Is a "syllaweb," or a topical bibliography made available on the World-Wide Web "published"? Does it belong on an academic vitae?

For the first time, the traditionally informal, routine work of academia -- making up a syllabus, making up a reading list or bibliography -- is becoming a real and valuable resource to colleagues working in the same field. And not just officemates or cronies; these ideas are available to academia as a whole. The ideas are as real and as shared as those in any journal article or conference presentation.

But, some will claim, they are not "peer-reviewed"! At least in the case of the syllawebs, this objection negates the fact that the class and its instructor have been "reviewed" -- and approved -- by the administration of the school. Still, the objection is valid -- if we insist upon clinging to the traditional definition of "peer reviewed." In the best of all possible worlds, decisions about what ideas to accept or reject and what to include in discourse will be based on social consensus -- or perhaps better still, the ability to provoke productive social dissensus.

Should a syllaweb, attached to something called "The Rhetorical Invention Homepage," count as knowledge-making? In what will probably be a very short time, the community of rhetorical scholars will begin to make that decision. What ths website provides is, among other things, the possibility for that decision to be made, one way or another.