Britain and the Sea:
Estimate of Difficulty

This is a very ambitious project, which is good - projects should be ambitious - but with acute difficulties and perhaps necessary steps to take in order to overcome them:
  1. I know of no web project which will offer so much high-level text together with such a large pool of associated images. Web lectures do indeed exist, but are often less substantial - and the papers in Britain and the Sea will be highly illustrated;
  2. If the authors are not to be scared off by mention of the web, an editor will be needed to convert the naked essays into illustrated web pages, and to liaise with the authors to ensure they remain happy;
  3. it might be tacically useful to gain agreement at an early stage from four or five willing authors so as to indicate when approaching the remainder that the ball is already rolling, and has met acceptance in the academic world;
  4. whether the authors will be happy to write directly along the themes I have suggested, or demand to write what they wish, will depend in part on the tact of the editor and the list of names already gathered for the project;
  5. some potential authors might be put off by prejudice against the web as a supposedly lightweight medium;
  6. One way of combatting the above point would be to check the status this project might have in the academic world: that is, how could it be made to count within the Research Assessment Exercise, so that your authors could get their work counted as research papers just as tghey would be in refereed print publications? To find the answer, you should talk to some high-up University administrator, and see if a strategy suggests itself;
  7. another useful linkup might be with a Department of Art History, such as that of Professor William Vaughan at Birkbeck. He has been interested in computers in Art History for a long time, and they offer an MA in this area. Might some of their students like to help with the project, perhaps as elements in their dissertation or practical work?
  8. as well as payment for the essays, I suggest you think of offering each author 10 (or more) CDROM versions of the project (obviously not the whole thijng, which would be too big; but sufficient to give a flavour); these they could then distribute as they would offprints, thereby enhancing their credibility in the eyes of web-rabid university administrators, and that of the project as well;