[Patina] distributed cognition refereces

[Enrico Costanza]

Hello.

Thanks Luc for setting up the mailing list and wiki.

I promised some references on the "Distributed Cognition" framework
which can be useful for observing and analysing existing practices of
archaeologists' computer use.

A good introductory paper is:
http://mcs.open.ac.uk/yr258/papers/dcog/dcog-brief-intro.pdf
(maybe enough at this stage)

This HCI book: http://www.id-book.com/
also covers the basics of how to apply distributed cognition to a field
observation (pp 394-399).

The paper that is often cited as seminal for Distributed Cognition is:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.84.4210&rep=rep1&type=pdf
This however is less practical for our context.

Another more theoretical paper:
http://www.springerlink.com/index/BMWNJ1NFHWTW136V.pdf

Tom, at the risk of stating the obvious, when I started doing this kind
of field work I was given the following suggestions:
-  use a digital voice recorder, because they have better microphones
than an average cell phone, and they are quite inexpensive, for example:
http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/product.asp?product=1388
(always ask permission at the beginning of the recording);
- even though you are recording, try to take as many notes as possible,
and use the recording as a failback; transcribing can be very time
consuming (if you have to transcribe, there are free software
applications that make it easier);
- if possible take photos.

I hope this helps.

Best,
Enrico

-- 
Dr Enrico Costanza
Lecturer, Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia Group
School of Electronics and Computer Science
University of Southampton, UK, SO17 1BJ

http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ec
http://d-touch.org