Execom

 PLEASE LIST HERE EVERYTHING ELSE YOU WISH TO ADD:

1) HOME - no change

2) JOIN/RENEW - no change

3) GOVERNANCE - no change / just update regularly

4)      CAHIERS (cf A-:) - add list of Editorial board / add index to each article

5) REPERTOIRE OF SCHOLARS=MEMBERSHIP LIST (cf B-:) - find a good name

6) FORUM=SAND-BOX (cf C-:) - find a good name, salon?

7) NEWS=NEWSLETTER (cf D-:) - Newsletter is a good name ?!?

8) RESOURCES=DATABASE / who's who,  teaching resources (cf E-:) - find a good name

The web editor's job is to organize the work, to recruit (with your help) the teams, to make sure everything runs, to prepare the templates for the diverse categories (with the help of the web-designer and consultant), to consult with the execom, to present the work at the conference, and to oversee all categories and contributors.

The Secretary and the Executive Director are the only ones making changes to the Governance & Join/Renew pages, Membership Database, and Fee Manager.

F-: As soon as we have enough content to show, then we need to link the website to all wikipedia entries that are relevant to our subjects. This is less urgent because we will need to build content in order to do so, but it is vital. It is also extremely time consuming, and it is the perfect job for a summer grant or a sabbatical. We need to define how we can make this job count in a university evaluation.

G-: In the long run, we can invite sister societies to join us.

E-: the resources needs to be 2 things: a multi- and inter-disciplinary database of all the 17^th century French who's who (from writers to doctors to architects to philosophers to salonnières to courtesans to princes... well, everyone who counted), with links to other sources and links among themselves. It would take too long and too much effort to create our own dictionary, and really, all info is available already, no need to do a repeat. On the other hand, there is no place to go online to have a list of all these people.

D-: We need a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter of information relevant to the 17^th century, put on the website for all to see and search and also sent by email to our members (and Francis's list member, as he suggested).

This could be done in the form of a blog.

For this, we need to put together the biggest team of collaborators, preferably young scholars and grad students. The web-designer will be primarily responsible for providing the tech support.

C-: We replace the forum by a sand-box wiki: A specialized collaborative space where everyone can come and ask questions, create material, put ideas together and establish collaboration, seeding research projects, and publish a paragraph, a first draft, etc. Anyone can see it, but only members can edit => added value for the members: they master it but everyone can see. 

B-: The repertoire of the bio-biblio of our members is open to all and can already be viewed by everyone (except for personal info). It could be made more visible. It is mandatory for members to be in it, and it should be up to them if they want their personal info given or not. The web-designer should be able to create a way to let the members decide if they want they personal info visible by all or only by members (encode an option).

We don't have content that a search engine can find (big problem), because we don't generate information:

A-: Cahiers: the quickest way to add content to our website is to generate information with the Cahiers. We have an enormous source of information, and it is available to the public, but not necessarily visible. ROSE SHOULD ENTER THE DISCUSSION AT THIS POINT, with her ideas about how to better the Cahiers' website:  

My preliminary  ideas are as follow:

2) We are not linked to anything on the web (like Wikipedia, big problem) because of 3)

3) We don't have content that a search engine can find (big problem), because we don't generate information:

2) and 3) are linked together: How to create / generate content so we can be searchable:

Our website is not showing in almost any Google search because:

1) The name is not specific enough (not really a problem)

• People search for key words, or sentences everywhere on the web (i.e. google) 
• Very few people log on to a specific site, unless it's a search engine (i.e. Amazon) 
• Information is free and readily available. No one wants to pay or wait when they can go to the next link and get what they want. What's important is to be the first one to say/share the information. 
• Our presence on the web is done through 2 ways: our content and our site linked to other sites that have content. RIGHT NOW, we have these rubrics on the website:

According to the discussions we have been having for the past 2-3 years, it is my understanding that we would like to be the site where people (scholars, students, journalists, general public?) needing any kind of information on 17th century France (any discipline) would come to.

We therefore need to have content (with other sites linking to it), and link to other sites which have the content we don't have.

 DO YOU AGREE WITH THIS? ANY SUGGESTIONS? RESPOND HERE BELOW:

I would like to know if there is any student of yours who would be interested to be part of this workforce. Institutions often have summer grant money for hiring students for tech development stuff. If a member in charge of one of these projects (or not) could apply through their institutions (like Katherine did for the Cahiers money last summer to get lots archived), that would make our dollar go further. RA students could also be involved.

PLEASE RESPOND HERE BELOW WITH YOUR THOUGHTS AND SUGGESTIONS:

I have to organize a task-force with a team of young scholars and grad students who will be willing to dig specific information for the website. Maybe the members at large could be involved in this part also? The editorial board of the Cahiers (D-:)?We need to give this team some recognition in the form of a title, for it to count for tenure review or as a line in their CV. It will be a lot of work on their part and they should be compensated for it.

Has the following items:

We have been talking back and forth about joining or not the positions of web-editor and bibliographer. We can either combine both positions, or keep the web-editor position and redefine the position of the bibliographer for the purpose of the website. Personally it doesnt matter, whatever is easier for the by-laws, but I guess we could use a bibliographer at this point. Just for the purpose of clarity, I have separated the two positions in part e) STAFFING.

REQUEST YOUR THOUGHTS (as COMMENTS) ON THE MATTER BELOW: 

We agree with Katherine that keeping Tad Macy on board (our actual web-designer who has worked with Katherine since the beginning of the website at Bowdoin) will save time and energy, and we are very willing to work with him, if he is interested in the position. If he agrees to take the responsibility and work for us as freelance, I propose to spend the money we set aside for a web-designer and hire him. The society and Tad Macy will need to establish a contract in which we will need to detail the exact functions and responsibilities he would have.

For the SE17 excom:

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