Dear Air-L Members, First, let me introduce myself to the wider community, since this is my first post here... my name is Jason Young, and I am currently a graduate student in Geography at the University of Washington. While I am still in the beginning stages of my PhD program, I am planning to use my doctoral research to explore the implications of digital technologies for Inuit as they engage in politics of environmentalism in the Arctic. I am writing to the listserv because I would like to invite you all to participate in a digital, scholarly experiment that I started last week. I have become increasingly interested in leveraging digital technologies to open up traditionally closed aspects of the graduate experience. In this spirit I decided to blog an aspect of my graduate work which is traditionally only open to the members of my doctoral community. In particular I blogged my Preliminary Examination this past weekend, which is essentially a practice version of our General or Comprehensive Exams. This exam is designed to explore what knowledge I currently have of relevant literature, in order to suggest further readings which will help me progress in my intellectual development. Opening the Exam process to many eyes has left me feeling a little vulnerable, especially since Prelims is designed to expose holes in my current academic knowledge. However, I am really hoping that this process might help me to gain access to and learn from a wide range of perspectives on my work, and also perhaps to provide a resource for other students as they go through similar exam processes. I thought Air-L might be a good target audience, both because you all might be interested in this type of digital scholarship and also because most of my scholarship has been limited to geographical understandings of technology. I would love suggestions and ideas on readings, etc., which might help me to explore the great work going on across other disciplines. If you are at all interested in the process, you can find more information here: < http://jasoncyoung.com/home/digital-experimentation-expanding-the-preliminary-examination/>. I would certainly appreciate any time you might be able to spend taking a look at the exam, and highly encourage commenting! Thanks so much, Jason PS. Apologies for any duplicate emails via cross-posting!