Archive Fever

Gates Foundation Picks Guilford Tech For New Program

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:03:00 +0000

I had read about this in InsideHigherEd about a week ago and the story recently got some play on the local news. Until the left is willing to work harder and collaborate a bit more effectively, this is our hegemony (and IMHO it's not all bad). Being an ex-community college instructor, this seems like important work in a pivotal and crucial educative space. Lastly, a lot of the Gates Foundation pilot work was done at Portland Community College in their alternative high school problem. My partner taught in this program and she had nothing but praise, well almost nothing but praise. So, here's the InsideHigherEd blurb and the local WRAL link follows.

New Gates Grants for Remedial Ed at Community Colleges

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and MDC Inc. are today announcing $16.5 million in
grants to 15 community colleges in 6 states to expand remedial education efforts that
appear to be having significantly more success than the norm. More than 133,000 students
take remedial courses at the colleges involved and the rate at which students move from
remedial to college-level work went from 16 to 20 percent for those involved. The
strategies involve the use of technology to teach basic skills, mentorships and better
coordination between high schools and community colleges. The five states and their
participating colleges are: Connecticut (Housatonic Community College and Norwalk
Community College); Florida (Valencia Community College); North Carolina (Guilford
Technical Community College); Ohio (Cuyahoga Community College, Jefferson Community
College, North Central State College, Sinclair Community College and Zane State College);
Texas (Coastal Bend College, El Paso Community College, Houston Community College and
South Texas College); and Virginia (Danville Community College and Patrick Henry
Community College).

WRAL link:

Gates Foundation picks Guilford Tech for new program :: WRAL.com

Beaverella Strikes Again!

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:41:00 +0000

Here's a video of my very talented UNC English Department colleague, LF, participating in the Beaver Queen Pageant. It's a shindig to raise money for the Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association. Here's a link to an article in Durham Magazine, if you want some basic info on the event.

Russians Love Them Some SNS

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:46:00 +0000

Details of a comScore study excerpted verbatim from TechCrunch:

The comScore study found visitors in Russia to spend 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per visitor per month on average.

To put that level of ‘engagement’ in perspective: the average world-wide is 3.7 hours and 525 pages per visitor. Among the 40 individual countries reported by comScore, Brazil ranked closest to Russia at 6.3 hours, followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico (5.3 hours) and Spain (5.3 hours). The United States is ranked number 9, with 4.2 hours and 477 pages per visitor per month.

According to comScore, 65 percent of the worldwide Internet audience engages in social networking activities. More precisely, of the 1.1 billion people age 15 and older worldwide who accessed the Internet from a home or work location in May 2009, 734.2 million visited at least one social networking site during the month.

P-Pie's 1st Birthday!

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 14:20:00 +0000

Double chocolate cupcake...mmmm mmmm good.

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:04:00 +0000

Salinger-esque...

Panel at SLA Addresses Interdisciplinarity in Science

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:52:00 +0000

Carol Tenopir, professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville's College of Communication and Information and director of the Center for Information and Communication Studies, drove a great panel presentation discussion at the recent annual meeting for the Special Libraries Association. Those familiar with Tenopir's work will recognize her compelling claims.

In short, she is drawing attention to the proliferation of science journals over the past few decades and the increasing interdisciplinarity of these journals. This is impacting scholarly communication in profound ways, and this paradigm positions the library as a nexus for this scholarly exchange and curation.

In the presentation, Tenopir alerted attendees to the trend of how scientists are now reading a wider swath of journals than ever before. For instance, "in 1977 scientists on average read at least one article in 13 journals per year, in 1995 scientists read 18, in 2003 they read 23, and in 2005 they read 33. An increase in the number of journals and articles read means that scientists are now reading each article much more quickly than before."

