Register here if you are interested in joining a pilot 4S conference archiving project focused on a particular session of the 2019 4S conference. Session organizers are especially well positioned to take this on but other session participants can also take the lead (serving as archive author). A session archive can be minimalist, simply including abstracts and information about organizers and presenters. A session archive can also be rich with content, including the full text of papers, slides from presentations, audio or video recordings of presentations or discussions, photographs of the session or from the research presented, and so on. Archive authors will be responsible for obtaining signed consent from session presenters who provide content or are included in audio or video recordings. If audience members will be recorded, this should be announced at the start of the session and indicated on the consent form. Space in this project is limited. If space remains available, registration will remain open through September 15, 2019. Archives should be complete and ready for public release by November 15, 2019.
The archive will be hosted at https://stsinfrastructures.org/. Instructions for uploading content and stylesheets to guide layout will be provided.
For ideas, see this archive of videos from the 4S 2019 meeting in Sydney. Also see exhibits in the STS Across Borders project (built in advance of Sydney meeting) and in the Innovating STS project (built in advance of the New Orleans meeting). Authors of these exhibits worked side-by-side, in dialogue with each other for months in advance of the meetings in Sydney and New Orrleans, in process building new social connections as well as impressive archival content.
This pilot project will contribute to the historical record of STS and 4S while also experimenting with ways 4S can extend virtual participation in its events by infrastructuring scholarly exchange beyond the confines of traditional face-to-face meetings. In the future, for example, sessions could be partially achieved in advance of a face-to-face meeting, allowing for online collaborative engagement before or instead of travel to the meeting. This would allow participation without the expense and climate impact of physical travel. It also would allow people to participate who can’t cross borders or chose not to for political reasons.