Planet DHASS

Do you like to play "Farmville," "Mafia Wars," "Restaurant City," or other Facebook games?  Do you really know what is going on behind the scenes?  Make sure you don't fall victim to a scam while playing one of these games.  Arm yourself with knowledge.

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With so much information at our fingertips, with so many people a point, click and reply away, it still takes effort to find not only what we want, but to organize ourselves in ways that make it ea

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This is a brief description of what I have been thinking about and doing. You see, I have this idea. This idea is what has propelled me into a graduate program because I feel it is only in a graduate program I can find the words I need to describe my idea.

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Outsourcing, particularly in the last five years, has become the preferred method of slashing expenditure for those schools struggling to remain fiscally operable.

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Durig our research for Talkers and Doers, one of the great organizations we've had an opportunity to talk with is NFTE, the Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship.

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As a publisher of digital entertainment that educates, engages and empowers, we at E-Line have become big believers in the idea that one of the secrets to getting an audience engaged with content i

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A meeting was held at King's College, London, on 26th and 27th October 2009, between representatives of the following networks, infrastructure projects, and planning initiatives working with digital technologies in the Arts and Humanities: [read more...] arts-humanities.net (http://www.arts-humanities.net/) ADHO - Association of Digital Humanities Organisations (http://www.digitalhumanities.org/) CLARIN (http://www.clarin.eu/) centerNet (http://www.digitalhumanities.org/centernet/) DARIAH (http://www.dariah.eu/)

The Charles Babbage Institute is accepting applications for the 2010-2011 Adelle and Erwin Tomash Graduate Fellowship. The fellowship will be awarded to a graduate student for doctoral dissertation research in the history of computing. The fellowship may be held at the recipient's home academic institution, the Charles Babbage Institute, or any other location with appropriate research facilities. The stipend is $14,000. It is intended for students who have completed all requirements for the doctoral degree except the research and writing of the dissertation. [read more...]

Book available for download.

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The Federation of American Scientists held a National Summit on Educational Games that has released a report titled, Harnessing the Power of Video Games for Learning. This is not, despite the sponsor, a scientific report. It is a call for funding for research into educational games. The report, however, slides into hype about American competitiveness. I think the pitch is that games will save American education and keep the country competitive. So, for example, on the first page it reads,

The success of complex video games demonstrates games can teach higher order thinking skills such as strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, and adaptation to rapid change.

The phasing may be unfortunate, but I read this as suggesting that financial success demonstrates educational value. Does that mean that the success of Celine Dion demonstrates that pop music can teach higher order skills? Further on they write,

Many companies and industries have transformed themselves by taking advantage of advances in technology, and new management methods and models of organization. As a result, they realized substantial gains in productivity and product quality while lowering costs. No such transformation has taken part in education. Education is not part of the IT revolution. (p. 6)

How can scientists say that education is not part of the IT revolution? Have they been a school or university recently? For that matter, where are the companies using computer games to teach management methods and models of organization? (Perhaps the financial sector was playing a bit too much World of Warcraft to worry about managing our pensions.) My impression is that gains in productivity have come through automation and inventory control.

My counter proposal would be to invest in board games for teaching higher order skills. Lets bring back Monopoly (or the Landlord’s Game it was based on) as a way of learning about property, mortgages, and bankruptcy. Board games would be cheaper and probably teach the same higher order skills.

I’m sure I’m being unfair, and they do call for more research into what skills games could teach which is needed.

DigitalKoans postings will resume on 11/16/09.

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Boing Boing has gotten a lot of eyes this week with Cory Doctorow's post on the leaked text of the "secret" Anti-Counterfeit Trade Agreement...

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The WiTTIE Team has been hard at work over the last few months.

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Yesterday I went to the John Hope Franklin Center for a talk on

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In case you missed this news over the past month or so due to the continual onslaught of digital information, there has been a disturbing---to put it lightly---incident involving Twitter, its use b

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Yesterday I went to the John Hope Franklin Center for a talk on

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FDG 2010 has put out their Call for Papers, the important date being 5th February as the paper and poster submission deadline.

FDG 2009 was a fantastic conference, filled to the brim with various gaming academic luminaries, fascinating papers and a wide variety of interests. I’m looking forward to 2010, as it’s just down the road in Monterey!

There was a book sale outside the library at UCLA today. lots of wonderful paperbacks for 50 cents each. a year ago i would have bought a bag full. today zero. why? i do almost all my novel reading now on my iPhone which is always with me and which makes it easy to read at the gym, as opposed to print books which never lie flat.

The Harvard Law Library is recruiting a Manager of Digital Lab.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Harvard Law Library is seeking a creative and experienced innovator to provide strategic and operational leadership as the Manager of our Digital Lab. The Digital Lab is the Library's focal point for a wide range of activities, including developing internet tools to promote and enhance access to legal information and coordinating the library's digitization efforts. Reporting to the Associate Director for Collection Development and Digitization, the Manager of the Digital Lab leads the design, creation, and distribution of technological tools for delivering content and services in support of learning and research at the Harvard Law School and beyond; manages the Library's digitization projects, including those produced onsite and those outsourced to the University's Digital Imaging Group or other external entities; develops and implements division policies, plans, goals, and procedures; ensures appropriate staffing levels, staff skills, and output. The Manager will supervise a current full time staff of five; two Development Programmers, a Web Development Librarian, a Digital Preservation Librarian, and a Digital Projects Assistant, as well as project fellows.

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Brill, an international academic publisher located in Leiden and Boston, has launched Brill Open.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

This new author service offers the option of making articles freely available upon publication. Brill Open enables authors to comply with research funding bodies and institutions which require open access.

The Brill Open option will be available for all 135 journals published under the imprints Brill, Martinus Nijhoff and VSP. Articles will be put in online open access in exchange for an article publishing fee to be arranged by the author.

Sam Bruinsma, Brill's Business Development Director, explains:"We are launching this new service in answer to a growing number of research funding bodies and universities announcing their compliance with the open access model. With Brill Open our journals are ready to meet the expected increase in contributions under this model."

In order to ensure that authors' funder requirements have no influence on the editorial peer review and decision-making, Brill Open will be made available to authors only upon acceptance of their paper for publication. Those authors who do not wish to use this service will be under no pressure to do so, and their accepted article will be published in the usual manner.

Brill's strategic intent is to adjust the future subscription price of a journal to reflect an increase in Brill Open fees. Sam Bruinsma comments: "Our view on open access developments is positive. We accept that over time an increasing part of our revenues will come through this new model. This will have an impact on the revenues from our library subscription service. The combination of these two business models will continue to support a healthy and sustainable journal program attractive to the best authors in the field."

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Rebecca Tushnet has self-archived the "Economies of Desire: Fair Use and Marketplace Assumptions" in SSRN.

Here's the abstract:

At the moment that "incentives" for creation meet "preferences" for the same, the economic account of copyright loses its explanatory power. This piece explores the ways in which the desire to create can be excessive, beyond rationality, and free from the need for economic incentive. Psychological and sociological concepts can do more to explain creative impulses than classical economics. As a result, a copyright law that treats creative activity as a product of economic incentives can miss the mark and harm what it aims to promote. The idea of abundance—even overabundance—in creativity can help define the proper scope of copyright law, especially in fair use. I explore these ideas by examining how creators think about what they do. As it turns out, commercially and critically successful creators resemble creators who avoid the general marketplace and create unauthorized derivative works (fanworks). The role of love, desire, and other passions in creation has lessons for the proper aims of copyright, the meaning of fair use, and conceptions of exploitation in markets.

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The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has released Information Economy Report 2009: Trends and Outlook in Turbulent Times.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Contents:

• Global and regional trends in the diffusion of ICTs such as fixed and mobile telecommunications, Internet, and broadband
• Ranking of the most dynamic economies in terms of increased ICT connectivity between 2003 and 2008
• Monitoring of the “digital divide”
• Survey of national statistical offices on the use of ICT in the business sector
• A review of the changing patterns in the trade of ICT goods
• A mapping of the new geography in the offshoring of IT and ICT-enabled services.
• Policy recommendations on how developing countries can reap greater benefits from ICT
• A statistical annex with global ICT data.

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The Utah State University Press will merge with the Merrill-Cazier Library, and it will "adopt a new publication model, with open access as a central component."

Here's an excerpt from the press release

Joining a growing national trend, Utah State University Press will merge with the administrative structure of Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University. The transition has begun, with the arrangement officially taking effect at the start of fiscal year 2010-11. . . .

"Many university presses are moving toward open access, often under the administration of the library,” Clement [Richard Clement, Dean of USU Libraries] said. “The most conspicuous example in the recent past is the University of Michigan Press which moved into the library and is now focusing on OA and other forms of digital publication. We propose to move the USU Press along the same path." . . .

While the decision to move USU Press to Merrill-Cazier Library was not completely budget-driven, it will result in significant savings, Clement said. With a larger staff in place, the library will assume a number of support activities for the press, including accounting, IT support, graphic design and public relations. . . .

USU Press will adopt a new publication model, with open access as a central component and will move toward increased digital delivery of books. The library’s position will be enhanced as well, as academic libraries nationally take on a stronger role in the evolution of scholarly publishing.

Read more about it at "Survival—Through Open Access" and "USU Press merging with Merrill-Cazier Library."

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I recently returned from a symposium in Luxembourg on the topic of Contemporary History in the Digital Age and will report some of my impressions here. First, I should say that attending the event was a remarkable experience for a number of reasons. The symposium, which was hosted by the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe (CVCE) and the University of Luxembourg (Master’s in Contemporary European History program), was multi-lingual and this was a technological and human achievement in its own right. Translators worked in the background to make accessible the French language papers for English speakers, and they were highly skilled. Another reason the conference was so interesting is that it looked at digital innovation in the humanities from a European perspective. As an Australian in Sweden, much of this discussion was very new to me and I gained a great deal from it. The field of digital history tends to be dominated, at least in the research published in English, by the work of a handful of scholars in the US and UK. The CVCE in particular has a lot of experience in digital history projects. It coordinates and produces La référence multimédia sur l’histoire de l’Europe, one of the long-running digital resources on European history and integration. One of the main points for discussion at the symposium was the decision to re-design this online resource, and papers compared the earlier verion with the upcoming version from different perspectives (technical, conceptual, philosophical). However, I should say that the focus on practical experiments (in interface design, content management, interrelationship of institutional resources etc) was arguably eclipsed by one main issue: training the next generation of researchers/technicians. Indeed, this need was identified by nearly all the presenters. It seems that the digital humanities are at the start of what is likely to be a rapid rise to a more central place in universities but that what is lacking is the people to facilitate this transition.

