Approaches
As we've suggested, Inventio authors can document the process of creating a webtext through individual production choices and through editorial feedback. Another approach to Inventio is through key topics in new media scholarship, several of which we discuss below. An Inventio author might decide to focus on one of these (or other) issues as it has come into play in the process of creating and publishing a webtext.
Collaboration
Because of all that's involved in producing digital scholarship, authors of webtexts often work collaboratively. The nature and process of this collaboration could be profitably explored in Inventio.
For instance, "Decentered, Disconnected, and Digitized," authored by Beth Brunk-Chavez and Shawn Miller and published in Kairos 11.2, includes in the webtext itself a range of related materials that underscore the collaborative nature of its production: discussions about the initial conference proposal out of which the webtext developed; email correspondence between the authors; comments from the Kairos' editorial board reviewers.
This kind of contextualizing and scaffolding can help us learn more about how collaboration works in new media scholarship.
Tools
With a bewildering and seemingly ceaseless flood of new software, media formats, and other production technologies hitting the market every day, the choices for composing new media scholarship become ever more complex.
Inventio authors can discuss the use of specific tools and technologies, media and file formats, providing insight into the rewards and drawbacks that emerged in the process of creating a webtext. In other words, authors can consider how a particular tool or technology, in light of its price, features, availability, and file format, contributes to or limits rhetorical action within a work of digital scholarship.
Daniel Anderson, for instance, provides a useful discussion of prosumer tools, even as he uses these tools--digital cameras and digital video editing applications--to produce his webtext, "Prosumer Approaches to New Media Composition."
Technological/Rhetorical Causes
As we and our students use the Web and digital technologies for our writing, issues of access, sustainability, and ownership become increasingly important. For many scholars, these technological and rhetorical causes have become critical to their teaching and research. Of particular interest is the use of open source file formats, production technologies, and languages--and how those sometimes must be negotiated against the features and capabilities of proprietary software.
It's also the case that a webtext advance or enact a certain rhetorical cause in the sense that it pushes the limits of scholarly practice and pushes readers into new kinds of interpretive practices. We're thinking here of webtexts like Adrian Miles's "Violence of Text" and Anne Wysocki's "A Bookling Monument." Works like these promote a different way of thinking about the role of aesthetics and interactivity in scholarly writing.
In the process of creating a webtext, one of these causes might emerge as critical. Authors can use Inventio as a venue for meta-commentary on the issue, highlighting the particular strategies and resources he or she used in the webtext.