Baraniuk’s vision of an open source system for sharing digital texts is consistent with our vision for the History of Missiology web site though admittedly a few steps further down the road. We are trying to provide a body of texts that can support teaching, research, investigation, and conversation about the the beginnings of Christianity in the non western world, the founding of indigenous churches, and early theories of comparative religion. Mission thinkers produced some of the first ethnographic studies of people in primal societies, and histories of encounters between westerners and people from Asia, Africa, and the America. In a course setting, the site provides for the students and professor to engage in conversation through blogs, discussion forums, and chat. Baraniuk has taken the vision a step further to encourage a real mashup of the texts in a way that I find to be a really fascinating possibility.
Naturally, his vision has enormous implication for scholarly publishing…
Engineering professor Richard Baraniuk talks about his vision for Connexions, an open-source system that lets teachers share digital texts and course materials, modify them and give them to their students — all free, thanks to Creative Commons licensing.