>>Community Report COMMUNITY REPORT 2001: Christie Carson Christie Carson Director, Centre of Multimedia Performance History Department of Drama and Theatre Royal Holloway, University of London Which recently completed digital projects are making a difference in the work of those using them and why? Which issues were the most important of the year and what appear to be some of the promising avenues forward? I would like to make observations on three related subjects which touch on the above questions: 1) the relationship between resource creators and resource consumers, 2) the process of creating collections of digital resources and 3) the importance of networking as a communications medium rather than just a medium of information retrieval. The Relationship between Resource Creators and Resource Consumers: Real Change On the first issue I suggest that while digital resources make possible the introduction of new pedagogical practices it is my experience that time, facilities and institutional pressures of all kinds have prevented teaching practices in universities from moving very far at all. I have spent the last two years splitting my time between the UK and Canada and have found, on both sides of the ocean, that while students respond very well to new resources and new approaches to the delivery of material, my colleagues have difficulty making the conceptual and practical leaps required to radically alter their teaching practices. I suggest that creators of new resources need to return to the classroom to get a real sense of the kind of response their work might generate. I also suggest that resource creators will need to help teachers to reconceive their approaches and as well as help to change institutional practices if real changes in teaching and research are to be seen. Creating Collections of Digital Resources With the second issue, the creation of collections of digital resources, I would like to question the desire to remove personality and perspective from our research work. The most useful resources for my teaching and research work at the moment are curated collections which specify their position and objectives very clearly. They are also collections which draw together work which shares a methodological approach. The Digital Performance Archive at Nottingham Trent University, for example, brings together an archive of information about performances which include elements of digital and live performance during the two year period of 1999-2000. The other resources which I draw on heavily are the five services of the Arts and Humanities Data Service in the UK, but particularly the Performing Arts Data Service with which I work very closely. The notion of creating an objective collection of any kind is increasingly questionable. I suggest that the more specific and transparent collection-making becomes the more useful those collections will be. An example of this new avenue forward is the Library of Congress and Smithsonian joint project to develop an archive of the material placed on the web in response to the events of September 11, 2001. Networking as Communications Not Just Information Retrieval. The final point I would like to make is the importance of the old meaning of the word networking in this new networking environment. The fact that we have instant access to other scholars but also to creative practitioners has altered my approach to building and promoting the use of networked resources. In the field of Drama and Theatre the desire to shift the focus of analysis from the products of creativity to the process of creativity is greatly enhanced by using the communications properties, as well as the preservation and distribution properties, of the networking medium at our disposal. The speed of this communication as well its informality far outstrip the possibility of exchange provided by journal publication. It is for this reason that I feel that debates of this kind have an inherent value. This kind of exchange - fast, frank and friendly - is new to academic publishing, it therefore constitutes a new kind of research practice in itself. Therefore, to my mind one of the most promising avenues forward in terms of networking cultural heritage is to return to the social practices of networking, an inherently and unashamedly personal practice