Mary Lou Mahon of NSF's "Creativity and Cognition" division has just opened her talk on "Enhancing Creativity and Implicaions for Design Cognition" with an essential and elegant insight. She's showing slides of preverbal infants playing with laptops and iPhones. As she notes, for these toddlers, these complex digital machines are "toys," no different from other toys. They play, they respond, they learn, they play more. When something doesn't work, they hand the toy (ie iPhone) to and adult, "Huh, huh," and the adult shows them how it works, and then the process continues.

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This fall’s Digital Dialogues are now available with brief descriptions on our MITH Podcasting page. Topics covered this fall include videogame preservation, teaching in Second Life, data mining for metaphors in eighteenth century literature, data sets and an “abundant humanities library”, how programming is taught, open source teaching and scholarship, and a close look at Ebook devices.

We have a couple more episodes before wrapping up this season’s series on November 17th. If you are unable to attend the live event, the podcast file will be available within a day after the talk. Download the Fall 2009 Speakers Schedule to view a complete list of speakers and topics.

The video is set up as a PSA interrupting in-game play, in which Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels steps out of a Hummer to talk to something close to his heart: random grenades. Getting tagged by a sticky grenade from out of nowhere is undoubtedly frustrating for FPS gamers, and Hamel urges players to avoid using this type of attack because, he assures them, random grenades are "for pussies." Later, we find that he is speaking on behalf of the Fight Against Grenade Spam.

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Special Post-Halloween post! I can haz robot holocaust?

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Announcing Digital Studies / Le champ numérique. This is a new journal from the SDH/SEMI (Society for Digital Humanities).

Announcing Digital Studies / Le champ numérique, a refereed academic journal, publishing three times a year and serving as a formal arena for scholarly activity and as an academic resource for researchers in the digital humanities. DS/CN is published by the Society for Digital Humanities / Société pour létude des médias interactifs (SDH/SEMI).

Observation is the first step towards scientific discovery. With the WildLab iPhone application and associated inquiry-based curriculum, students learn the basics of scientific fieldwork, while using other STEM-related skills.

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Collaboration is one of the concepts frequently discussed among those in the humanities and those studying social networking. How do we facilitate it? What tools make it effective? What cognitive models should we use? How can the drive for it inform pedagogy? These and many other questions we explore on a regular basis with the assumption that collaboration is likely to create new, useful knowledge, is a necessary skill for our students to learn, and is probably the direction toward which current technological tools are driving us, so we need to understand it. Nevertheless, one place where collaboration is rarely, if ever seen, is in the conventional research done by humanities scholars.

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“A wacko holding forth on a soapbox. If Ms. Davidson just wants to yammer and lead discussions, she should resign her position and head for a park or subway platform, and pass a hat for donations.”

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Start: 19/01/2010 - 17:00 End: 19/01/2010 - 19:00 The London Digital Humanities Group 'Connected Histories: New Methodologies for Searching Distributed Electronic Sources' Tim Hitchcock (Hertfordshire) and Bob Shoemaker (Sheffield) [read more...] The London Digital Humanities Group

The London Digital Humanities Group Queen Mary, University of London [read more...]

A MITH Digital Dialogue
Wednesday, November 11, 3:30-4:45
MITH Conference Room, McKeldin Library B0135

“From the First Year Through Tenure: New Pathways for Humanities in a Digital Age” by GREG CRANE

Classical studies offers one particular, but potentially powerful, window onto possibilities for the humanities. A growing, international body of classicists are dedicated not simply to creating digital tools but to reimagining the field against the opportunities and challenges of the digital world in which we already live. On the one hand, we are beginning to see new possibilities for research that were not feasible with the tools of print culture. At the same time, and perhaps even more importantly, we are seeing a reorganization of who can participate and what they can contribute. We can see the possibility of a truly global field emerging, with implications far beyond the traditional bounds of
classical studies.

GREG CRANE is currently a Professor of Classics, as well as Editor-in-Chief of the Perseus Project at Tufts University. He has written two books on Thucydides; The Blinded Eye & The Ancient Simplicity, and is currently conducting preliminary research for a planned book on Cicero. He is particularly interested in the extent to which broadcast media such as the World Wide Web not only enhance the work of professional researchers and students in formal degree programs but create new audiences outside academia for cultural materials. His current research focuses on “computational humanities” and how this new field can help to democratize information without compromising intellectual rigor.

Coming up @ MITH 11/17: Jennifer Fleeger (Catholic), “Archiving America: The Vitaphone, the DVD, and Warner Bros. (re)store Jazz History”

View MITH’s complete Digital Dialogue schedule here:
http://www.mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_fall_2009.pdf

All talks are free and open to the public!

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-8927)

I wish you could all be here. Short of that, I invite you to follow us on Twitter with the #DNWS hashtag and to check out David Sonntag's amazing work using Google Wave. Here's that url again: http://aoardlifesci.wordpress.com/2009/11/04/digital-natives-workshop-da...

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JISC has released Fedorazon: Final Report.

Here's an excerpt:

The Fedorazon project is first and foremost the experiences of a small HE/FE team running and maintaining a Repository in the Cloud for one year. Being early adopters we provide both technical, fiscal and practical advice for both our successes and failures in this endeavour. We hope this report provides insight for other institutions wishing to utilise the Cloud for their Repository instance which we wholeheartedly recommend given they read this report first and prepare accordingly.

The Fedorazon project has discovered that a 'Repository in the Cloud' is easy to get up and running (both figuratively and literally); after that, all the complexity of hardware management, political costings and human resource allocation are still right where you left them. None the less we think there are significant cost savings in the Cloud that will only increase over time. We also believe that utilising the 'network effect' of the Cloud institutions can relieve the burden of having a local hardware expert to manage the repository instance. Finally, we believe that Cloud will lead to a significant change in the way we view repository architectures, especially in regards to how a 'preservation architecture' is achieved.

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The Harvard Law Library is recruiting a Web Developer.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Harvard Law Library is seeking an energetic and creative web developer to join our newly created Digital Lab team. The Digital Lab is the Library's focal point for a wide range of activities including developing internet tools to promote and enhance access to legal information. The Web Developer manages the full life cycle of development projects. Reporting to the Manager of the Digital Lab, the Web Developer will design, develop, test and deploy new applications and extensions to existing applications; research coding and infrastructure technologies in connection with application design and implementation; identify integration requirements between applications; review and modify systems programs as needed to correct utility or application programs; install or customize modules and features for open source and proprietary software packages; develop and maintain documentation, participate in third party tool and product evaluations as needed, and take on other related duties as assigned. Works closely with librarian, unit director and other programmers.

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Stanford University will implement an electronic dissertation program this month.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Speaking at the Oct. 22 Faculty Senate meeting, University Librarian Michael Keller said the digital world offers a "much greater palette of expression" to graduate students, because they will be able to include more graphics, color and character sets in their dissertations than in paper copies.

"[There will be] more opportunities to link to online resources and to have those links live," Keller said during a joint presentation on the program with University Registrar Thomas Black.

The program is the result of a yearlong collaboration between Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources and the Registrar's Office.

Under the program, digital dissertations will be stored in the Stanford Digital Repository, which provides preservation services for scholarly resources, helping to ensure their integrity, authenticity and usability over time.

Keller said the documents will be available to the Stanford community through Socrates, the university's online library catalog, and "available to the world" through Google, which will serve as a third-party distributor. He said the library will print one copy of each work and store it in the Stanford University Archives.

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Presentations from the DC-2009: Semantic Interoperability of Linked Data conference are now available.

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The PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research) project has released: Final Report on the Provision of Usage Data and Manuscript Deposit Procedures for Publishers and Repository Managers.

Here's an excerpt:

This report concludes the development of an overall framework for depositing stage-two outputs in and for harvesting log files from repositories. An innovative workflow has been devised to describe and standardise the deposit from publishers to repositories that demonstrates, in a core group of interoperable European repositories, the capability of accepting material deposited from third party publishers and authors beyond the project duration.

The development of an appropriate workflow for author deposits has proved challenging, as the author response is unpredictable, and cannot readily be standardised. The guiding principle adopted is that authors are encouraged to follow their established practice of deposit in an institutional or subject-specific repository. Failing such practice, a central deposit in the PEER Depot for distribution to designated PEER repositories is recommended.

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Meandre 1.4.7 was released today, November 3, 2009. This is the last and most stable release in the 1.4 series before we move onto big changes for the 1.5 series. Version 1.4.7 has a few new features and numerous bug fixes and usability improvements.

As usual, the Download page now points to this stable release:

http://seasr.org/meandre/download/

The raw artifacts are available at the SEASR repository:

http://repository.seasr.org/Meandre/Releases/1.4/1.4.7/

Visible changes since 1.4.5 (Version 1.4.6 was an internal release):

• Meandre server can now load flows from the network and then be restarted and run offline.

• Improvements to the Meandre Administrative Interface for user accounts.

• Allow specification of the port when running a flow from the ZigZag console.

• Performance improvement on component installation by using MD5 checksums to check whether a particular resource already exist on the meandre server.

• When regenerating, downloading jar files is skipped if they already exist on the meandre server.

• Bug fixes.

Last week, the second and final installment of the Episodes of Liberty City downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV, The Ballad of Gay Tony, was released. Unlike the more sullen story of Nico Bellic, clawing his way up from nothing, Gay Tony’s Luis begins with a crisp suit, good job, plenty of cash and all sorts of expensive items to wreak havoc throughout Liberty City. What marks out GTA IV’s DLC from a simple mission pack or extra campaign is that it offers the chance to experience Liberty City from a new perspective, reimagining the gameplay, and thus, the game, in the process.

This is something I heartily commend.

Casting our minds back through the mysts of tyme, in ye olden days, expansion packs for PC games were popular stop-gaps between development cycles. Often, the best packs would invite a new experience, for better or worse. Blizzard’s Frozen Throne expansion for Warcraft III included some fairly awful squad-based levels, eschewing the base management aspect the original. However, the attempt was there, the price of development was low, and the cost to the consumer was reduced too. Win-win. Now that DLC has become entwined in the fate of games on the current generation of consoles, we see this trend returning.