There is cross-pollination between disciplines and fields as a result too. This is particularly appealing to my interest in the cultural study of scholarly communication in technoscience.
The panel also mentioned what most librarians already know: that interdisciplinary scholars are most inclined to discover (re)sources in other disciplines based on linked citations or other networked sources. The assertion was also made that researchers in a few recent studies were described as valuing textbooks and conference proceedings less, as well as being older. This impacts the preference for new types of library service and curation across a diverse demographic (not just "younger" digitally literate researchers). And lastly, the panel suggested that libraries compose multidisciplinary library teams that may be embedded in the library or in departments across campus. This is a particularly exciting rearticulation of space and outreach to.

There's a lot of inspiration in this...to that end you may want to check out Tenopir's recent journal publications (linked here).

On The Media: Transcript of Process Journalism

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 15:30:00 +0000

On The Media: Transcript of "Process Journalism" (June 12, 2009)

This is a good listen from the folks at TechCrunch, who are doing process journalism REALLY well. The interview struck me because there is a lot of talk (and has been for decades) in English/Composition about process and post-process pedagogy, but from my experience it's mostly lip service at most places. The typical writing program ultimately seems to follow the NY Times model of putting out a perfectly "polished" piece, however untimely and non-dialogic it may be.

L7 and Digital Humanites Manifesto 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:55:00 +0000

Summer has been filled with all sorts of activities, from teaching a Technical Communication summer session course to weeding and organizing CDs. Technical Communication is what it (bleh) is, but the CD weeding...now that's been great. For the past few days a decade old L7 disc has been spinning in my car stereo. It's been just what I needed (in many ways to deal with the summer session class...j/j of course). Regardless, L7 has me in my manifesto-y mentality AND, fortuitously, today I received an email alerting me that there's a new Digital Humanities Manifesto out. It's a project of the Mellon Seminar in Digital Humanities at UCLA and the new document is aka The Digital Humanities Manifesto 2.0. A pdf is linked here. A few of my new manifesto-lifted mantras below:

Process is the new god; not product. Anything that stands in the way of the perpetual mash‐up and
remix stands in the way of the digital revolution.

And for the traditionalists in humanities departments that "fuel my fire", we've got a problem with you too. The new manifesto rightly identifies these folks as:

‐‐ the great diminishers: they will reduce anything in digital humanities (it's just a tool; it's just a repository; it's just pedagogy). They have rarely, if ever, built software, parsed code, created a database, or designed a user interface. They are uni‐medium scholars (most likely of print) who have been lulled into centuries of somnolence.

‐‐the false fellow travelers: they will wave the banners of change with continuity on their agenda. What's at stake is not simply continuity vs. change but honesty vs. hypocrisy.

‐‐all those who would falsely equate the tools of the present with a turn away from history in the name of presentism, voguishness, or vocationalism

These are just a few, and I'd love to post more but Tech Comm awaits. Check out the Manifesto. It's a quick and inspiring read. After you've read it, do something.

Reuters Reports Web 2.0 as One Millionth English Word

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:28:00 +0000

A former student sent me this news story today...Web 2.0 is recognized, canonized, surely now outmoded as a term.

U.S. Impact Studies

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 14:40:00 +0000

Following up on yesterday's post, here's a great resource that shares a continuing study of the impact of free access to Internet/computers in public libraries. The U.S. Impact Studies project's "aboutness" is described as:

"A research team led by Mike Crandall and Karen Fisher of The University of Washington Information School, with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is examining the impact of free access to computers and the Internet on the well-being of individuals, families, and communities."

Check out their site and emerging data if you are interested (and you should be).

Libraries Essential to National Broadband Reality

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 22:05:00 +0000

ALA spokespersons commented recently to the FCC with regard to achieving the administration's goal of national broadband. In sum, libraries (of all sorts) can be key in realizing this goal. An excerpt follows:

“The national broadband plan has the potential to benefit millions of people by enabling high-capacity, ‘future-proof’ connections to the Internet in large multi-user locations such as libraries,” said Emily Sheketoff, executive director of ALA’s Washington Office. As the premier public computing centers around the country, libraries can serve as “community anchor institutions” by providing broadband, Sheketoff said.

