The most recent Weekend Edition Saturday on NPR had a story about a different kind of archive: a vault containing seeds from the world’s grains, for preservation purposes. Central to the story is the Global Crop Diversity Trust. This is interesting in a number of ways. One rather academic question it raises is whether seed … Read more A Different Kind of Archive: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault
I want to provide a link to some admirable and important work being done by the Center for Media and Democracy: ALEC Exposed. (ALEC is the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that serves as a clearing house for model state government legislation written to further the interests of corporations.) The work of the Center … Read more ALEC Exposed, and some food for thought
Libraries and the Enlightenment Author: Wayne Bivens-Tatum Price: $25.00 Published: March 2012 ISBN: 978-1-936117-42-0 Contemporary American libraries are products of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment–the intellectual and political movement that emerged in 18th century Europe–consolidated various scientific and political ideals into a worldview advocating scientific discovery and experimentation, reason as a touchstone of truth, intellectual freedom … Read more New Book: Libraries and the Enlightenment
A low-paid outsourced content screener in Morocco has apparently leaked the “Abuse Standards” guidelines that are in effect at Facebook. Gawker.com published the next update to those standards shortly after releasing the originally-leaked document (these were versions 6.1 and 6.2). Without commenting on the appropriateness of the rules as we now know them, I want … Read more Facebook Abuse Standards Leaked
Excerpted from Barney Rosset’s obituary: By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times February 23, 2012 Barney Rosset, the renegade founder of Grove Press who fought groundbreaking legal battles against censorship and introduced American readers to such provocative writers as Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco and Jean Genet, died Tuesday in New York City. He was … Read more Obituary: Barney Rossett, groundbreaking publisher at Grove Press, lived to 89
We have posted Robert Jensen’s foreword to our recently published book, Prophets of the Fourth Estate: Press Critics of the Progressive Era, by Amy Reynolds and Gary Hicks. It’s a good read. Comment if it interests you…
An illuminating article in the Chronicle of Higher Education this week: “The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth on Wikipedia,” by historian Timothy Messer-Kruse. It illustrates a problem with the protocol in place on Wikipedia that operate to attempt to ensure objectivity. This problem is one that academics who work on Wikipedia articles are likely to run … Read more On the “undue weight” rule in Wikipedia
The latest issue of InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies (Volume 8, Issue 1) is available at interactions.gseis.ucla.edu. Table of Contents: Articles Stop Speaking For Us: Women-of-Color Bloggers, White Appropriation, and What Librarians Can Do About It By Julia Glassman How Much Knowledge Can They Gain? Women’s Information Behavior on Government Health Websites … Read more New issue of InterActions
There is a new issue of Women in Libraries, formerly a print publication, is now online. It has items on the Occupy Wall Street Librarians on feminism, activism & librarianship; Elizabeth Andrejasich’s Q&A with Hillary Jordan; and the 2012 Amelia Bloomer List.
If you’re headed to the iSchool conference, something to read if you haven’t yet is a paper that was rejected for inclusion in the 2008 iSchool conference, by Jonathan Furner and Anne Gilliland, both professors at the UCLA School of Information (officially an iSchool). It’s titled, The Humanistic iSchool: A Manifesto. I am very much … Read more The Humanistic iSchool
As we’ve been reminded again recently, in case we somehow forgot, the “facts” of news reporting are not actually neutral. Just plain data is part of a political context, too. For example, New York City counts homeless people, in an annual pavement-pounding overnight effort. But the city – despite its technocratic, data-driven mayor – has … Read more Who Does Your Data?
Library Juice blogger Alan Mattlage has posted a review of Prophets of the Fourth Estate: Broadsides by Press Critics of the Progressive Era, on his own blog. His review provides a good description of what is offered by this book.
Susan Cain offers a most welcome statement in yesterday’s New York Times: “The Rise of the New Groupthink.”
The CEO of an internet business in Kenya called Mocality has posted a report to his blog about what seem to be some unethical and probably illegal business practices by Google, involving trolling their database in order to poach their customers for their own competing service, and lying in the process. If this report is … Read more Evidence of Evil at Google, from a faraway land
Arthur Brisbane is New York Times Public Editor, a position outside the regular editorial team that is supposed to act as the reader’s representative. Followers of this blog have probably already heard about his recent post, “Should the Times be a Truth Vigilante?, which many readers found maddeningly stupid. Brisbane was asking whether NYT reporters … Read more The New York Times, Compromise, and the Past
A site set up by tricky spammers, potentially useful in information literacy instruction: “CNBC” report on “income at home system.”
Litwin Books, LLC is starting a new imprint. Auslander & Fox will publish “books with originality, wit, and perspective,” for a general audience. Publications coming up include a children’s book with a message about television, a fun coffeetable and reference book about nationalist and secessionist movements, and a new translation of a controversial play by … Read more Auslander & Fox
Robert Darnton, frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books on libraries and author of The Case for Books: Past, Present and Future, was interviewed prior to a talk at Cardiff University, by Cardiff grad student Rhys Tranter. The interview was posted to the blog of Cardiff University’s Centre for Editorial & Intertextual Research.
Prophets of the Fourth Estate: Broadsides by Press Critics of the Progressive Era Authors: Amy Reynolds and Gary Hicks Price: $28.00 Published: January 2012 ISBN: 978-0-9802004-6-1 Printed on acid-free paper Prophets of the Fourth Estate: Broadsides by Press Critics of the Progressive Era highlights press criticisms during the Progressive Era (1890-1920) that aimed to enhance … Read more New Book: Prophets of the Fourth Estate
There was a problem with a spam-blocking plugin in the back-end of this blog that was preventing people from making comments. The problem is now fixed, so if you feel like commenting on any recent posts, have at it. Cheers!