While GTA IV asks players to see the city through the eyes of a new protagonist, with new motivations and financial status (equaling new mission, weapons and cars, gameplay-wise), Burnout Paradise’s expansion, Big Surf Island is an unashamed distillation of the core game. Criterion took all the aspects that made the original fun: huge jumps, secret areas, inventing Tony Hawk-esque routes to create the most exhilarating run, and shrunk it down into a tiny area, converting the game from a weak beer to a hard shot of tequila. It’s a wonderful addition to the game. In fact, the only problem is that the island is too much fun. Driving between both areas, linked from a bridge, is now a jarring experience: the jumps, twists and turns of the new island give way to open, flat, straight, roads of the original. Roads that once seemed exciting and fast are now tedious and one-dimensional.

The difference between these expansions and those that the PC cultivated is that while we need to build new content, we can still situate the player in the same environment that they know, playing off their familiarity with surprise and nostalgia. The re-imagining of these games shows just how many play-styles modern games are capable of supporting, if only the developers had the time to do so. There are strong parallels with MMOs here, visiting the old friend of Azeroth after six months away can reveal new secrets and functionality, delighting players for years on end. Revisitating promotes an ownership of virtual worlds that were hitherto transient places, existing for a single game, for a single purpose.

I hope this signals a new style of development, building on solid foundations to support ever more complex and ever more exciting gameplay, refining original ideas over time, rather than creating monolithic pieces that remain the same forever. The intent is the same as the (arguably failed) episodic gaming movement of a few years ago, but the execution different.

And now, back to Gay Tony. I have some skyscrapers to base jump off.

The Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989, signaling the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a new era in transatlantic relations and European unity. November 9, 2009 celebrates 20 years since the Berlin Wall was torn down. Long a symbol of isolation and contention, the Berlin Wall now symbolizes hope, change and unity.  Students at more than 25 US universities will celebrate the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall by organizing Campus Weeks with financial and organizational support from the German Embassy in Washington DC .

This fall,  George Mason University and CHNM will join in the German Embassy’s campaign, Freedom Without Walls, a crosscultural celebration of the unification of East Germany and West Germany, and the possibility for peaceful change  throughout the world. CHNM is hosting the George Mason website for Freedom Without Walls, which will feature updates on project news, Campus Week events, and new content.

The Campus Weeks are a component of Germany ’s Freedom Without Walls campaign, an effort to reach out to the generation that was born around the time the wall came down.

Ambassador Scharioth explained that reaching today’s university students is critical if the memory and the inspiration of the fall of the wall is to be preserved. “Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the vestiges of the wall remind us that freedom is precious,” he said. “We are proud to support a new generation of future leaders in their effort to discover and to share what the fall of the wall means to them,” he continued.

The Freedom Without Walls Campus Weeks will include public speaking competitions and an art competition involving replicas of the Berlin Wall to be located across the country.

The German Embassy has created a website with information about the historic anniversary at www.Germany.info/withoutwalls, as well as a Freedom Without Walls page on Facebook. The Germany.info website contains comprehensive information about the history of Germany’s division and reunification, and it will document the Campus Weeks using online video and photos.

The Freedom Without Walls campaign is generously supported by Air Berlin and by the Max Kade Foundation, Inc.

The Goethe-Institut USA and the Wende Museum in Los Angeles provide support in kind for the German Embassy’s Freedom Without Walls campaign.

Colleges and Universities Participating in Freedom Without Walls Campus Weeks 2009

Amherst College

Boston College

Bowdoin College

Brown University

California State University Long Beach

Canisius College , Buffalo

Chapman University , LA

University of Cincinnati

Columbia University

Cornell University

Duke University

University of Florida

University of South Florida

George Mason University

Georgetown University

Johns Hopkins University

University of Massachusetts – Amherst

University of Michigan

Middlebury College

University of Missouri-St. Louis

University of Oregon

Rice University

University of St. Thomas

UCLA – to be confirmed

Vanderbilt University

University of Virginia

Wartburg College

Washington University

Westminster College

Durham Public Schools superintendent Carl E. Harris will leave the school system at the end of the calendar year in order to work for the U.S. Department of Education, according to a news release sent this morning.

Harris has accepted a position as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education for Policy and Strategic Initiatives with the federal agency.

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If you are a video nut like me and have done any type of video post-production from your home Mac or PC, then you probably know how useful and powerful a tool Sorenson Squeeze can be. For anyone out there not familiar, Squeeze is one of the best one-stop-shop encoding programs available for digital video. Not only is Squeeze compatible with a variety of different codecs, but I have found it to work as seamlessly on a PC as it does a Mac, a function that not many other programs can claim.

You can understand my elation, then, when I heard that Sorenson was releasing Squeeze 6, the latest and greatest in streamlined video encoding.

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Observation is the first step towards scientific discovery. With the WildLab iPhone application and associated inquiry-based curriculum, students learn the basics of scientific fieldwork, while using other STEM-related skills. Through observations, questions, and analysis, students come to know t

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The inimitable Howard Rheingold has just made a terrific video on How To Build a Personal Intelligence Dashboard, which shows how to organize your dashboard in a way that streamlines, aids, abets, and in all ways supports your attentions and, equally important, your distractions. As always with Howard's video, extremely helpful and clear. Check it out!

http://blip.tv/file/2799206

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Senator John McCain has introduced the "The Internet Freedom Act of 2009" in the U.S. Senate and Rep. Marsha Blackburn has introduced the "Real Stimulus Act of 2009" in the U.S. House of Representatives. Both bills are aimed at preventing the FCC from imposing net neutrality regulations, saying: "The Federal Communications Commission shall not propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services."

Read more about it at "House Bill Would Ban FCC Net Neutrality Rules" and "House, Senate Get Separate Bills to Kill Net Neutrality."

Related Posts

1. Congressional Research Service Electronic Accessibility Act of 2009 Introduced
2. Analysis of The Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009
3. Net Neutrality: The Federal Communications Commission's Authority to Enforce its Network Management Principles
4. In 2007-2008, Reed Elsevier Inc. Made Contributions to Eight House Judiciary Committee Members
5. Urgent Call to Action: Conyers Bill Opposing NIH Open Access Policy May Soon Come to House Vote

The VIVOweb Project based in Cornell's Mann Library is recruiting nine software design/development/usability specialists.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The VIVOweb Project is a two-year $12 million project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to build a national network of distributed Resource Description Framework (RDF) databases facilitating discovery of scientists and their research and encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration and scientific exchange. The VIVO (http://vivo.cornell.edu) experts and resources network has been under development in Mann Library at Cornell since 2003 and is currently in use at Cornell and at the University of Florida. The latter is the lead institution in this multi-institution project.

Related Posts

1. Software Development Manager at King's College London
2. Digital Library Jobs: Project Manager for the Integrated Workflow for Institutional Repository Enhancement Project
3. Digital Library Jobs: Library Technology Development Specialist at Villanova
4. Digital Library Jobs: Digital Project Manager at Houston Public Library
5. Digital Library Jobs: Repository Software Programmer at CARL

In "Internet Archive Dishes up BookServer as Digital Books Market Heats Up," Nancy Herther discusses the recent BookServer announcement and its implications.

Here's an excerpt:

Using an open architecture and open ebook formats, Kahle and his team intend to see that ebooks are available—for free or a fee—that will work on any device—whether a laptop, PC, smartphone, game console, or dedicated ebook reader. While it is still in development and probably years from completion, the BookServer project is intended to allow users to search book indexes across the web—whether it be on publishers' sites, libraries, bookstores, universities, or other sources—to identify content, compare vendor offerings, and easily download titles.

Related Posts

1. Internet Archive Launches BookServer
2. Internet Archive Asks to Intervene in Authors Guild v. Google
3. Internet Archive’s New E-Book Reader, Flip Book
4. Sony’s eBook Store to Offer Over a Half-Million Public Domain Books from Google
5. 300,000 Sony Reader Digital Books Sold

The UK Intellectual Property Office has released © The Way Ahead: A Strategy for Copyright in the Digital Age.

Here's an excerpt:

Based on the findings, the Government's reported intentions are:

• for authors of copyright works; to support fair treatment through new model contracts and clauses and fair returns for use of their work by improving education about and enforcement of rights;
• for rights holders; to help secure a viable future by encouraging the development of new business models, modernising the licensing process and maintaining support for education about and enforcement of rights;
• for consumers; to allow them to benefit from the digital age by seeking to legitimise noncommercial use of legitimately-purchased copyright works and improving access to 'orphan works' such as out-of-print books;
• for educators and researchers; to support them by improving access to works, resolving issues around copyright and contract and ensuring exceptions to copyright are right for the digital age; and
• for businesses and other users; to work towards a simpler copyright system by, improving the copyright licensing process and encouraging the development of new business models.

This means:

• UK action to improve access to orphan works, enable extended collective licensing, encourage the development of model contracts and clauses, and tackle P2P file-sharing; and
• A willingness on the Government's part to consider European action that provides commonsense rules for private, non-commercial use of copyright material that will give consumers much more freedom to do what they want (such as creating mash-ups) and make clear what they cannot do.

Related Posts

1. Orphan Works: A Statement of Best Practices
2. Center for Intellectual Property to Launch CIP Member Community
3. Peter Hirtle on the Impact of the Google Book Settlement on Foreign Copyright Holders
4. “The Google Book Search Settlement: A New Orphan-Works Monopoly?”
5. "ALPSP Response to the Intellectual Property Office Issues Paper '© the Future'"

The Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER) has released Making the Case for European Research Libraries: LIBER Strategic Plan 2009-2012.

Here's an excerpt:

In 2009-2012 LIBER will give priority to the following areas:

• Scholarly communication
• Digitisation and resource discovery
• Heritage collections and preservation
• Organisation and human resources
• LIBER Services

Related Posts

1. Stanford University to Implement Electronic Dissertations
2. Concordia University Launches Spectrum: Concordia University Research Repository
3. Patricia A. Steele Named Dean of the University of Maryland Libraries
4. ARL Releases Transformational Times: An Environmental Scan Prepared for the ARL Strategic Plan Review Task Force
5. ARL Releases The Research Library's Role in Digital Repository Services

Our increasingly techno-savvy and sophisticated society is taking the problem of obesity and giving it the technological solution - through the use of virtual communities in physical fitness.

