10/26/10

AFS Web Site Feature and User’s Introductory Guide

1. The new AFS web site is now live. Its URL is the same as before: .

2. The new site offers you new possibilities for information and interaction:

About the American Folklore Society provides information about AFS and its activities.
The AFS Review, edited by John Laudun of the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, publishes a wide range of materials, including essays, opinion pieces, notes, and queries, as well as all the news once included in the AFS Newsletter.

The Folklore Commons is a wiki-style knowledge base that over time will become a comprehensive information resource about folklore and the field of folklore studies.
The AFS Workspace includes a calendar of conferences and other events; a career center with postings of jobs and other professional opportunities; a place to join the Society or AFS sections, or to make donations to the AFS; a tool to search the AFS member directory; and the AFS online store, for completing payments to AFS for any product or service other than AFS memberships.

Forums offer public communication opportunities for our members.

3. The structure is in place, but the rest depends on you! This is largely an interactive web site. You can submit news items and contributions for publication in the AFS Review (which offers stable URLs for citation in your CV). You can post job openings and events in the field to the AFS Workspace’s calendar and career center. You can contribute links, new entries, amplifications, documents (bibliographies, syllabi, proposals) to the Folklore Commons – its value as a knowledge base will grow only to the extent that you and other AFS members contribute to it. As an AFS member, you can engage in public, archived discussions on topics and issues of interest in the Forums. If you are a member of an AFS Section, you and others in your section can use your “Group” space to create a section-members-only website, to share files and images, and to communicate within the section.

4. Anyone can read; only members can write. Anyone with an Internet connection can browse almost all parts of almost all pages of our site, but you need to be a member of AFS to contribute to, or to edit, the site's contents.

5. Your record goes public – or not. By default, every member has a searchable profile, viewable to AFS members, which can contain contact information, your interests in the field, a professional biography, your CV, and other information of your choice. Your profile is also your AFS member record, so you must provide, at minimum, email and a mailing address for such things as the Journal of American Folklore. However, you can use “Edit Bio” in your Profile—reach it by clicking on Manage Profile in the My Profile box that appears on the right-hand side of any site page once you Sign In—to hide data from other members.

6. Sign In if you want to take advantage of the site’s capabilities. “Sign In” is for current AFS members. “Register” is for joining AFS for the first time. (The “Sign In” link is on the top gold line of the home page, or any other page you’re on if you haven’t Signed In yet.) We have transferred our data records, so you may use your previous user ID and password to Sign In. If you did not create a user ID and password in the past, but your membership is current, you can sign in with your first initial and last name (e.g., jsmith) as your user ID, and “temporary” as your password. Once signed in, you will be taken to your personal Profile, and you can edit it, access all parts of the site, and post site content.

If you cannot sign in using the above process, please email Lorraine Cashman at with the user ID and password you want to use for the site. Your password must be alphanumeric (i.e., it must contain both letters and numbers).

7. How to contribute content (this information is also on the site itself):

Your member profile: You can edit this information yourself at any time. Start by clicking Manage Profile in the My Profile box that appears on the right-hand side of every site page once you Sign In. You can then change information about yourself, and control what will be readable, in Edit Bio. This website is communications-friendly—perhaps too much so—so its default is for you to receive notification of many changes made to the site by other members. From Manage Profile you can also go to Preferences, where you can control what sorts of notifications you want to receive from the website.

AFS sections: Pages about AFS sections for the public appear in About AFS. Section leaders can add to or edit these pages at any time by clicking the Edit This Page button in the upper right-hand corner of the text area. Be sure to click Submit when you’re done. Sections also have Group space for their own use—for section-member-only information and communications, for example – which group members can access from their own Profiles, in My Groups. Any section member can post content to these pages.

AFS Review contributions: Submit your essays, opinion pieces, notes, queries, and news items by clicking the Add New Post button on the AFS review page. AFS Review editor John Laudun () will review them before adding them to the site.

Submitting events for the Calendar: Email information to Tim Lloyd ().

Job postings: You can post these directly to the Career Center in the AFS Workspace.

Adding or editing Folklore Commons content: To add a new page, email the page title and text in .doc format, including any hyperlinks and notes about placement, to Tim Lloyd. To contribute to or edit an existing page, click the Edit This Page button in the upper right-hand corner of the text area. Be sure to click Submit when you’re done.

Starting or contributing to a Forum: We have created 14 initial forums on a variety of areas of interest, and posted an initial forum topic to the Professional Practice forum. To create a new forum, please email its name and a sentence or two of description to Tim Lloyd. To start a new topic in an existing forum, just click on the forum name. To contribute to an existing topic, click on its name. Click on the Subscribe or RSS icons to stay connected to a particular forum or topic.

8. How to renew your AFS membership: All AFS members will receive renewal notices—once by US mail, then via email—as their membership expiration dates approach. Email notifications will contain a link to the online member renewal process. You also can renew your AFS membership at any time; sign in, then go to “Membership Info” in your Profile Menu. If your membership lapses before you renew, use “Sign In”; it will provide a link to renew your membership before you will be able to access your Profile.

All other financial transactions – for AFS section memberships (including renewals), Fellows dues payments, JSTOR access, sponsorships of international members, and eventually, annual meeting registration fee payments – are managed in the Online Store in the AFS Workspace. Therefore, for AFS members with any of these add-ons, renewal is a two-step process. First, complete the member “registration” transaction, including a credit card payment, and then continue to the Online Store to renew section memberships or any of these other add-ons, and to pay for them via a second credit card transaction.