The research team completed the scoping study between April – July 2012 and employed qualitative research methods and conducted semi-structured interviews with all the four case studies’ participants and a focus group discussion.
The research team conducted the interviews with the case studies’ participants in person: Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico in Rome and Eugenio Tisselli in Barcelona, both in April; and, Helen Varley Jamieson and Adam Hyde in Berlin in May.
After the completion of the visits to the case studies’ participants, a two-day workshop was held in Edinburgh on 2nd and 3rd July. On the first day of the workshop, a focus group with the case studies’ participants was carried out to discuss the commonalities and differences between findings from the interviews as well as to identify issues that may not have arisen within the confines of individual interviews.
The scoping study explored “Authority, Authorship and Voice” by focussing on two broad issues: 1) Representations and understandings of multi-authored digital texts, and 2) The relationship between use of open source and changing notions of authorship, control and power.
A set of guiding questions were designed which covered the following topics: a) Scope of the term ‘digital manual’ b) Details of digital resources and output as well as role of participants c) Community formation d) Authorship and Ownership e) Openness in and Sustainability of the projects.
The scope and meaning of the term digital manual itself can be found in our blog posts here, here, here and here. Audio-visual extracts from the interviews and focus group on the other issues can be found in the sub-pages of this section.