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Applications for MITH’s Spring 2010 Winnemore Digital Humanities Dissertation Fellowship are now being accepted.

Intended for students whose dissertations engage the intersections between new media and the traditional concerns of the Arts and Humanities, the Winnemore Fellowship will provide a stipend of $9,570, plus full benefits and tuition remission up to five credits.

Nominees will be evaluated on three main criteria: (1) The potential contribution of the dissertation to the Digital Humanities; (2) The quality of the student’s work; (3) The likelihood of the student successfully completing the dissertation.

Applicants will be asked to submit an application form; a 500-1000 word abstract written for a general audience; a statement of work completed to date, work remaining, and expected completion date; a curriculum vitae; and two letters of recommendation, one of which must be from the student’s dissertation director. The application form can be found here: http://mith.umd.edu/research/WinnemoreApp2010.pdf

Students who wish to apply for the fellowship should submit a copy of the application form and the required attachments to Neil Fraistat, Director of MITH, McKeldin Library B0131, Campus.

Students who have funding that is related to their dissertation research or another substantial fellowship should not apply.

Applications for Spring 2009 are due at MITH by noon, Monday, December 7, 2009. The recipient will be announced in mid-December 2009.

Please address any questions to Neil Fraistat, Director of MITH (fraistat at umd dot edu).

Three sixth graders from Williams Elementary in Flint presented their DIGW games in Lansing, Michigan on Oct. 28, at the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning student technology showcase. They did a terrific job of explaining DevInfo GameWorks and the Millenium Development Goals to

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Yesterday afternoon, Professor of Music Sever Tipei presented at the Illinois Composers' Forum on recent projects and research. Sever offered a demonstration of SoundMaker--an additive sound synthesis engine with a web-based interface--which readers can explore at http://aurel.music.uiuc.edu:81/SoundMakerWeb/Login (requires that users establish a free account).  The program, written in C++, enables composers ...

Intermedia Festival will be co-produced by eDream's affiliate program at IUPUI.  The Festival will be held right in our backyard, too -- just 2 hours east, in Indianapolis, this coming Spring, from April 23-25, 2010. The Festival will focus on "emerging artistic trends in telematic and media arts," in which telematic ...

Two of Guy Garnett's graduate students have been named Siebel Scholars, Class of 2010: Brett Jones and Rajinder Sodhi.  This major honor was established by the Siebel Foundation "in 2000 to recognize the most talented students at the world's leading graduate schools of bioengineering, business, and computer science."  Siebel Scholars  ...

On October 2nd, John Toenjes debuted an Astral Convertible blog (see eDream's Projects page for more details), which will follow his and our collaborators' progress in pre-production work for the restaging of this contemporary American dance masterpiece.  The blog provides special insight into the complex technical challenges such an arts-technology ...

We eDreamers were delighted to meet so many interesting and talented colleagues at the recent Illinois Informatics Institute's Open House. Among them was Therese Tierney, a professor who has just joined the School of Architecture and whose work and interests readily evoke the brave new arts-technology space in which ...

eDream is helping to facilitate the approval of a doctorate that will concentrate on digital arts media, which will be administered by the Illinois Informatics Institute and granted by the Graduate College.  The degree, which is bundled with other areas of informatics, was approved by the Education Policy Committee of ...

The Illinois Emerging Digital Research and Education in Arts Media Institute— is dedicated to promoting arts that are conceived, created, and conveyed through digital technologies.

Prompted by Sen. Coburn's recent condemnation of political science as a money pit, I've been thinking more about the contributions of political science (and social science generally). I'm certainly not alone. The value of social science is a source of frequent soul searching by practitioners, and Sen Coburn's grandstanding has brought it to the attention of a national audience. Other commentators have provided nice summaries of political science accomplishments, so I won't rehash them here.

Instead, I purpose a constructive way to better political science, one that should resonate with others on this board: find the killer app for political science.

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HASTAC is delighted to announce the HASTAC 2010: Grand Challenges and Global Innovations Conference. Held April 15-17, 2010 and hosted by the Institute for Computing in Humanities, Arts, and Social Science at the University of Illinois, HASTAC 2010: Grand Challenges and Global Innovations will be a free, entirely virtual event held in a multiplicity of digital spaces instigated from sites across the globe.

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Start: 02/12/2009 - 10:00 End: 02/12/2009 - 16:30 Third VERA Winter Workshop – Wednesday 2nd December 2009 "Digital field recording and publication in archaeology" The VERA project invites you to a workshop entitled "Digital field recording and publication in archaeology" to be held in the Archaeology Department of the University of Reading on Wednesday 2nd December 2009. [read more...] Mapping the Past

I just mailed the November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter.  This issue takes a close look at a few threads in the argument that knowledge is and ought to be a public good.  The roundup section briefly notes 223 OA developments from October.

Emory University Libraries invites applications for a 12-month postdoctoral Research Fellow to work on a digital scholarship planning grant funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This project will pursue the further development of Emory's Digital Scholarship Commons (DiSC) and explore the evolving structural role of research libraries in the digital scholarship domain. A new organizational model, as envisioned by Emory through DiSC, will address the four foci of digital scholarship: scholarly communications, research resources, pedagogy, and ethics. [read more...]

Pamela Samuelson and Krzysztof Bebenek have self-archived "Why Plaintiffs Should Have to Prove Irreparable Harm in Copyright Preliminary Injunction Cases" in SSRN.

Here's an excerpt:

It has become lamentably common for courts to issue preliminary injunctions in copyright cases once rights holders have shown a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits without going on to require them to prove that they will suffer irreparable harm unless the injunction issues. Harm is too often presumed to be irreparable if plaintiffs have made out a prima facie case of infringement. This presumption cannot be squared with traditional principles of equity, as interpreted in numerous Supreme Court decisions, particularly eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange LLC, 547 U.S. 388 (2006).

While a presumption of irreparable harm is inappropriate in all copyright cases, it is particularly troublesome in cases involving transformative uses of existing works, such as parodies and remixes and mashups, because free expression and free speech interests of creative users are at stake and transformative uses cases often raise plausible non-infringement defenses. Indeed, if any presumption about harm is appropriate in transformative use cases, it should probably run in favor of irreparability of harm to the defendants' free expression and speech interests under First Amendment case law which treats preliminary injunctions as presumptively unconstitutional prior restraints on speech.

Related Posts

1. Forcing the Net Through a Sieve: Why Copyright Filtering is Not a Viable Solution for U.S. ISPs
2. Copyright and E-Reserves: Update on Cambridge University Press et al. v. Georgia State University
3. “Statutory Damages in Copyright Law: A Remedy in Need of Reform”
4. Rep. John Conyers Replies to Lessig and Eisen about Fair Copyright in Research Works Act
5. Shifting the Burden of Proof in Fair Use Cases to Copyright Holders

The Stanford University Libraries are recruiting a Digital Archivist.

Here's an excerpt from the ad (Job ID: 36243):

Reporting to the Principal Manuscripts Processing Librarian, the Digital Archivist will help define and apply the methodology and standards of traditional archival best practice to born-digital collections. This work will be done as part of a grant project, Born Digital Collections: An Inter-Institutional Model for Stewardship (AIMS), funded by the Mellon Foundation and led by the University of Virginia.

Related Posts

1. Digital Archivist, Digital Curation Services at University of Virginia
2. Digital Archivist at Yale
3. Digital Archivist Project Manager at the New York Philharmonic
4. Digital Library Jobs: Digital Archivist at the University of Texas
5. Digital Library Jobs: Digital Collections Archivist at Georgia Tech

The transfer of the OAIster database to OCLC's WorldCat is now complete, and OCLC will offer a free OAIster-only database view in 2010 to complement integrated WorldCat Access.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The University of Michigan and OCLC today announced that they have successfully transitioned the OAIster database to OCLC to ensure continued public access to open-archive collections, and to expand the visibility of these collections to millions of information seekers through OCLC services.

OAIster records are now fully accessible through WorldCat.org, and will be included in WorldCat.org search results along with records from thousands of libraries worldwide that add their holdings to WorldCat. OCLC plans to release a freely accessible, discrete view of the OAIster records in January 2010 through a URL specific to OAIster. OAIster records will also continue to be available on the OCLC FirstSearch service to Base Package subscribers, providing another valuable access point for this rich database and a complement to other FirstSearch databases. OCLC will continue to develop and enhance access to open archive content.

"Adding records for open archive collections is a natural complement to WorldCat and will drive discovery and access of these collections for a broader community of scholars," said Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development. "OCLC is committed to building on the success of OAIster by identifying open archive collections of interest to researchers and libraries, and ensuring that open archive collections will be freely discoverable and accessible to information seekers worldwide."

"Integration of OAIster inside WorldCat.org is the result of many years of looking for a better home for OAIster, where its resources can be searched alongside other valuable, scholarly resources," said Kat Hagedorn, OAIster/Metadata Harvesting Librarian at the University of Michigan. "I am eagerly looking forward to its increased usefulness in the world of search and discovery."

OAIster is a union catalog of digital resources hosted at the University of Michigan since 2002. Launched with grant support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, OAIster was developed to test the feasibility of building a portal to open archive collections using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). OAIster has grown to become one of the world's largest aggregations of records pointing to open archive collections with more than 23 million records contributed by over 1,100 organizations worldwide.

"The University of Michigan approached OCLC about managing future operations for the OAIster project to ensure its long-term viability," said John Wilkin, Associate University Librarian, University of Michigan Library, when the partnership was announced earlier this year. "OCLC plays a pivotal role in the business of metadata creation and distribution. Situating OAIster with OCLC helps to create an increasingly comprehensive discovery resource for users."

OCLC plans to release a freely accessible, discrete view of the OAIster database in 2010 that will be updated regularly. This will allow WorldCat.org searchers to view only items harvested through OAIster.

"OCLC has been very responsive to issues and needs brought up by the OAI community," said Ms. Hagedorn. "The creation of a free, separately accessible view of OAIster within OCLC is an example of their recognition of the value of OAIster in the world of metadata management."

Now that all OAIster records are accessible through WorldCat.org, the oaister.org Web site has been redirected to a new OAIster Web site at OCLC. For more information, visit the new OAIster Web site.

