Two links to share about what may be a growing trend – travel restrictions as a way to stifle political speech. A column in Salon by Glen Greenwald a few days ago talks about the Department of Homeland Security’s detention of filmmaker and journalist Laura Poitras at the U.S. border. They detained her and took … Read more Censorship through travel restriction (two links)
Last month in Varanasi, India, the First International Conference of Lokavidya Jan Andolan, or the Peoples’ Knowledge Movement, was held. The original call for participation talked about the situation of the displacement, environmental destruction, and poverty experienced by people throughout India: All these people, the displaced, the communities they belong to, have never gone to … Read more Valuing the People’s Knowledge
This post dovetails coincidentally with Rory’s 10/22 post about the solidarity library in Bethlehem – looks like it’s Israel/Palestine week at Library Juice. Hannah Mermelstein, a school librarian in New York City, is also a Palestine solidarity activist (and generally awesome person). She’s reworked her thesis into an article, “Overdue Books: Returning Palestine’s ‘Abandoned Property’ … Read more Looted Books
Message sent to me by the International Solidarity Initiative. I don’t have any personal names to connect to this group, but in response to my questions about them they told me that they are independent and not a part of another organization. They can be excused for wanting to stay personally under the radar given … Read more Solidarity Library in Central Bethlehem
ILWOL Books of Korea has published a Korean translation of Ed D’Angelo’s Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library: How Postmodern Consumer Capitalism Threatens Democracy, Civil Education and the Public Good. The book was previously published in Japanese translation in 2009 by Kyoto University. D’Angelo’s book has been one of our better selling books … Read more Korean translation of Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library
You will probably be hearing more about Weibo, a Chinese social networking site that combines aspects of Twitter and Facebook and presently has, at a minimum, 140 million users, which is nearly three times the user base of Twitter. The interesting news at present is that the Chinese government, which shut down access to Twitter … Read more Tension over Weibo, the Chinese Twitter
An interesting library-related paper from MiT7, by a media studies scholar: Knowledge Experiments: Technology and the Library, Paulina Mickiewicz Abstract: In April of 2005, the Grande Bibliothèque du Québec opened in Montreal, a library project of unprecedented scale in the city. This paper seeks to focus on the programming and technologies of the Grande Bibliothèque. … Read more Paulina Mickiewicz on library architecture
MiT7 was a great conference – intimate, warm, stimulating, interdisciplinary, and cutting-edge. There were some brilliant minds at work. I plan to post a few comments on the conference later. For now, here are links to podcasts from the three topical plenary sessions: Media in Transition 7: Unstable Platforms Archives and Cultural Memory Power and … Read more MiT7 podcasts
Media in Transition 7 (MiT 7), a small conference at MIT, is starting Friday and running ’till Sunday. I will be there; if you will be there too please say hello. Anyone wanting to follow the Twitter hash tag can look for #mit7.
There is an very good article by David Remnick in the February 28th issue of the New Yorker about Ha’aretz, the Israeli newspaper that has set the standard for accuracy in news there for many years while also providing the main support for pro-Peace viewpoints among Israelis. If you are interested in the role of … Read more Very good article on the Israeli newspaper, Ha’aretz
The Culture of the Internet and the Internet as Cult: Social Fears and Religious Fantasies Author: Philippe Breton Translator: David Bade Price: $22.00 Published: March 2011 ISBN: 978-1-936117-41-3 Printed on acid-free paper French author Philippe Breton examines the Internet and the culture surrounding it through the lens of its philosophical and cultural background. Central in … Read more New book: The Culture of the Internet and the Internet as Cult: Social Fears and Religious Fantasies
Librarians interested in intellectual freedom should take note of a case of censorship by copyright lawsuit. Danish artist Nadia Plesner has used an image of a Louis Vuitton handbag in some biting artwork about the genocide in Darfur to show our culpability in not bridging the gap between the tragedy there and our shallow consumerist … Read more Nadia Plesner free speech case
“The HMC announces an open call for entries to exhibit at Raday Konyveshaz & Gallery, Budapest, exhibition opening on August 24, 2011. … Submission deadline is March 15.” How influenced the digitalized area the traditional reading culture? Is it finished the Gutenberg area? We are waiting artist books, artworks on or of paper may be … Read more Call for entries (artwork) – Library Thoughts – Gondolatok a könyvtárban
Folks at the Progressive Librarians Guild have put the full text of back issues of their journal, Progressive Librarian, online. Coverage goes back to issue number one, from 1990. I was on the editorial board of Progressive Librarian for a number of years, and consider them an important venue for library literature that works to … Read more Progressive Librarian in full text
I was discussing the free press with a Russian friend once, and she told me that the main difference between Soviet Russia and the contemporary USA was that Russians knew they were being lied to, while Americans have naively believed that what the news says is the truth. Amusingly, right wing skeptics are presently doubting … Read more Terrorists meeting at the Capitol Building today? Government information and alternative media
A conflict over intellectual freedom of potential historical import may be taking shape in China surrounding China’s most famous (globally famous) artist, Ai Weiwei. Ai Weiwei is politically active as well as being a challenging and innovative artist whose work responds to the contemporary world, so it is not surprising that the Chinese government is … Read more Ai Weiwei
This article feels like another nail in the coffin of what we thought we knew of the past: Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’. Or a ramping-ing up of the general weirdness of the times. Here is the start of the article in the Independent, by Frances Stonor Saunders: For decades in art circles it was … Read more Modern art was CIA ‘weapon’
Sometimes people on the left respond to the “war on terror” by saying words to the effect that “war is terrorism,” to point out that killing innocent people is killing innocent people, whether it is done by a state or by a terrorist group. The main weakness to that argument is that it has an … Read more October 6th, 1976
There was a good article about WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Paul Assange, by Raffi Khatchadourian, in the June 7 issue of the New Yorker.