NINES, or how a site can find and create scholarship

This week, my colleagues and I were tasked to explore Nineteenth-century Scholarship Online, or NINES as it is more commonly called.  Upon first glance, the organization’s page seemed a bit dull, to be quite frank.  Visually, there was not much appealing and, if one were to scroll downwards, it appears to refer visitors away from the main page and instead to federated websites of specific authors.  In short, my first impression was less than favourable.

But then I began exploring.  The centre part of the page features an area entitled Recent News, where within are Images of the Week.  I selected the Ad for Panorama of Pilgrim’s Progress, submitted by one Dana Wheeles.  While intriguing in its advertisement of the Library of Congress’s American Time Capsule Collection which “invites visitors to see a panoramic exhibition of the famous religious narrative, and promises it will be ‘instructive and entertaining to a high degree,’” my eye was directed to the following text: “Browse this saved search in NINES to learn more about the reception of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress in the nineteenth century.”

When I clicked upon the link, I found myself at a results page for Pilgrim’s Progress and related materials.  Adjacent to each result were buttons labeled “collect” and “discuss”.  Intrigued, I selected “collect”.  Immediately it was requested I log in to perform such an action.  I obliged, scribing my name and password.  Upon doing so, the log in screen vanished, leaving me back at the results page.  What occurred?  What did collect do?

I spotted a tab in the upper left hand screen labeled “My9s”.  Clicking it, I found my answer.  When one performs a search on NINES and then selects “collect” they are able to save their search results for use at a later time and date.  This struck me as brilliant.  Often times, searches performed on library websites leave the user having to record their results in some fashion (at least, that is the experience of this researcher.  Perhaps I am missing a simple step . . .).  “My9s”, however, also allows users to create exhibits, which allows scholars to display their search results—as well as personal scholarship—to other users.  Discussions, it appears, can also spring from these exhibits. 

The ability to perform such a task is something new and innovative I have yet to encounter elsewhere.  Being able to share one’s cumulative results, demonstrating to other users of this site how the research is all interconnected creates, dare I say, a community of scholarship and of scholars.  Other NINES users are able to explore how others are utilizing the site and begin to think of research in a different manner. 

It reminds me of the discussion we had several weeks ago during one of our sessions – what can these sites do aside from just provide scholarship and digitized manuscripts in a database format?  NINES answers this call by allowing individuals to search their database, save and accumulate their results, and then synthesize the items into something that is able to be shared with other scholars.  Not only is it providing scholarship it is creating it as well.  Brilliant.