What an idea. As we are all dealing with new realities and developments, it is heartening to know that there are possibilities for re-imagining relations and communities. Re-thinking the importance of libraries to communities is especially appealing to me. It is a great example of rethinking the places that impact our access to spaces of community and connection. While this is indeed a potential boon to libraries, the implicit mandate is that the libraries and librarians facilitating this change are radically different in some ways. So, in working toward such realities we need to ask how technology and social practice has changed the ways that individuals and groups access information and their needs (both known and unknown) for curation of said information.

Yes, this is a call for things like "Library 2.0" and beyond, but it's also a situation where progressive librarians need to be adept at understanding new literacies and lost literacies when it comes to critically assessing user needs and resources.

Exploring "The Social" in the Twitter Universe

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:18:00 +0000

There has indeed been a lot written about Twitter as of late. Fred Stutzman blogged incisively a couple of days ago about demographic paradigms dialectically tethered to Twitter, blogs, and many things social media. Since then the remapping of "the social" has been a point of mental occupation for me. Today, TechCrunch published a piece entitled "The Future of Twitter Visualized". In it M G Siegler provides links to some groovy charts forecasting possible futures for the popular service. Scenarios range from worldwide domination to swift acquisition by another tech player. The visuals are pretty neat and I recommend checking them out.

My point to all this is that in none of the scenarios did anyone argue that the new paradigm Twitter has ushered in will disappear (or lose influence/user preference). We,whether we use Twitter or not, now live in a context that conceptualizes communication, social relation, social access, and social identity way differently. In Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet, Sherry Turkle is recasting Fredric Jameson when she writes, "In simulation, identity can be fluid and multiple, a signifier no longer clearly points to a thing that is signified, and understanding is less likely to proceed through analysis than by navigation through virtual space" (p.49). Turkle's prescience is probably even astounding to her.

With the ubiquity/mobility of Internet access and the waning influence of traditional textual mediums, our social realities and identities are rapidly changing faster than Turkle or most anyone else could have imagined. What was previously abstracted, apprehended only through the best postmodern theory (like Jameson), is now material---made apparent in our daily practices and inscribed in the corporeal and the now sentient places we traverse.

Eric Schmidt Video at CMU

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:33:00 +0000

Many have prolly already seen this, but I still find it interesting. It's Google's Eric Schmidt delivering the commencement address at Carnegie Mellon. I really wish more educators would think through how the characteristics he describes need to be used when designing curriculum. Educators and students need to be engaged and to be taught relevant skills, in addition to practicing creativity, criticality, and what I think of as progressive irreverence.

Time Magazine's 10 Biggest Tech Failures of the Last Decade

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Sun, 17 May 2009 14:11:00 +0000

Interesting "failure to launch" list and story. I'd like to see what these "failures" made possible or probable, by laying the groundwork or context for new innovations and expectations. Or, paths never to be trodden again (i.e., Vista).

Failure to Launch List

Microsoft Vista
Gateway
HD DVD
Vonage
YouTube
Sirius XM
Microsoft Zune
Palm
Iridium
Segway

AFT Report Details and Reaffirms Exploitation of Contingent Labor

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Tue, 12 May 2009 14:12:00 +0000

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has released American Academic: The State of the Higher Education Workforce 1997-2007.

The report is a 10-year analysis of hiring trends and faculty composition at community colleges and public and private colleges/universities. The findings show accelerated erosion of stable faculty positions with respectable wages and working conditions. AFT's report also shows that the trend of exploitation continues when it comes to "contingent" labor and graduate teaching assistants. Individuals within the academy that were interviewed about the report's findings, from my perusal of early reporting, seem to lay blame on market forces. To that I say, of course BUT individual departments and schools have allowed this to happen AND have even embraced this exploitation to protect the privileges of the already highly paid and tenured who enjoy low(er) teaching loads and academic freedom. This lowers the quality of intellectual exploration and education, as the bulk of the courses taught are done so by contingent labor. It is disgusting to see those in a position to take a stand simply step aside; and, in many cases, to witness the eagerness of continued hocking of bogus goods to graduate students and the nontenured by way of false hopes and promises.

