Category: Technology

Call for Papers – Information for Social Change – Science and Technology for Utopias

by RoryLitwin

INFORMATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE (ISC) ISSN 1364-694X CALL FOR PAPERS (please feel free to forward to other lists) — The Summer 2009 issue of the online journal Information for Social Change (ISC) will focus on the theme of SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY FOR UTOPIAS. This issue of ISC aims to document 21st century science and technology … Read more Call for Papers – Information for Social Change – Science and Technology for Utopias

Doris Lessing critical of the influences of technology, in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech

by RoryLitwin

This was just covered in the Chronicle of Higher Education daily email, with a link to a post in Ars Technica, a blog about technology. Doris Lessing delivered her Nobel Prize acceptance speech last week (not able to attend personally). It is about the contrast between the affluent North and the poor South, particularly Zimbabwe, … Read more Doris Lessing critical of the influences of technology, in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech

A couple of interesting links

by RoryLitwin

I found these on Arts & Letters Daily. A comment about that site after the links. First, an article from the New Yorker by Anthony Grafton: Future Reading: Digitization and Its Discontents. This is a thoughtful meditation on Google’s Library Project and the general effect of digitization on reading, from a well-informed historical perspective. I’m … Read more A couple of interesting links

Two articles of interest from The Nation

by RoryLitwin

First, Jeffrey Chester’s Google and Data-Seizure, about the significance of Google’s acquisition of Doubleclick, the internet marketing and company whose business is based on showing banner ads and tracking users’ web surfing. The article is primarily about privacy and what Google’s continuing acquisition of websites means for it (as the data is conglomerated). Second, Tom … Read more Two articles of interest from The Nation

Jean-Yves Mollier on Google Print and Europe’s response

by RoryLitwin

French historian Jean-Yves Mollier is happy with neither Google nor with Europe’s plans to counter Google’s anglo-american hegemony with digitized libraries of its own. Here is a translation of the start of an essay he wrote (French text available from the translated post) calling for language-based rather than nation-based digital libraries, out of an interest … Read more Jean-Yves Mollier on Google Print and Europe’s response

Wikipedia Scanner

by RoryLitwin

One nice thing about true open source software, especially when it’s running a huge website like Wikipedia, is that creative programmers can make useful add-ons to it. Wired Magazine (which I generally dislike) has an interesting article in the August issue about Virgil Griffith’s Wikipedia Scanner, which can tell you what organizations have edited what … Read more Wikipedia Scanner

Two minor correctives and one broadside on Library 2.0 madness

by RoryLitwin

First, two new ethnographic studies of undergraduate research habits, each offering a corrective to assumptions at the foundation of Library 2.0 thinking: Anthropologist Nancy Foster led a study at the University of Rochester, and presented her findings at the ACRL conference this year. The study will be part of a book published by ACRL soon. … Read more Two minor correctives and one broadside on Library 2.0 madness

A note on library “traditionalism”

by RoryLitwin

First of all, this post is inspired by a new Facebook group called “Zero Based Library School,” which derives from an analogy to Zero Based Budgeting, where nothing is carried over from the past, and everything needs to be justified in terms of present needs and conditions. In librarianship, it means that nothing should be … Read more A note on library “traditionalism”

Green Libraries

by RoryLitwin

Monika Antonelli is developing what I think is an important new conceptual direction for libraries, on the basis of ideas from the permaculture movement. She has just started a website, Greenlibraries.org, still mostly undeveloped, which will be a resource for support and documentation for making libraries more ecologically sustainable. Making libraries more sustainable is the … Read more Green Libraries

Sherry Turkle on alienation in our technological society

by RoryLitwin

Sherry Turkle, whose 1995 book Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet was much talked about when I was in library school, has an article in the current Forbes Magazine that updates her insights about human alienation in our technological culture. She has a notable ability to take us deep below … Read more Sherry Turkle on alienation in our technological society

Why Web 2.0 is leading back to full cataloging

by RoryLitwin

Just an observation of interest to librarians, about Web 2.0 types of websites. Two examples of rich Web 2.0 sites are Last.fm and LibraryThing. We often think of Web 2.0 sites in terms of the idea of “tagging instead of cataloging.” In fact, rich 2.0 sites, the ones that do a lot of data processing … Read more Why Web 2.0 is leading back to full cataloging

EDUCAUSE on libraries (with friends like these…)

by RoryLitwin

Library Juice readers on most university campuses should be able to read this new one from EDUCAUSE Review: “If the Academic Library Ceased to Exist, Would We Have to Invent It?” It’s a brief think piece that demonstrates why academic libraries are necessary, answering the idea, apparently familiar to the EDUCAUSE crowd, that they are … Read more EDUCAUSE on libraries (with friends like these…)