Related Posts

1. OCLC Answers Questions about the Future of OAIster
2. OCLC Outlines Its Future OAIster Strategy
3. OCLC Releases WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway
4. Clarifications about the Michigan/OCLC OAIster Deal
5. University of Michigan and OCLC Form OAIster Partnership

Peter Hirtle, Cornell University Library's Senior Policy Advisor, is interviewed in "Removing All Restrictions: Cornell's New Policy on Use of Public Domain Reproductions," which has been published in the latest issue of Research Library Issues.

Here's an excerpt:

Restrictions on the use of public domain work, sometimes labeled "copyfraud," are generating increasing criticism from the scholarly community. With significant collections of public domain materials in their collections, research libraries are faced with the question of what restrictions, if any, to place on those who seek to scan or otherwise reproduce these resources with the intention of publication.

Cornell University Library has responded by adopting new permissions guidelines that open access by no longer requiring users to seek permission to publish public domain items duplicated from its collections. Users planning to scan and publish public domain material are still expected to determine that works are in the public domain where they live (since public domain determinations can vary internationally). Users must also respect noncopyright rights, such as the rights of privacy, publicity, and trademark. The Library will continue to charge service fees associated with the reproduction of analog material or the provision of versions of files different than what is freely available on the Web. The new guidelines are found at http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/guidelines.html.

Related Posts

1. "A Defense of the Public Domain: A Scholarly Essay"
2. New York Public Library and Kirtas Technologies Make Half-Million Public Domain Books Available
3. Cornell Lifts Use Restrictions on Reproductions of Public Domain Works, Including over 70,000 E-Books
4. Public Domain Victory in Golan v. Holder
5. New from Boyle: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

ICANN has appoved the use of non-Latin characters in Internet domain names.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The first Internet addresses containing non-Latin characters from start to finish will soon be online thanks to today's approval of the new Internationalized Domain Name Fast Track Process by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers board.

"The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush. "Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters—A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names."

ICANN's Fast Track Process launches on 16 November 2009. It will allow nations and territories to apply for Internet extensions reflecting their name—and made up of characters from their national language. If the applications meet criteria that includes government and community support and a stability evaluation, the applicants will be approved to start accepting registrations.

"This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and an historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet," said Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's President and CEO. "The first countries that participate will not only be providing valuable information of the operation of IDNs in the domain name system, they are also going to help to bring the first of billions more people online – people who never use Roman characters in their daily lives."

Related Posts

1. Informed P2P User Act Hearing
2. Bill Would Prohibit Internet Use Caps: Congressman Eric Massa to Introduce “Broadband Internet Fairness Act”
3. COPA, RIP

During the 2009-10 academic year at the University of Washington, the UW HASTAC Scholars are organizing "What Does Digital Scholarship Do?", a conversation series aimed at sharing digital work-in-progress, exploring core texts in the digital humanities, and discussing common practices in digital scholarship.

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The Electronic Literature Organization’s
Fourth International Conference
& Program of Digitally Mediated Literary Art

June 3-6, 2010
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Organized by the ELO and Writing Digital Media 
at the Brown University Literary Arts Program
dedicated to Robert Coover

The Electronic Literature Organization and Brown University’s Literary Arts Program invite submissions to the Electronic Literature Organization 2010 Conference to be held from June 3-6, 2008 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA.

• electronic literature
• writing digital media
• language-driven digital poesis
• literal art

We welcome papers and presentations on a broad range of topics. The conference will focus on the theory, criticism, close-reading, practice and archiving of language-driven digital art and poetics. Our gathering will also embrace all the related cultural practices that continue to be addressed by scholars and artists in our growing field:

• expressive processing
• computational art
• artificial cognition and intelligence
• aesthetic gaming
• information art
• codework
• digitally mediated performance
• network & media art & activism

In addition we will give a special welcome to papers that engage with the contribution that Robert Coover has made to our field. A festschrift comprised of papers from the conference is proposed and Professor Coover will be our chief featured eWriter. (Other featured speakers to be announced shortly.)

In conjunction with the three-day conference, there will be a juried Program of Language-Driven Digital Art, concentrating on but not confined to installation works. We plan to show the selected work in gallery spaces close to the conference venue in downtown Providence over a two week period. Subject to funding restrictions, selected artists will be awarded bursaries to assist with attending the conference. Submission guidelines will be posted on the conference website by mid November.

Deadline for Submissions: December 15, 2009
Notification of Acceptance: January 25, 2010

PLEASE NOTE: Deadline for full papers will be May 1, 2010 to allow for reflection and exchange on the papers prior to the conference and to get head-start in the publication process.

The basic cost of the conference is $150; graduate students and non-affiliated artists pay only $100.

Conference registration covers access to all events, the reception, some meals, and shuttle transportation.

All conference attendees are also expected to join the ELO before the conference and this can be done at registration.

We are planning to implement online submission and registration. Before submitting, please consult the conference website at …

http://ai.eliterature.org

… where these facilities will be available and where you will find much more information about both the content and the form of the conference and arts program.

After consulting the website, for further queries and all email correspondence contact:

elo dot ai at eliterature dot org

The above address should be used for all conference business. It will checked by myself and also those colleagues and students who will be assisting me with the conference organization. But I appreciate that you may sometimes also want to get in touch with the conference organizer:

John Cayley, Literary Arts Program
Box 1923, Brown University
68 1/2 Brown Street
Providence, RI 02912, USA
office: +1 401 863 3966, John underscore Cayley at brown dot edu

The Conference is currently sponsored and supported by The Electronic Literature Organization, Brown University Literary Arts Program, Brown University Creative Arts Council, Brown University Library, and the RISD D+M Program.

Any organization or individual in receipt of this call who would like to sponsor and support this major international conference, please get in touch. External sponsors are being sought and will be appropriately acknowledged.

I was just sent a link to a YouTube video that shows a remarkable use of technology to help with an everyday sort of problem: it's remarkable for its simplicity. I think this highlights what gamers and educators inherently know, but which is often discounted for its importance. Check out the resu

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At a recent panel, a professor I work with asked, “What would happen if we had a climate crisis and nobody came?” When I read news reports (for instance this AP story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091022/ap_on_re_us/us_climate_poll) that suggest a la

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Can digital technologies help us resist the corporate university?

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Those of us who study computer and video games are very fortunate to have two free, online, peer-reviewed journals that do not assess page fees: Game Studies and Eludamos. And, there is at least one more free, online, peer-reviewed journal that does not assess page fees and includes articles about computer and video games: Digital Humanities Quarterly.

That’s the preface to my mentioning that a new issue (vol. 3, no. 2) of Eludamos is now out.

Also, that journal has issued a new call for papers:

The new call for papers for “Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture” is now open, and again, we cordially invite submissions dealing with everything that is relevant to the field of game studies.

All articles undergo a double blind peer review process except for
papers submitted to the game review section. We expect all
submissions to be in English and accept full papers only. For further
specifications about our submission guidelines please
consult the Eludamos site.

Eludamos also seeks volunteers to do editorial and proofreading work:

We are happy to announce that since its initiation three years ago, not just Eludamos’ readership but also its submission numbers have grown steadily. Thus we are looking to expand the ranks of our editors and proof-readers. Please note that all positions are honorary.

We are specifically looking for a book review editor. The editor’s responsibility would be to identify “hot topics” and to solicit reviews of new publications that deal with them.

We are also hoping to attract two volunteers for copy editing / proof reading.

Please send a short statement of interest via e-mail to the following address: ajahn2 at uni-goettingen dot de

Adam Greenfield's recent contribution to Wired UK magazine says that the complexity of the digital city requires translators, or urbanists, with a specialized understanding of networked urbanism. I'm not so sure...

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The Association of American Universities yesterday posted a series of documents relating to a previously-unpublicized effort by the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology. From the proposal, Roundtable on Public Access to Federal Research and Data:

... The House Science and Technology Committee, which has oversight of the federal civilian R&D enterprise, has a strong interest in [the question of public access]. The Committee seeks to convene a Roundtable of the key stakeholders to explore and develop an appropriate consensus regarding access to and preservation of federally funded research information that addresses the needs of all interested parties.

The progress of science and technology is very dependent on:

1. The wide dissemination of research results and data from which new science is born;
2. A peer review system that ensures the quality and integrity of scientific research results and analyses; and
3. Preservation and access to the archive of historic and current research results.

The federal government is an important funder of basic and applied research in the United States. As a result of this stewardship, the government should provide resources and establish policies where appropriate to facilitate access to scientific data and publications and preserve an accessible record to both entities. In doing so, the government must take into account the important role of the private sector in this enterprise. ...

To this end, a Roundtable forum is proposed to discuss these issues. ... Participants will be asked to contribute their expertise and proposed solutions on the respective role of the federal government, libraries, institutional repositories and the scholarly publishers on the topics of access and preservation of the results of federally funded research. ...

The total number of participants will be limited (to approximately 10) in order to facilitate the scheduling and productivity of the meetings. The initial roundtable meeting will be chaired by representatives of the House Science and Technology Committee with appropriate support and advice from staff in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Roundtable participants will be selected by the S&T Committee based on their interest and expertise on the issue. ...

To promote an open dialogue and exchange and to foster working toward a fair and balanced solution, participants will be at the table as knowledgeable individuals, but not as official representatives of their parent organizations. ... Participants will be asked to refrain from public disclosure of Roundtable deliberations until a consensus report has been completed. ...

The proposal is undated, but the status report states the roundtable was convened in "early summer 2009".

The AAU documents also include a list of participants and biographies of the roundtable members.

From the status report, dated October 29, 2009:

... In-person meetings and conference calls have taken place over the summer and early fall, with the goal of producing a consensus report containing views and recommendations before the end of the year. The Roundtable report will be submitted to the HSTC and OSTP and subsequently will be made widely available to all stakeholders as well as the broader public. Members of the Roundtable will be available for comment regarding the report after its public release. ...

Comment. Observers of American politics will know the central role of Congressional committees in policymaking. To date, two committees have given significant consideration to OA: the House Appropriations Committee, which passed the NIH mandate (and the earlier voluntary policy), and the House Judiciary Committee, whose chairman introduced the anti-public access Fair Copyright in Research Works Act and which held a hearing on the bill. (FRPAA was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, but that committee has not held a hearing on that bill in either its current or previous form. In addition, questions about OA have occasionally been asked of executive branch officials and nominees in their oversight committees.) Noticeably absent from that list, as I've previously noted, are committees with jurisdiction over science or education -- arguably the committees best suited to consider policies issues facing the research community and higher education. This effort changes that.

