The Medieval Electronic Scholarly Alliance (MESA) will be holding a roundtable session at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at 10 AM on Friday, May 11. We&#39;ll be in Fetzer 2040.<br><br><b>What is MESA?</b><br>

MESA is a federation of electronic medieval studies projects that provides a portal allowing the simultaneous searching of all member projects and provides peer review of electronic scholarship in the field of medieval studies. It is a sister federation of the <a href="http://www.nines.org/">Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship (NINES)</a> and <a href="http://www.18thconnect.org/">18thConnect</a>, and will be linked to both of these federations, allowing users to search any of the federations separately or in any combination.<br>

<br><b>How does MESA work?</b><br>MESA runs on Collex, an open-source collections- and exhibits-builder that is also the basis of NINES and 18thConnect. It uses Resource Description Framework (RDF) files that make data from member sites discoverable and cross-searchable. A good overview of how Collex works can be found on the NINES site at <a href="http://www.nines.org/about/software/collex/">http://www.nines.org/about/software/collex/</a><br>

<br>MESA will be launching later this year and is partnering with NINES and 18thConnect to build a larger meta-federation called ARC. Representatives from MESA, NINES, and ARC will be on the panel, and we are hoping to get feedback from the community as we plan our launch. Hope to see you there!<br>

<br>Tim Stinson &amp; Dot Porter<br><br>--<br>Timothy L. Stinson<br>Assistant Professor<br>Department of English<br>North Carolina State University<br><a href="http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/faculty_staff/tlstinso">http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/faculty_staff/tlstinso</a><br>