarship. The aim of this document is to present a working definition of open social scholarship through the aggregation and summation of critical resources in the field. Our work surveys foundational publications, innovative research projects, and global organizations that enact the theories and practices of open social scholarship. The bibliography builds on the knowledge creation principles outlined in previous research by broadening the focus beyond conventional academic spaces and reinvigorating central, defining themes with recently published research.

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In this paper we describe our efforts towards building a framework that extends the functionality of an Open Access Repository by implementing processes that integrate the ongoing trends in social media into the context of a digital collection—while taking into account the potential of social media, the relevance of open infrastructures and the accessibility of open knowledge. We refer to these processes collectively as the Social Media Engine. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, we propose to challenge some of the preconceived notions of digital libraries by making repositories more dynamic; and second, by challenging this notion we want to promote public engagement and open scholarship. As a work in progress, we believe that a real challenge lies in emphasizing the connections between documents that can be treated as objects of study as well.

Over the past decade or so, digital humanities discussions and initiatives have become more socially oriented. i Many digital humanities practitioners are reconsidering their role in the public sphere, both in regard to the often biased structures they work in, as well as how they can better collaborate and share with wider communities. This is not to say that the digital humanities have accomplished some advanced degree of public engagement, diversity, or inclusion. They haven't. Rather, a disciplinary turn toward matters of social justice, collaboration, and social media acknowledges a changing tide of consciousness around how an academic field is constituted, as well as what its role is (or could be) in the larger social sphere.A reconsideration of the importance of social contexts, roles, and practices is afoot for personal, professional, political, and even economic reasons. As early as 1995, David W. Brown attributed government funding cuts to academics' unwillingness to engage with the public. More recent research has echoed Brown's sentiments (Jay n.p.). In the humanities, an affirmative response to this perennial call for engagement has formalized under the banner of the "public humanities," and as Sheila A. Brennan writes, "Public history and humanities practices-in either digital or analog forms-place communities, or other public audiences, at their core" (384). Opportunities emerge for digital humanities practitioners to create knowledge with each other and with members of the broader public as the humanities continue this trajectory toward social practices, considerations, and analyses. Anne Burdick et al. write in "The Social Life of the Digital Humanities," New modes of knowledge formation in the digital humanities are dynamically linked to communities vastly larger and more diverse than those to which the academy has been accustomed. These communities increasingly demand and delight in sociable intellectual interactions… (75) I interpret this claim of dynamic linkages, diverse communities, and public demand for interaction as a call to action. In response to such a call, I argue in this chapter that the digital humanities, as a field, is well poised to embrace social knowledge creation practices, and I aim to synthesize current thinking around social knowledge creation. I begin with a brief description of the premise of social knowledge creation. From there, I touch on the necessary factors that are in place to encourage social knowledge creation in the digital humanities: collaboration across groups, alternative academic publishing practices, available technology and skills, engagement with social media, open access to research, and public humanities lessons. In closing, I reinforce that the current state of digital humanities, and that of the academy more broadly, is ideal for social knowledge creation practices to proliferate. In taking advantage of this timely opportunity, academia might serve the public that funds it more readily, as well as move toward the goal of creating and sharing knowle...