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Scalar Report

Phillip Cortes, Author

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Reading, Interconnection, Scales: Report and Assessment of Scalar

This report will talk about the following components: annotations, notes, media links, Scalar links, comments, tags, paths, and visualizations. This report has three purposes: exposition, evaluation, and exhortation. It intends to conduct a basic expository description of the digital components that we need to know about, to provide an evaluative discussion of the advantages of these components, and to advance an exhortative advocacy for harnessing all the resources that the Scalar platform affords us. I admit that the third purpose seems redundant, considering that everyone is, I hope, on board with using Scalar as the publication flagship for our scholarly endeavors. Notwithstanding, it is important that we realize Scalar's rich potential.

The report is organized into four main sections. The first section details what the Scalar User’s Guide identifies as “whole-part relationships” that Scalar can produce; the second describes “whole-whole relationships”; the third discusses the value of visualizations; the fourth makes concluding remarks and offers suggestions for what we might want to do. Some of the sub-sections, such as the paths sub-section, contain more substantial exposition and examination, and some, such as the media links sub-section, have more cursory explanations. From time to time, this report will be relying on the Scalar’s Users Guide found online. Additionally, this report references and provides links to existing Scalar books as examples and models for the kinds of things we should look into. The appendix contains a list of links to some exemplary Scalar books.

This report, however, will not do a step-by-step explanation of how to generate these features. It will not, for instance, tell you how to create a path. This can be done in a how-to tutorial in class in the fall. Rest assured, Scalar is, in my view, a very user-friendly platform, so it shouldn't be that difficult to learn how to use this program.

For readers not directly involved in our ballad project, I say "welcome!" You will find that this report makes references to this project, and it is probably appropriate that I fill you in on what we want to do. The project has its genesis in a series of hands-on activities we performed during the graduate seminar of Patricia Fumerton, a professor at UCSB's English department and the Early Modern Center (EMC). In this seminar, our class made paper using early modern methods and used a printing press to print an excerpt from a Renaissance ballad on the paper we made. We also hope to make woodcuts in the fall of 2014. These activities inspired Professor Fumerton to launch a peer-reviewed online journal called the emcImprint that will showcase our essays on several elements of the ballad-making process. For this to happen, we will be using Scalar as our publication platform, and we hope to integrate its features into our essays. It should be stated that the views and opinions expressed in this report are purely the author of this Scalar report and do not necessarily represent those of the journal participants and authors.



This Scalar Report can be read in five different ways: (1) in a linear fashion from the beginning to the conclusion and appendix (2) focusing on the expository elements only (3) focusing on the interpretative side (that is, the side where I offer my opinions on Scalar) (4) focusing on interpretations dealing with the  reading experience of Scalar (5) focusing on the conclusion and appendix sections only. Click on the five links below to explore the five primary path systems of this report.



Regular


Exposition


Interpretation


Experience


Tailpiece

                             



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