Twitter Cops

Twitter cops...

"The fate of "Paper of Record", GOOG, and the Tacit Call for DIY Attitudinal Librarians

I have had all intentions of posting/commenting on this story ever since I ran across it on InsideHigerEd a few days ago. But, alas and alack, I am end of the semester swamped. So, here is an excerpt and a link. Evidently, Google does not always have the same (intellectual) project in mind that the academy does 100% of the time.

"As digital archives have become more important and more popular, there are varying schools of thought among scholars about how best to guarantee that they will be around for good. Some think that the best possibility is for the creators of the archives -- people generally with some passion for the topic -- to keep control. Others favor acquisition, thinking that larger entities provide more security and resources for the long run."

And here's the rub...

"The fate of "Paper of Record," a digital archive of early newspapers with a particularly strong collection of Mexican newspapers, may be cited in the years ahead as an example of the dangers of purchase by a large entity. Paper of Record was purchased (secretly) by Google in 2006, and shortly after Google took over management of the site, late last year, the archive disappeared from view. After weeks in which historians have complained to Google and others about the loss of their ability to work, the previous owner of the archive has received permission to bring the archive back for some period of time, and resumption of service could start as early next week."

Please read more here.

UNC School of Information & Library Science Ranked #1

U.S. News Media Group has released the 2010 edition of America's Best Graduate Schools. The rankings are available online at www.usnews.com/grad and are to be featured in the May U.S.News & World Report magazine (on newsstands April 28, 2009). The 2010 rankings are of graduate school programs for a variety of disciplines, however some disciplines are not ranked this year. Information and Library Science is one of those; rankings for ILS programs come out every two years.

UNC's School of Information and Library Science was ranked #1 in 2009. UNC SILS shares this distinction with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The rankings are here. Of particular interest to me, UNC SILS is ranked number one in digital librarianship.

"Laptop Hunter" Videos

I just wanted to post the most recent video in what I think is a pretty interesting exchange...it's the new "Homeless Frank" release. The video is a parody of Microsoft's "Laptop Hunters" series; some Brooklyn Mac disciples crafted it. Lots of discussion around this. I am digging this collaborative exchange among various authors and publics...fluid, flexible, and indicative of how we communicate identity and ideology in "New Times". More curation to come.

And now, the Mac devotee response to MSFT!

Use Facebook, Lose a Letter Grade

Ah, here's a great piece detailing the academic consequences of Facebook use. Watch out young scholars...your new literacies and/or slacking off could portend poor curricular performance.

Kurt Cobain and 15 Years

Not enough coverage of Kurt Cobain's death, imho. A Seattle Times piece here. A New York Daily News piece here. For a band that brought music out of the '80s and soothed the pain of the Bush I trainwreck, there needs to be more. My students were three when this happened. Where is their Cobain? What discourse do I give them? There is a crack in the world and I don't know how we fix it.

U of Michigan Press Commits to Digital Monograph

Inside Higher Ed reported that the University of Michigan Press has commit ed "to shift its scholarly publishing from being primarily a traditional print operation to one that is primarily digital". In addition, Scott McLemee blogged about this. McLemee correctly remarks that this sea change has been on the horizon for some time AND that this change will radically impact infrastructure that produces and circulates knowledge/scholarship/information. I would also add that uses and practices of literacy will change because of this too. Preferences for consumption and organization of such information will drive these new literacies. Of course, policy and pedagogy must recognize this change, driven by digital literacy, and accommodate accordingly.

Daft Punk

womyn/man, i dunno...it just seems we need more of this these days. increasingly i am looking for music/soundtracks/whatever that enable a looking in all directions at the same time. it's geography, not history. daft punk feels like what henri lefebvre was saying when he uttered "history is contested in the city but won in the countryside". btw, lefebvre was french as is daft punk. that's hokey on my part. sorry.

but, back to my claim this is good stuff. seriously. i'm serious. are those the same?

Library Journal Releases Movers & Shakers 2009

Library Journal has published its annual issue that includes "Movers & Shakers 2009". These are the people identified as those who are "shaping the future of libraries".

I like the map function on the site that details total winners...way to go NC!

The only augmentation I'd like to see in the future might be the creation of a "monkeywrench" category...a space to profile the radicals that are challenging the status quo in (sometimes uncomfortable) lesser aggrandized ways. I'm thinking of social, economic, and literacy justice areas. Granted, many on this year's list do this; but, a whole category of monkeywrenchers would be pretty cool. Good stuff regardless.

Google's Master Plan

photo by Jurvetson (flickr)

"What a way to go out, out like a sucka"

Once again, Jon Stewart proves to be the closest thing we have to journalism. Most recently, Stewart calls out Jim Cramer and in his infinite hubris Cramer falls into the Crossfire/Tucker Carlson trap...he tries to defend an indefensible argument. I'm saddened because, in a way, I really like Cramer but he's beat. He'll be on Jon Stewart tomorrow. In honor of this event I'm embedding a classic. Please watch, Jim.

