| 29 | | Building on the affordances of TK3, Stein began to imagine ways to add a networked component to the authoring and reading of media-rich texts, as well as a timeline to allow time-based events on individual pages. Sophie therefore not only adds a networked component to authoring and reading, but offers users the ability to craft "books" that hover somewhere between films and traditional texts. [[BR]] |
| 30 | | |
| 31 | | In 2004, the Mellon Foundation became intrigued by the potential of Sophie to contribute to emerging forms of scholarly communication and the restructuring of scholarly publishing in a digital era. Mellon subsequently funded Sophie with three grants; the first grant helped further develop Sophie's authoring functionality, while the second grant recognized the need to radically expand Sophie. These two grants pushed Sophie to the Early Release version in March 2007 and the Sophie 1.0 release in April 2008 respectively. Sophie was also awarded a grant from the !MacArthur Foundation in 2007, and this, too, helped introduce a stable version of Sophie to a broader community of users in 2008. [[BR]] |
| 32 | | |
| 33 | | Sophie is currently being significantly revised and improved, thanks to a third grant from the Mellon Foundation in October, 2008 and to a Java codebase contributed by Astea Solutions, a company formed to design and develop proprietary and open source electronic publishing products. With this funding, Sophie is not only being rewritten in Java to enhance its stability, but is being transformed from its initial iteration as a powerful multimedia authoring too into a reading and authoring environment that incorporates the recent cultural shifts instigated by social networking and software. Sophie 2.0, then, will understand and facilitate reading and authoring as socially mediated acts. [[BR]] |
| 34 | | |
| 35 | | With the revision, the new Sophie Reader will be browser-based, offering even easier access to – and sharing of – Sophie projects. Sophie 2.0 will also allow the embedding of Sophie Books as applets on any Web page, and the new version will support Adobe Flash. In addition, Sophie 2.0 will be accompanied by full-scale support for an emerging Sophie user community. [[BR]] |
| 36 | | |
| 37 | | USC became involved with Sophie officially in xx of 2xxx. However, USC had for many years followed and supported Bob Stein's research. A frequent lecturer across the campus, Stein was also a Senior Fellow in the Annenberg School, and the Institute for the Future of the Book was initially housed between USC and Columbia University. USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy, a research unit within the School of Cinematic Arts, has also used Sophie extensively. Through the IML, for example, Sophie was introduced to undergraduates in General Education courses, as well as to students in the IML's Honors in Multimedia Program in 2007 and 2008. [[BR]] |
| 38 | | |
| 39 | | USC's support for Sophie has also included funding a week-long workshop for scholars in May 2008, during which Sophie's affordances were tested in practice in tandem with discussions regarding the ways in which Sophie transforms the traditional acts of scholarly reading and writing. Organized and led by the IML, the workshop raised several key conceptual issues. One of these centered on the tension between understanding Sophie as a compositional environment that sparks new forms of writing, in opposition to imagining Sophie to be an aggregator, or a space for gathering and displaying various texts and media objects. Another key issue centered on the tensions among text, audio and video: what takes precedence? How does one orchestrate these elements effectively? And how do readers learn now to "read" these media-rich texts? More than that, though, the workshop prompted discussions of the conceptual work to come.[[BR]] |
| | 29 | Building on the affordances of TK3, Stein began to imagine ways to add a networked component to the authoring and reading of media-rich texts, as well as a timeline to allow time-based events on individual pages. Sophie therefore not only adds a networked component to authoring and reading, but offers users the ability to craft "books" that hover somewhere between films and traditional texts. [[BR]] |
| | 30 | |
| | 31 | In 2004, the Mellon Foundation became intrigued by the potential of Sophie to contribute to emerging forms of scholarly communication and the restructuring of scholarly publishing in a digital era. Mellon subsequently funded Sophie with three grants; the first grant helped further develop Sophie's authoring functionality, while the second grant recognized the need to radically expand Sophie. These two grants pushed Sophie to the Early Release version in March 2007 and the Sophie 1.0 release in April 2008 respectively. Sophie was also awarded a grant from the !MacArthur Foundation in 2007, and this, too, helped introduce a stable version of Sophie to a broader community of users in 2008. [[BR]] |
| | 32 | |
| | 33 | Sophie is currently being significantly revised and improved, thanks to a third grant from the Mellon Foundation in October, 2008 and to a Java codebase contributed by Astea Solutions, a company formed to design and develop proprietary and open source electronic publishing products. With this funding, Sophie is not only being rewritten in Java to enhance its stability, but is being transformed from its initial iteration as a powerful multimedia authoring too into a reading and authoring environment that incorporates the recent cultural shifts instigated by social networking and software. Sophie 2.0, then, will understand and facilitate reading and authoring as socially mediated acts. [[BR]] |
| | 34 | |
| | 35 | With the revision, the new Sophie Reader will be browser-based, offering even easier access to – and sharing of – Sophie projects. Sophie 2.0 will also allow the embedding of Sophie Books as applets on any Web page, and the new version will support Adobe Flash. In addition, Sophie 2.0 will be accompanied by full-scale support for an emerging Sophie user community. [[BR]] |
| | 36 | |
| | 37 | USC became involved with Sophie officially in xx of 2xxx. However, USC had for many years followed and supported Bob Stein's research. A frequent lecturer across the campus, Stein was also a Senior Fellow in the Annenberg School, and the Institute for the Future of the Book was initially housed between USC and Columbia University. USC's Institute for Multimedia Literacy, a research unit within the School of Cinematic Arts, has also used Sophie extensively. Through the IML, for example, Sophie was introduced to undergraduates in General Education courses, as well as to students in the IML's Honors in Multimedia Program in 2007 and 2008. [[BR]] |
| | 38 | |
| | 39 | USC's support for Sophie has also included funding a week-long workshop for scholars in May 2008, during which Sophie's affordances were tested in practice in tandem with discussions regarding the ways in which Sophie transforms the traditional acts of scholarly reading and writing. Organized and led by the IML, the workshop raised several key conceptual issues. One of these centered on the tension between understanding Sophie as a compositional environment that sparks new forms of writing, in opposition to imagining Sophie to be an aggregator, or a space for gathering and displaying various texts and media objects. Another key issue centered on the tensions among text, audio and video: what takes precedence? How does one orchestrate these elements effectively? And how do readers learn now to "read" these media-rich texts? More than that, though, the workshop prompted discussions of the conceptual work to come.[[BR]] |