In addition, the involvement of the Executive Office of Science and Technology Policy is the first significant public engagement of the Obama White House with OA. (The Bush White House expressed mild concern about the NIH mandate, but ultimately signed a bill containing the measure.)

Accordingly, this process has the opportunity to shape discourse about public access in a major way. Unfortunately, since it's secret, we don't have much to go on until the recommendations are released and the participants' vow of silence is lifted.

At first glance, the proposal itself is fairly even-handed. The biggest criticism I can level so far is that, while presuming increased access to be beneficial, it fails to ask the crucial question of what exactly are the benefits of access and the costs of lack of access. Nevertheless, the proposal counters two claims sometimes heard from (or implied by) opponents of OA: that greater access is not necessary (e.g. that benefits from OA would be negligible) and that government has no proper role in access and preservation.

There's also the question of focus. This roundtable was tasked with considering access and preservation to publications and data from federally-funded research, rather than a narrower focus only on peer-reviewed article manuscripts. While other types of documents should be considered, that shouldn't distract from a swift recommendation for a FRPAA-style mandate.

In tagging the documents for the OATP, Peter remarks, "Is the membership list balanced? Read it and decide for yourselves." Of course, the theory behind this arrangement is that members will check their agendas at the door and work together as unbiased experts, so "balance" wouldn't matter. We'll only learn later (if ever) if practice followed theory in this case.

Update. Post title revised to more accurately reflect the essence of the matter.

HASTAC@KAIST takes me to Daejeon and then Seoul, South Korea. I've been to several countries in Asia but this is my first trip to Korea. And my first workshop with CIO's of the international and Pacific Rim military, science, and industrial complex. I expect I will learn more in the next two weeks than I can even imagine which, of course, is why I am going. For that, of course, is the theory of my new book, that you only learn by exciting (in the neurological sense and imaginative senses too) yourself out of your preconceptions and that doesn't happen when you spend all your time hanging around in your discipline, with your generation, in your country, in your culture and subculture, clucking derogatorily about how everything is going to the dogs.

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UPDATE: The downtime has been postponed to Thursday.

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At MW2010 museum staff members will show sites created in a non-profit environment and explain the workings behind them to their colleagues. Informal demonstration sessions are a chance to see many sites close-up and talk one-on-one with colleagues about their designs and the decisions that went into them. The Demonstration Hall is set up in the Exhibit Hall. Delegates move from booth to booth for individual discussions with Demonstrators. Call for Participation [read more...]

Start: 13/04/2010 - 09:30 End: 17/04/2010 - 17:30 Museums and the Web is an annual conference exploring the social, cultural, design, technological, economic, and organizational issues of culture, science and heritage on-line. Taking an international perspective, MW reviews and analyzes the issues and impacts of networked cultural, natural and scientific heritage. Our community has been meeting since 1997, imagining, tracking, analyzing, and influencing the role museums play on the Web.

Author John Scalzi just made an interesting blog post regarding Amazon's patent of a new method of tracking e-books. The method, such

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Author John Scalzi just made an interesting blog post regarding Amazon's patent of a new method of tracking e-books. The method, such

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Tiltfactor’s Mary Flanagan will be visiting MIT’s Gambit lab on Monday 2nd November, for Introduction to Game Studies. Later in the day she is speaking at the MIT series Purple Blurb about her art practice as it relates to her theory of Critical Play.

On Tuesday 3rd November, Flanagan is speaking in a Lunchtime Gallery Talk at 12:30pm related to the exhibition currently on, The Art of Sonia Landy Sheridan.

two interesting pieces about the importance of the Android OS to "the future of the book"

http://ireaderreview.com/2009/10/27/androids-impact-on-ereading/
http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/the-coming-android-mini-tablet-flood/

What happens when your site is being spammed not by automated bots but by real humans who are obviously being paid some nominal amount to pretend they are legit? They can read the captcha, take the math tests, and can register and fill out the required bio. It means that real humans have to wade through all of these registrations, one by one, to figure out who is legit and who is dying to become a member of HASTAC in order that they can plant their url's throughout the site, hawking replica purses, six pack abs, great sex, or hydroxycut. These are the equivalent of the "Gold Farmers" but, instead of being hired at sweatshop wages to play your MMOPG for you while you hold down your day job, these false registerers are obviously being paid to go to well-traveled sites to lure others. I don't think they have a name yet so we can call them "Gold Harvesters."

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Reblogged from DUKE RESEARCH, this story features a winner of the HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition's first cycle of awards, Tim Lenoir (PI) and his peaceful strategy negotiating simulation game, Virtual Peace. EMERGENCE is the multi-player net phase of the game. It's amazing.

And exciting as we move toward launching our third Competition next month to think what a "third generation" of digital media and learning will bring!

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Ahrash Bissell and I were in Sacramento for the JEANC conference this past weekend (Journalism Education Association of Northern California). It was great to see so many of the Student Journalism 2.0 students at the conference, and to see the Palo Alto and Mont

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One of the hallmarks of the digital humanities is the collaborative nature of the work.What we do is interdisciplinary by nature, and we generally believe that the more eyeballs a project receives, the better. We also fully recognize that no one person has all the expertise necessary to move thin

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On Monday (November 2) at 6pm in MIT’s room 14E-310,

The Purple Blurb series of readings and presentations on digital writing will present a talk by

Mary Flanagan

author of Critical Play: Radical Game Design (MIT Press, 2009)

Mary Flanagan is the creator of [giantJoystick], and author of [theHouse] among other digital writing works. She is Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in Digital Humanities at Dartmouth, where she directs Tiltfactor, a lab focused on the design of activists and socially-conscious software.

Flanagan investigates everyday technologies through critical writing, artwork, and activist design projects. Flanagan’s work has been exhibited internationally at museums, festivals, and galleries, including: the Guggenheim, The Whitney Museum of American Art, SIGGRAPH, and The Banff Centre. Her projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Pacific Cultural Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Flanagan writes about popular culture and digital media such as computer games, virtual agents, and online spaces in order to understand their affect on culture. Her co-edited collection reload: rethinking women + cyberculture with Austin Booth was published by MIT Press in 2002. She is also co-author with Matteo Bittanti of Similitudini. Simboli. Simulacri ( SIMilarities, Symbols, Simulacra ) on The Sims game (in Italian, Unicopli 2003), and the co-editor of the collection re:skin (2007).

Flanagan is also the creator of The Adventures of Josie True, the first web-based adventure game for girls, and is implementing innovations in pedagogical and values-based game design.

Using the formal language of the computer program or game to create systems which interrogate seemingly mundane experiences such as writing email, using search engines, playing video games, or saving data to the hard drive, Flanagan reworks these activities to blur the line between the social uses of technology, and what these activities tell us about the technology user themselves.

A representative from the MIT Press bookstore will be at the talk offering copies of Flanagan’s books for sale.

The Wisconsin Project for Automated Libraries is recruiting a WISPALS Library Consortium Coordinator.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The primary responsibilities of the WISPALS Library Consortium Coordinator are to coordinate the Consortium budget and operations, facilitate future growth of the Consortium including marketing Consortium services and establish services to new members, act as liaison between Consortium and automation system and electronic services vendors, and represent the Consortium to other groups and agencies.

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2. Coordinator, Library Systems at Texas Woman's University
3. Library IT Jobs: Technology Coordinator at Washington and Lee University
4. Library IT Jobs: Systems Librarian at San Jacinto College
5. Library IT Jobs: Library Technology Coordinator at University of Puget Sound

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has made its 2010 National Leadership Grant guidelines available.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is accepting grant applications for the agency’s 2010 National Leadership Grant (NLG) program. Applications, guidelines, and examples of successful proposals can be found on the agency's Web site. The deadline for submitting applications is February 1, 2010.

For the past 12 years, the National Leadership Grants program has been the capstone program for IMLS, providing the agency's highest level of support for innovative projects that provide important research, tools, and models for library and museum programs across the country. Museums and libraries interested in submitting NLG proposals to IMLS can apply for one of two types of grants: Projects or Collaborative Planning Grants. Each of these types applies to the four funding categories: Advancing Digital Resources, Library-Museum Collaboration, Research, and Demonstration.

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2. Institute of Museum and Library Services Announces Award of National Leadership Grants to 51 Institutions
3. Arizona’s SIRLS Gets $900,000+ IMLS Grant for Online Digital Information Management Graduate Certificate Program
4. Dryad Repository Gets $2.18 Million Grant from the National Science Foundation
5. Grants: TexTreasures Grants for Digitization and Other Purposes

DeepDyve has launched a rental service for scholarly articles.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

DeepDyve today unveiled the world 's largest online rental service for scientific, technical and medical research. From a growing database spanning thousands of journals, DeepDyve now gives consumers and professionals access to more than 30 million articles for as little as $0.99 per article.

"The web is transforming the publishing industry and creating opportunities for new users to access our content," said Martin Frank, Ph. D., executive director of the American Physiological Society. "The rental model that DeepDyve has pioneered enables us to serve these new users without compromising the products we offer to our traditional subscription customers." . . .

DeepDyve . . . offers an array of features and benefits to enrich the searching and reading experience, including:

• Free search & preview: Researchers can be certain of an article's relevance before renting.
• Personalized suggestions: DeepDyve will automatically display suggested articles based on a user 's profile.
• Bookmarks: Favorite articles are saved and displayed on a user 's MyDeepDyve home page for easy access.
• Email and RSS alerts: Users can receive regular updates of new articles and search results delivered directly to their email inbox or RSS reader.
• More Like This: DeepDyve offers links to related content with every search result and article page. . . .

DeepDyve is currently offering a risk-free, 14-day trial that allows users unlimited access to thousands of authoritative journals at no cost. Users enjoy continuous access to any article until their Free Trial expires, after which they may join one of three plans:

• Basic Rental Plan: For just $0.99 per article, users of this “pay-as-you-go” plan can rent and read a premium article from one of the many prestigious journals available through DeepDyve. Articles can be read multiple times for up to 24 hours.
• Silver Monthly Plan: For $9.99 per month, users can rent and read up to 20 premium articles per month. Each article can be read multiple times for up to seven days.
• Gold Monthly Plan: For $19.99 per month, users can rent and read an unlimited number of articles for an unlimited amount of time. There is no expiration date.

