What forms can collaborative writing and research take? What diverse audiences might they address? What role can technology play in collaboration? The examples of collaborative projects on this page of Collaborate! suggest some--but only some--models for collaborative writing and research. For additional examples of collaborative writing and research, browse the additional projects included at Links.

Collaboration and The Great War Documentary

In "Doing Public History: Producing The Great War for PBS and BBC," distinguished historian Jay Winter describes the varying kinds of collaboration crucial to the success of this important documentary series. Perhaps more important, Winter describes the difficulties of such collaboration, noting that he had to be willing and able to take criticism from members of groups he was collaborating with as well as from fellow academics and critics. As a result, Winter argues that senior scholars in the Humanities cannot leave this hard collaborative work to junior colleagues, especially assistant professors without tenure. Instead, well established and secure full professors must take the lead in creating and carrying out such large-scale projects. Indeed,projects like The Great War simply cannot be carried out by individuals, no matter how talented, creative, and dedicated. If we want to preserve public history, Winter says, we must be not just willing but eager to participate in big and often messy collaborations.

Collaboration and ArtShow, a project featuring youth arts groups

For the last dozen years, Shirley Brice Heath and a group of collaborative researchers have been documenting the practices of youth art groups around the United States as part of an effort to demonstrate--to public policy makers, funding agencies, and the public--the essential value of arts and humanities to young people. To make this case most persuasively, Heath needed to go beyond the traditional audiences that a book or research report might reach. The result, a documentary film entitled ArtShow (screened during autumn 2000 on many PBS stations and described at www.shirleybriceheath.com) required over two years of intensive collaboraiton among Heath, members of the original research group, the young people involved in the four groups the film features, film directors and editors, digital sound and visual effects experts, and other technical artists. Like The Great War, this project aims to bring humanities research to a broad public audience, and to affect public policy as well.

Collaboration among University and Community groups

• At Carnegie Mellon University, a well established community-university collaborative is at work on a range of issues related to community literacies. This project and the research carried out within it have identified, described, and enacted the "intercultural collaboration" that serves as the vision and mission for the center and adumbrated a theory of "rivaling," a critical practice that is constitutive of effective youth involvement in the community (see http://english.cmu.edu/clc/).