Sherlockian.Net now based at Michigan State University

The official date of the change is October 14, 2016, and transfer of the domain name and site content to Michigan State will happen over the next few weeks. The site will now be managed by WIDE director Dr. Liza Potts and her colleagues, including Kristen Mapes, digital humanities specialist for MSU’s College of Arts and Letters.

Sherlockian.Net will continue to have close links with the traditional Sherlockian world. Liza Potts herself is a member of the Greek Interpreters, the Sherlockian society in East Lansing, Michigan. In addition, an advisory board for the website will be announced, drawing on the expertise of Sherlockians from across North America.

“WIDE is committed to conducting research and providing sustainability for significant cultural projects,” says Potts. “Like many of you, we consider Sherlockian.Net to be an established, useful resource for the Sherlockian community. With your support, we are aiming to provide pathways for participants to connect with one another, preserve cultural memory, and sustain this community.”

Michigan State's WIDE Research Center focuses on “researching and innovating experiences in the Digital Humanities, including new uses of social user experiences to solve social, cultural, and political problems, new ways of constructing computational analytics for improving persuasive communication, and the new forms of public engagement and democratic practice on a global scale. The outcomes of our research projects include publications and applications aimed at enriching these conversations.”

I was delighted when Liza Potts suggested that maintaining Sherlockian.Net, as a service to the online community and as a resource for research, would fit squarely within WIDE’s interests. It’s a perfect solution to the problem of how to maintain this website in the years ahead, when it needs new content, new design, and new technology that I’m not equipped to provide.

Sherlockian.Net was launched under its present name in 2000, after six years of being “the Sherlockian Holmepage” as an offshoot of my web creation work at the University of Waterloo. When it was created in November 1994 it was the only Sherlockian website in the world, with fewer than a dozen links to online material about Sherlock Holmes and the Victorian era. Growth has been explosive ever since then.

This summer I announced that it was time for Sherlockian.Net to find new owners and editors. I’m very grateful to the people across the Sherlockian world who offered to take on part or all of the site, and I’m confident that they’ll be delighted by what WIDE does with it. I look forward to using the site myself, and to enjoying more time that I can devote to other projects and interests.

Chris Redmond
October 14, 2016