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4. SHERPA's RoMEO Service Tops 500 Publisher Self-Archiving Policies
5. Harvard University Press Launches Open Access Law Journal

Laura N. Gasaway, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, has self-archived "A Defense of the Public Domain: A Scholarly Essay" in SelectedWorks.

Here's the abstract:

Much has been written for librarians about copyright law. Despite the importance of the public domain, it has attracted much less scholarly attention than has copyright law generally, and yet a healthy and robust public domain is crucial to our society. It provides the building blocks for authors, composers, artists and movie makers who can borrow from public domain works without seeking permission of copyright owners. Unfortunately, the public domain is under attack from expanding the term of copyright, to making it more difficult for works to enter the public domain to the restoration of some foreign copyrights that had entered the public domain in the United States. Some librarians have asked whether vigorous application of fair use could not substitute for the shrinking public domain. It cannot. Fair use is a defense to copyright infringement and is very fact determinate. A court's finding of fair use applies only to the two parties to the litigation while the public domain is available to everyone from individual users of works, to artists and authors and to publishers and producers. It is crucial that the public domain be energetically defended. Today, it is not clear whether an author can even place his or her work in the public domain since copyright attaches automatically. A statutory method must be developed so that authors who wish to do so can easily place their works in the public domain.

Related Posts

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2. New York Public Library and Kirtas Technologies Make Half-Million Public Domain Books Available
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4. Public Domain Victory in Golan v. Holder
5. New from Boyle: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

The Cornell University Library has published Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums by Peter B. Hirtle, Emily Hudson, and Andrew T. Kenyon. A PDF copy of the book can be freely downloaded and the print version can be purchased from CreateSpace.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

How can cultural heritage institutions legally use the Internet to improve public access to the rich collections they hold?

"Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Guidelines for Digitization for U.S. Libraries, Archives, and Museums," a new book by published today by Cornell University Library, can help professionals at these institutions answer that question.

Based on a well-received Australian manual written by Emily Hudson and Andrew T. Kenyon of the University of Melbourne, the book has been developed by Cornell University Library's senior policy advisor Peter B. Hirtle, along with Hudson and Kenyon, to conform to American law and practice.

The development of new digital technologies has led to fundamental changes in the ways that cultural institutions fulfill their public missions of access, preservation, research, and education. Many institutions are developing publicly accessible Web sites that allow users to visit online exhibitions, search collection databases, access images of collection items, and in some cases create their own digital content. Digitization, however, also raises the possibility of copyright infringement. It is imperative that staff in libraries, archives, and museums understand fundamental copyright principles and how institutional procedures can be affected by the law.

"Copyright and Cultural Institutions" was written to assist understanding and compliance with copyright law. It addresses the basics of copyright law and the exclusive rights of the copyright owner, the major exemptions used by cultural heritage institutions, and stresses the importance of "risk assessment" when conducting any digitization project. Case studies on digitizing oral histories and student work are also included.

Hirtle is the former director of the Cornell Institute for Digital Collections, and the book evolved from his recognition of the need for such a guide when he led museum and library digitization projects. After reading Hudson and Kenyon's Australian guidelines, he realized that an American edition would be invaluable to anyone contemplating a digital edition.

Anne R. Kenney, the Carl A. Kroch University Librarian at Cornell University, noted: "The Library has a long tradition of making available to other professionals the products of its research and expertise. I am delighted that this new volume can join the ranks with award-winning library publications on digitization and preservation."

As an experiment in open-access publishing, the Library has made the work available in two formats. Print copies of the work are available from CreateSpace, an Amazon subsidiary. In addition, the entire text is available as a free download through eCommons, Cornell University's institutional repository, and from SSRN.com, which already distributes the Australian guidelines.

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2. University of Calgary Libraries and Cultural Resources Join ARL
3. Controlling Access to and Use of Online Cultural Collections: A Survey of U.S. Archives, Libraries and Museums for IMLS
4. Copyright and Related Issues Relevant to Digital Preservation and Dissemination of Unpublished Pre-1972 Sound Recordings by Libraries and Archives
5. Dutch Cultural Institutions and Rights Holders Reach Landmark Digitization Agreement

In a recent article in the Huffington Post, Henry Jenkins---the MIT Media Lab guru, new media visionary and expert on convergence culture--poses the question "In a Social Networking World, What is the Future of TV."

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First there is the series of conversations with folks like Kate Hayles, the Guerrilla Girls, and Brenda Laurel that is happening at Tiltfactor in the variable_d salon held in Hanover NH!

Second, a symposium on complex systems will take place next Friday (Nov. 6) that I thought would be of interest to many of you. It’s on Complex Systems and will be held in Spanos Auditorium at Thayer.  Keynotes will be given by Duncan Watts (Yahoo!), George Conrades (Akamai Technologies), and John Donahoe (eBay).

Fantastic! Join us!

In my last blog entry I promised to discuss some of my research in Illinois CTCs as well as some personal and professional technological eye-opening experiences that made me realize I needed to go from the Google earth view to a more street level view. As previously mentioned, these events couple

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A MITH Digital Dialogue
Tuesday, November 3, 12:30-1:45
MITH Conference Room, Mckeldin Library B0135

“The Great Ebook Throwdown” with Ben Bederson, Nick Chen, and Matt Kirschenbaum

Ebooks are suddenly everywhere again. Kindle, Nook, iPhone . . . after 2000 years, the codex is getting an upgrade. But what kind of electronic books and electronic reading devices do we really want? Are we trying to improve on the book, or create something new? Something different? Are there some universal design principles we can agree on? And what about the bigger picture: can electronic gadgetry reverse the national decline in reading dramatically documented by agencies such as the NEA? This roundtable discussion led by Ben Bederson, Nick Chen, and Matt Kirschenbaum will feature as many electronic reading and electronic book devices as we can lay our hands on, including some prototypes being developed here at the University of Maryland. We’ll hold them up, pass them around, turn them on, talk some trash, and, in the process, maybe gain just a little bit of insight into what we all want from our electronic book readers. Attendees are encouraged to bring along electronic book devices of their own.

Benjamin B. Bederson is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and the previous director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and iSchool at the University of Maryland. His research is on mobile device interfaces, information visualization, interaction strategies, digital libraries, and accessibility issues such as voting system usability. He is also co-founder and Chief Scientist of Zumobi, a startup offering a mobile content platform based on that research.

Nicholas Chen is a doctoral candidate in the department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland and is affiliated with the Human Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL) at UMD. He is advised by Professor Francois Guimbretiere in the Cornell University Information Science Department. His research is on electronic reading devices, pen-based user interfaces, and interactions for supporting simultaneous use of multiple devices. Previously, he performed the first-ever evaluation of a dual-display electronic reading device.

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Maryland, Associate Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH), and Director of Digital Cultures and Creativity, a new “living/learning” program in the Honors College.

Comint up @ MITH 11/11: Greg Crane, “From the First Year Through Tenure: New Pathways for Humanities in a Digital Age”

View MITH’s complete Digital Dialogues schedule here:
http://www.mith2.umd.edu/programs/mith_speakers_fall_2009.pdf

All talks free and open to the public!

Contact: Neil Fraistat, Director, MITH (www.mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 5-8927)

Continuing this week’s media blitz . . .

The folks at the Center for History and New Media have, at their extreme peril, invited me to be an “irregular” on the Digital Campus podcast (think of a shirt that is discounted because it’s missing a button). This week, I joined Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Tom Scheinfeldt, and fellow irregular Bryan Alexander (Research Director for NITLE) in an episode entitled “Theremin Dreams.”

Cody Brown, an NYU undergrad, just announced Kommons, an ambitious effort to build a new model of news gathering and presentation. I just read his blog post announcing the new venture, "A Public Can Talk To Itself" and find myself deeply disturbed. Although its no longer fashionable to say so, we live in a class society and our news organizations serve the needs of the classes they represent. Brown may very well go on to build the most successful news gathering operation of this new era, but whose interests will it serve? Brown's idea of "the public" is clearly limited to those people who have access to technology, to the opportunity to learn the skills necessary to express themselves with that technology and the time to be a "citizen journalist." Brown's use of his mentor Clay Shirky's automobile analogy confirms this when he writes: "A hundred years ago, back when cars were first being sold, you didn?t just buy one and drive it off the lot, the car itself was so complicated and difficult to manage that you hired a professional chauffeur who also served as a kind of mechanic." I"m not sure how wealthy you had to be to buy the pre-Model T cars but I'm assuming it was a very small percentage of "the public."

A last point, i find it fascinating and not insignificant that Brown has named his new venture, Kommons. I'm sure he just thinks it's cute, but if he checks the Wikipedia, he'll find there is a specific historical meaning often attached to the switch from K to C. I'm sure he didn't set out consciously to trash the concept of the Commons but then i'm also sure he doesnt' see any problems with his definition of public either.

From Wikipedia

"K" replacing "C" (article here)

Replacing the letter ?c? with ?k? in the first letter of a word came into use by the Ku Klux Klan during its early years in the mid to late 1800s. The concept is continued today within the ranks of the Klan. They call themselves "konservative KKK."

In the 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, leftists, particularly the Yippies, sometimes used Amerika rather than "America" in referring to the United States.[1] It is still used as a political statement today.[2] It is likely that this was originally an allusion to the German spelling of America, and intended to be suggestive of Nazism, a hypothesis that the Oxford English Dictionary supports.

In broader usage, the replacement of the letter "C" with "K" denotes general political skepticism about the topic at hand and is intended to discredit or debase the term in which the replacement occurs. [9] Detractors sometimes spell former president Bill Clinton's name as "Klinton" or "Klintoon". [emphasis mine]

A similar usage in Spanish (and Portuguese too) is to write okupa rather than "ocupa" (often on a building or area occupied by squatters [10], referring to the name adopted by okupación activist groups), which is particularly remarkable because the letter "k" is rarely found in either Spanish or Portuguese words. It stems from Spanish anarchist and punk movements which used "k" to signal rebellion [3].

The letter "C" is also commonly changed to a "K" in a non-pejorative way in KDE, a desktop environment for Unix-like operating systems.

On Oct. 29, 1969, UCLA student Charles Kline sent the first message over the ARPANET, the computer network that later became known as the Internet. Though only the "l" and "o" of his message ("login") were successfully transmitted, the interactive exchange ushered in a technological revolution that has — as anyone alive long enough to witness the shift knows — revolutionized human interaction.

