All the Pages Are My Days: A Next Generation Plan for Grateful Dead Reference Works

A truism in the academic world is that it lags far behind industry in its adoption of new technologies, especially in the humanities, where traditional research models still drive the major disciplines. Yet for historians and literary scholars, the archival basis of their work has undergone a seismic set of changes in the last decade, driven substantially by advances in Internet-associated technologies.

This presentation will focus on the potential of "Web 2.0" technologies in addressing longstanding humanities research questions by grounding their discussion in the Grateful Dead Archive, which poses fascinating challenges and opportunities for archivists and scholars.

Nicholas will discuss two basic reference works being planned for the Archive, an interactive stand-alone bibliographic web site and a discography, demonstrating how these projects capitalize on emerging and established technologies to address conventional research questions in innovative ways.