International Journal of Fieldwork Studies, 2003 1 (1)

Editorial

Karl Donert
Liverpool Hope University College
Hope Park, Liverpool L16 9JD, UK

This first issue of the International Journal of Fieldwork Studies marks the completion of the European Commission supported Virtual Montana ODL Project. It presents a major achievement in delivering on-line, accessible, quality, academic, multidisciplinary articles based around the theme of fieldwork studies. The Virtual Montana Project had initially identified major gaps in resources that could be used by undergraduates and postgraduates to support academic studies of mountain fieldwork locations.

The International Journal of Fieldwork Studies originated from the need to support international undergraduate fieldwork that was being undertaken by Liverpool Hope University College students in the French Alps and in Romania. Though many staff had gathered useful resources, it was becoming increasingly difficult to make them readily available to students. The World Wide Web was an obvious solution. However the needs and the resultant resource base were on too large a scale to be dealt with under normal circumstances. So the funding application to establish the Virtual Montana Project was born in order to provide an academic link between four very different European organisations, each with significant expertise in their own right. Some of the results and outcomes of this liaison have been dealt with and identified in the opening article of this volume.

The Virtual Montana project experience has highlighted major differences between European countries in their technological, pedagogical and cultural approaches to fieldwork with students. The fact that these have been overcome in completing all of the planned aspects of the Virtual Montana Project is testimony to positive relationships that can be enhanced through international collaboration. Virtual Montana has succeeded in creating the Virtual Montana Web site (http://www.virtualmontana.org) with materials from France, Romania and Wales, as well as advice and guidance for those seeking to visit mountain areas. Also developed has been an electronic newsletter VM News, which has promoted many of the activities in 2002 associated with the International Year of the Mountains, a European Conference on mid-mountain regions, held in Annecy, France and finally this product, an on-line journal featuring an interesting variety of contributions all based on the theme Fieldwork Studies. The quality and number of prospective inputs to this first issue from around the world is testimony to the power of new technologies in breaking down barriers.

The Joint Editors would like to thank all members of the Editorial team for their support and particularly the dedicated work of the Virtual Montana Project Researcher, Amanda Plumb, with the hope that all those who access this product will find the contributions of the authors useful and thereby seek to submit articles, based on their own research activities, for consideration.