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I recently gave a presentation on the landscape of open source software in computer games at the Univ. Rey Juan Carlos, where I am currently visiting the Libresoft research group. My slides are available here.

While much of the talk covered well-known libraries (SDL, OpenAL), game engines (Ogre, Irrlicht), physics engines (Bullet, Tokamak), and content creation tools (Blender, GIMP), there were a few surprises. One was how many open source game-creation systems I found (4, more than the zero I expected). These are Game Editor (2d with export to some mobile devices), Construct (2d, some 3d), Novashell (2d), and Sandbox (3d). Another surprise was the game Yo Frankie! (pictured above), which has very high quality animation and artwork, and was produced using Blender.

A disappointment was the state of open content sharing. While some sites, like OpenGameArt and New Grounds provide tagging with a Creative Commons license, far more common are sites like Google’s 3D Warehouse that have site-specific terms of use, and provide no ability for artists to indicate they are willing to share their work via Creative Commons or an open source license.

My local Sainsburys have stopped stocking "Dr" Gillian McKeith products (or even Ms Gillian McKeith products). Over priced, over promoted, non-medicated muesli be gone!

Result.

I was just wondering where next year's Digital Resources in the Humanities and Arts conference was going to be next year - sadly I missed the Dublin conference this year as I had a friend's wedding in the diary so didnt hear the announcement about 2010 - but it surprised me I couldnt find the DRH website anywhere.

Steve Hitchcock, David Tarrant, and Les Carr have self-archived Towards Repository Preservation Services. Final Report from the JISC Preserv 2 Project in the ECS EPrints Repository.

Here's the abstract:

Preserv 2 investigated the preservation of data in digital institutional repositories, focussing in particular on managing storage, data and file formats. Preserv 2 developed the first repository storage controller, which will be a feature of EPrints version 3.2 software (due 2009). Plugin applications that use the controller have been written for Amazon S3 and Sun cloud services among others, as well as for local disk storage. In a breakthrough application Preserv 2 used OAI-ORE to show how data can be moved between two repository softwares with quite distinct data models, from an EPrints repository to a Fedora repository. The largest area of work in Preserv 2 was on file format management and an 'active' preservation approach. This involves identifying file formats, assessing the risks posed by those formats and taking action to obviate the risks where that could be justified. These processes were implemented with reference to a technical registry, PRONOM from The National Archives (TNA), and DROID (digital record object identification service), also produced by TNA. Preserv 2 showed we can invoke a current registry to classify the digital objects and present a hierarchy of risk scores for a repository. Classification was performed using the Preserv2 EPrints preservation toolkit. This 'wraps' DROID in an EPrints repository environment. This toolkit will be another feature available for EPrints v3.2 software. The result of file format identification can indicate a file is at risk of becoming inaccessible or corrupted. Preserv 2 developed a repository interface to present formats by risk category. Providing risk scores through the live PRONOM service was shown to be feasible. Spin-off work is ongoing to develop format risk scores by compiling data from multiple sources in a new linked data registry.

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3. Digital Preservation: Life2 Final Project Report
4. SHERPA DP2: Developing Services for Archiving and Preservation in a Distributed Environment—Final Report
5. JISC Final Report—CTREP, Cambridge TETRA Repositories Enhancement Project

Singapore Management University is recruiting a Digital Library Systems Specialist.

Here's an excerpt from the ad:

The Library seeks a dynamic, innovative and service-oriented professional to join the Digital Library Systems Team in supporting and enhancing the new systems. Reporting to the Systems Librarian, the Digital Library Systems Specialist is primarily responsible for managing the Institutional Repository (IR). Other duties and responsibilities include, but are not limited to: assisting the Systems Librarian in managing the Digital Library systems including Millennium, the ILMS, and the other system modules from Innovative Interfaces Inc.; helping support the Library RFID management system; identifying and analyzing user requirements; providing optimal operation of information systems and supporting other technical staff in meeting user needs. The successful candidate will work in conjunction with the University Webmaster to support the library website and with the library staff to introduce web services and coordinate and support content development.

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The Coalition for Networked Information launched the CNI Conversations series with Clifford A. Lynch in September.

Two podcasts are now available:

• Oct. 6, 2009
  Discussion topics included:

• Internet2
• NDIIPP storage systems symposium
• Bamboo Project
• University libraries and presses

• Sept. 15, 2009
  Discussion topics included:

• DataNet
• Google Books proposed settlement
• Library measures for the challenging economic climate
• Future of newspapers

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4. Grants: Digging into Data Challenge from JISC, NEH, NSF, and SSHRC
5. Updated ACRL Scholarly Communication Toolkit Released

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association has made available a Webinar of a question-and-answer session with five open access publishers.

Related Posts

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3. “Enhancing the Debate on Open Access: A Joint Statement by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and the International Publishers Association”
4. Paying for Open Access Publication Charges: Guidance for Higher Education and Research Institutions, Publishers and Authors
5. ARL Issues "ARL Statement to Scholarly Publishers on the Global Economic Crisis"

Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have launched a two-year project to share digital data.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

An initiative that will determine how Triangle area universities access, manage, and share ever-growing stores of digital data launched this fall with funding from the Triangle Universities Center for Advanced Studies, Inc. (TUCASI).

The two-year TUCASI data-Infrastructure Project (TIP) will deploy a federated data cyberinfrastructure—or data cloud—that will manage and store digital data for Duke University, NC State University, UNC Chapel Hill, and the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) and allow the campuses to more seamlessly share data with each other, with national research projects, and private sector partners in Research Triangle Park and beyond.

RENCI and the Data Intensive Cyber Environments (DICE) Center at UNC Chapel Hill manage the $2.7 million TIP. The provosts, heads of libraries and chief information officers at the three campuses signed off on the project just before the start of the fall semester.

"The TIP focuses on federation, sharing and reuse of information across departments and campuses without having to worry about where the data is physically stored or what kind of computer hardware or software is used to access it," said Richard Marciano, TIP project director, and also professor at UNC's School of Information and Library Science (SILS), executive director of the DICE Center, and a chief scientist at RENCI. "Creating infrastructure to support future Triangle collaboratives will be very powerful."

The TIP includes three components—classroom capture, storage, and future data and policy, which will be implemented in three phases. In phase one, each campus and RENCI will upgrade their storage capabilities and a platform-independent system for capturing and sharing classroom lectures and activities will be developed. . . .

In phase two, the TIP team will develop policies and practices for short- and long-term data storage and access. Once developed, the policies and practices will guide the research team as it creates a flexible, sustainable digital archive, which will connect to national repositories and national data research efforts. Phase three will establish policies for adding new collections to the TIP data cloud and for securely sharing research data, a process that often requires various restrictions. "Implementation of a robust technical and policy infrastructure for data archiving and sharing will be key to maintaining the Triangle universities' position as leaders in data-intensive, collaborative research," said Kristin Antelman, lead researcher for the future data and policy working group and associate director for the Digital Library at NC State.

The tasks of the TIP research team will include designing a model for capturing, storing and accessing course content, determining best practices for search and retrieval, and developing mechanisms for sharing archived content among the TIP partners, across the Triangle area and with national research initiatives. Campus approved social media tools, such as YouTube and iTunesU, will be integrated into the system.

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2. "Empirical Study of Data Sharing by Authors Publishing in PLoS Journals"
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4. NSF Awards about $5 Million to 14 Universities to Participate in the IBM/Google Cloud Computing University Initiative
5. Infrastructure Planning and Data Curation: A Comparative Study of International Approaches to Enabling the Sharing of Research Data

In "Possible Text Mining Opportunity at Stanford," Matthew Jockers describes a research proposal being developed at Stanford University for a text mining center that would provide access to 30 million digitized books plus Highwire Journals.

Here's an excerpt:

As I'm sure many of you already know, Stanford has been closely involved with Google's book scanning project, and we (Stanford) are currently preparing a proposal for the creation of a text mining / analysis Center on campus. The core assets of the proposed Center would include all of the Google data (approx. 30 million books) plus all of our Highwire data and all of our licensed content. We see a wide range of research opportunities for this collection, and we are envisioning a Center that would offer various levels of interaction with scholars. In particular we envision a "tiered" service model that would, on one hand, allow technically challenged researchers to work with Center staff in formulating research questions and, on the other, an opportunity for more technically advanced scholars to write their own algorithms and run them on the corpus. We are imagining the Center as both a resource and as a physical place, a place that will offer support to both internal and external scholars and graduate students.

Related Posts

1. HathiTrust Will Release Search Engine Indexing 1.5 Billion Pages from Digitized Books and Other Materials
2. University of Michigan to Distribute Over 500,000 Digitized Books Using HP BookPrep POD Service
3. Mining a Million Scanned Books: Linguistic and Structure Analysis, Fast Expanded Search, and Improved OCR Grant Awarded
4. Over One Million Public Domain E-Books from Google Now Available in EPUB Format
5. University of California Systemwide 2008 Use Statistics for Databases, E-Books, and Journals

Start: 19/04/2010 End: 23/04/2010 Book early as places are limited and early bird discounts are available! http://www.digitalconsultancy.net/digifutures/ Led by international experts, Digital Futures focuses on the creation, delivery and preservation of digital resources from cultural and memory institutions. Lasting 5 days, Digital Futures is aimed at managers and other practitioners from the library, museum, heritage, media and cultural sectors looking to understand the strategic and management issues involved in developing digital resources from digitisation to delivery. [read more...]

I was recently introduced to the website doodle.com where you can set up a poll for scheduling purposes or simply schedule something. It's easy to use and has changed my work life: I regularly am charged with setting up meetings and have to find a date and time

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Start: 01/02/2010 End: 05/02/2010 Book early as places are limited and early bird discounts are available! http://www.digitalconsultancy.net/digifutures/ Led by international experts, Digital Futures focuses on the creation, delivery and preservation of digital resources from cultural and memory institutions. Lasting 5 days, Digital Futures is aimed at managers and other practitioners from the library, museum, heritage, media and cultural sectors looking to understand the strategic and management issues involved in developing digital resources from digitisation to delivery. [read more...]

Yesterday I was invited to be on a panel speaking with a gathering of Christian publishers at Duke's Divinity School. As an introduction, I gave my standard presentation about the five aspects of effective networks, but to make it more relevant to this audience, I started with two seminal works ab

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