By not owning the consequences of silence and hypocrisy the tenured and tenure-track are killing the academy and its promise. You know who you are.

Here's a great chart, from InsideHigherEd's synopsis of the report, with some key figures.

Distribution of Teaching Positions in Higher Education, 1997 and 2007

Job Type	1997	2007
All Institutions
--Full time, tenured or tenure track	33.1%	27.3%
--Full time, non-tenure track	14.2%	14.9%
--Part time	34.1%	36.9%
--Graduate assistants	18.6%	20.9%
Public doctoral granting universities
--Full time, tenured or tenure track	34.1%	28.9%
--Full time, non-tenure track	14.1%	14.4%
--Part time	14.3%	15.8%
--Graduate assistants	37.5%	41.0%
Public four-year colleges and universities
--Full time, tenured or tenure track	51.0%	39.0%
--Full time, non-tenure track	9.0%	10.9%
--Part time	33.6%	43.9%
--Graduate assistants	5.7%	6.3%
Public community colleges
--Full time, tenured or tenure track	20.6%	17.5%
--Full time, non-tenure track	13.4%	13.8%
--Part time	64.7%	68.6%
--Graduate assistants	1.2%	0.0%
Private doctoral-granting universities
--Full time, tenured or tenure track	34.9%	29.2%
--Full time, non-tenure track	17.3%	17.9%
--Part time	29.9%	31.3%
--Graduate assistants	17.9%	21.6%
Private four-year colleges and universities
--Full time, tenured or tenure track	39.3%	29%
--Full time, non-tenure track	15.6%	17.2%
--Part time	42.3%	52.2%
--Graduate assistants	2.9%	1.6%

Book Scanning: The Google Edge

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Sun, 03 May 2009 18:18:00 +0000

Google has a propriety book scanning technique AND has a patent on said technique. There's an article with diagrams at BuzzNewsRoom and at TechCrunch. As both articles highlight, Google is scanning thousands (millions?) of books a year...who knows how many?

Regardless, the point is that the project is full speed ahead and it looks as if there's no turning back to the way things used to be when it comes to searching, retrieving, and accessing information/books. Being a library science scholar I can't help but think what this continues to mean for librarians. I am still working through scenarios, as every librarian should be, because these are exciting and quickly changing times. The main challenge/excitement for me is the fact that how we conceptualize the institution of library and the practices that articulate that institution is way different now.

Libraries will never be able to scan books as quickly as Google. However, we will be able to curate better (or with different objectives) because information seekers need curation that isn't bound up in selling something. It's a knowledge project, and as long as librarians recognize that we can move successfully around in these new spaces without old institutional strictures.

Thoughts, anyone?

Google Goats

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Sat, 02 May 2009 17:30:00 +0000

Here's a link to Google's blog post announcing their use of goats instead of lawn mowers. Click here. I'm digging it, seriously.

Twitter Cops

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 01:28:00 +0000

Twitter cops...

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

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 00:21:00 +0000

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

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

And here's the rub...

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

Please read more here.

UNC School of Information & Library Science Ranked #1

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:42:00 +0000

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

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

"Laptop Hunter" Videos

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:39:00 +0000

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

And now, the Mac devotee response to MSFT!

Use Facebook, Lose a Letter Grade

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:59:00 +0000

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

Kurt Cobain and 15 Years

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 01:44:00 +0000

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

U of Michigan Press Commits to Digital Monograph

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:59:00 +0000

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

Daft Punk

noreply@blogger.com (hilltaylor@unc.edu) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:08:00 +0000

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

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