What is Needed for the Website?
The Finnish Studies in the Web
1. The Aim of the Project:
The aim of the project is to create "Finnish Studies in the Internet" with needed materials and intellectual resources serving regional, national and worldwide interests in Finnish studies, and related fields. Scientific communication has moved from material spaces to virtual spaces, and current software offers easy-to-use ways to build a Finnish studies community in the Internet serving.
Thus this website is not only for 'marketing', or general information, but also -- and even primarily -- for teachers' and students' use, a (hopefully useful and powerful) tool for research, teaching, and information in the area of Finnish Studies and related fields.
2. General & Elementary Questions:
-Technical resource, who's going to be hired to do the website? Where's the money for it?
--> Klaas and I discussed hiring a student to design a new website over the summer. I have a student in mind that I'll contact. As for the funding, this can be brought up as an agenda item to the GOFDANS committee.
-From where the project gets continuing support for technical solutions and updates?
--> The website should be designed in such a way that it's easy to update, either Klaas or I, or the current GOFDANS holder can update it.
[ I think we should reach for the website that could be totally wiki-based for the easy up-dates (I don't think it's a good idea to think that you should take the task of up-dating all the possible materials). Instead, as wiki "ideologue" goes, everyone with proper ID and password could have an access and possibility to edit the pages.]
3. Website "philosophy":
-Interactive approach (wiki-based option for inside and outside contributions)
--What would be alumni Finnish Chairs' options to contribute?
--- What’s the recent policy with visitors Internet ID’s for blogs, and websites?
--> My opinion is that simplicity should be a top consideration in both the design and maintenance of the website. We will have to research the policy with respect to former GOFDANS holders access to the website, if we want to include that.
4. Website Contents:
-Links to the following (and other sites):
--Finnish courses in UMN
--Finnish Studies elsewhere (i.e. http://ies.berkeley.edu/fsp/finnishstudies/index.html)
--> I have a list of where Finnish is taught in the US and Canada.
--Finnish community (and others):
---www.finlandiafoundation.org
---www.minnesotafinnish.org
---www.finnfaca.org
---www.salolampi.org
---virtual.finland.fi
-Data-base for articles, course materials etc. in Finnish studies and related fields
--Immigration History Research Center at http://www.ihrc.umn.edu/
-Finnish language resources on the Internet
--donnerwetter.kielikeskus.helsinki.fi/FinnishforForeigners
--www.yle.fi/opinportti/supisuomea/
--en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_language
--www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/Finnish.html
-News-site for upcoming events (with an easy option to add an event [wiki-based?])
-->Yes, this should be easy to update.
-Podcasting (Finnish language studies)
--www.yle.fi/podcast.html
-Lectures
--> Can this be subsumed under upcoming events above in a single category?
[This entry (should it be [?] study materials) refers to actual papers, audio lectures, even lectures with moving images (see i.e. MIT's webpage, see http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html), which can be downloaded from the web.]
-News
--www.hs.fi
--www.yle.fi
-An edited e-journal (?) (or more mildly working papers e-series)