This should be a fairly basic site to build and maintain. The first three sections will largely by hypertext narratives. I expect not only to implement internal links, but hope to incorporate a number of relevant external links within the document itself. The majority of the work in these sections will be performing the research necessary to produce a comprehensive account. I think this will ultimately rely mainly on secondary source material, although there are a few relevant primary sources, such as The Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language's ongoing efforts to digitize Diderot's Encyclopédie (available through the GMU library page) that I would hope to include. Additionally I will utilize audio files in conjunction with the oral history sections, and several Flash elements in the encyclopedia sections.

The most challenging portion of the project will be implementing the MediaWiki software to allow users to view and edit Wikipedia-like entries. MediaWiki is a free software package licensed under the GNU General Public License, so there will be no monetary cost associated with this. However, the technical aspects will require me to learn PHP and MySQL, although only in limited amounts. MediaWiki is built to be implemented and used with a minimal amount of coding knowledge. Fortunately, there is extensive documentation on using MediaWiki which should make the process (hopefully) painless.

I see all of this as being completely manageable to be executed by myself over the course of a semester, especially if chunks of the research have been done in advance. I don't anticipate any special monetary needs beyond potentially purchasing server space.

Finally—the homepage!