Symbolic Interactionist Poesis

Mainstream Humanities, poolside but never in the pool. DCFC as poetry. This composition seems pretty magical and profound...happy sad happy sad.

On the "Post" in Post-Literacy

The moniker "post-literacy" does not mean or refer to a state or context after literacy. It does, however, rely on the supposition that individuals and groups (maybe even society) have "worked through" literacy...that literacy has been iterated into something else. This is not to say that literacy has been mastered or achieved its ultimate possibilities. Literacy has merely morphed or matriculated along trajectories to a point that it no longer resembles a dominant historical definition (such as the one that curriculum insists upon). Some aspects of symbolic interactionism touch on this in valuable ways.

The Invisible Web OR Skilled Curation and Search is Valuable

Google and other social search engines don't retrieve everything. Actually, according to this piece, they retrieve a small percentage. Worth a cruise through. Check it out:

http://www.lagcc.cuny.edu/library/invisibleweb/characteristics.htm

Information Literacy in NY Times

In a Feb. 15 article, New York Times reporter Motoko Rich profiles librarians who lead students through critical navigation of the staggering amount of information available on the Internet. The New York Times piece explores the roles librarians play in helping students develop information literacy.

Check video HERE.

"How the University Works" OR Humanities as Pomo Sausage Factory

Marc Bousquet's recent book "How the University Works: Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation" is a must read for anyone involved in higher education, either as student, faculty, or staff. It is an appropriate indictment (especially of the humanities) of the enterprise that is higher education. I am particularly glad that Bousquet has called out English departments for the bogus goods they sell to graduate students and for the extremely unethical way they treat non-tenure stream faculty (i.e., the folks who teach most of the sections in English departments but who are paid the least). There are many reasons the humanities are on the ropes, Bousquet highlights the primary drivers. Highly recommended (as are his YouTube videos). Linked here.

On "Non-Prescience" OR Precious Metallica

Somehow, not seeing the whole paradigm that Napster portended still haunts me. I stumbled (back) upon this after hearing a Grateful Dead iteration from years ago. Obviously, the genealogy of this song is something that precious Metallica didn't get. Now, more than ever, the Beavis and Butthead nod to these morons seems appropriate.

At least read the Wikipedia entry on "Whiskey in the Jar".

AP Accuses Shepard Fairey of Copyright Infringement OR Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last?

Redux, redux, read all about it. ..AP continues to be on the wrong side of fair use/copyright (TechCrunch piece here) and insists on absurdly caricaturing itself, again (that's kinda sorta what redux means...hee hee). Read more here.

Internet News

This clip has been circulated on quite a few blogs since TechCrunch commented on it a few days ago. It is indeed pretty interesting. The prescient quote below characterizes the video.

"Engineers now predict the day will come when we get all our newspapers and magazines by home computer, but that’s a few years off.”

Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies

I am always looking for progressively appropriate definitions of literacy. I recently read Howard Rheingold's chapter from Joi Ito's fabulous new release, Freesouls. HR's chapter is entitled Participative Pedagogy for a Literacy of Literacies and, per usual, is helpful in formulating the impact and possibility of how "people do complicated things together". Rheingold's notion of literacy is foundational and seems better than a lot of what I've read from careerist academics; it's an encompassing and intelligent conceptualization that covers what society has done, is doing, and can do with technology when collaborating and communicating. Rheingold writes that literacy is:

the set of skills that enable individuals to encode and decode knowledge and power via speech, writing, printing and collective action, and which, when learned, introduce the individual to a community. Literacy links technology and sociality.

Rheingold continues:

If the humans currently alive are to take advantage of digital technologies to address the most severe problems that face our species and the biosphere, computers, telephones and digital networks are not enough. We need new literacies around participatory media, the dynamics of cooperation and collective action, the effective deployment of attention and the relatively rational and critical discourse necessary for a healthy public sphere.

The activist pedagogical project at hand for Rheingold, and me, is a simple one...positive social change. It is not valorization of the liberal arts and their historically specific texts, cultural literacy, or discovering truth in physical logocentrically bound decaying media (i.e., books). It is not insistence on centering traditional "reading" or "writing" skills (though that is very important). Nay, the project is driven by, any means necessary, that "the more people who know how to use participatory media to learn, inform, persuade, investigate, reveal, advocate and organize, the more likely the future infosphere will allow, enable and encourage liberty and participation".

I would encourage critical educators to scrutinize their curriculum and their own skill set to see if they are doing this. If not, how might they retool to do so? It might require work and effort, but is certainly well worth it.