Digital Campus

Episode 97: Digital Potato Library of America

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 15:41:00 +0000

In another single-topic Digital Campus, we react to the news that Dan is headed to the Digital Public Library of America as its Executive Director (no tears, no tears) by forcing him to tell us all about it. Special guests on the podcast include Berkman Center and DPLA Technical Workstream member David Weinberger, author of Too Big to Know and Everything is Miscellaneous as well as Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows and The Big Switch. Issues raised include Internet centralization, the future of public libraries, and Mr. Potato Head.

Links
Nicholas Carr, “The Library of Utopia,” MIT Technology Review, April 25, 2012. Available at http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/427628/the-library-of-utopia/

Running time: 49:45
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Episode 96 — The Olds and the New

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:44:04 +0000

In this edition of Digital Campus, Tom, Dan, and Mills (Amanda was on a beach somewhere when we were recording) ventured into strange and wild paths of the Internet previously unknown to us, thereby proving that we are, indeed, old in Internet years. After years of talking about Google, Apple, Facebook, and Wikipedia, we set aside those old school web platforms to examine Pinterest and Tumblr. How might humanists, archivists, librarians, and museum professionals make good use of these sites that had (largely) been off our radar all this time? And we wondered whether the fact that traffic on Pinterest now rivals that on Twitter and the growing evidence that young people are moving away from Facebook to services like Tumblr might mean that those of us in the digital humanities ought to be taking a much closer look at how to best utilize these platforms. We also took a look at the 2012 Digital Humanities Award winners and offered up a few favorites from among the many worthy winners and runners up for those awards.

Links:
Maine Historical Society’s Pinterest site
Alan Jacob’s Tumblr blog
2012 Digital Humanities Awards

Running time: 37:02
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Episode 95 – MLA, AHA, and Aaron Swartz

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:13:49 +0000

One episode closer to the century mark, Amanda, Dan, Mills, and Tom welcome Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Tim Carmody for a debriefing on digital developments at the annual meetings of the MLA and AHA and a discussion of the tragic suicide of programmer and activist Aaron Swartz.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Dan Cohen, Digital History at the 2013 AHA Meeting
Mark Sample, Digital Humanities at MLA 2013
MLA Commons
Aaron Swartz (Wikipedia)
Tim Carmody, Memory to myth: tracing Aaron Swartz through the 21st century

Running time: 58:04
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Episode 94 – The 2012 Campies

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:28:10 +0000

Sure, there are a few talented people who have gotten EGOTs (an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), but has anyone gotten a CEGOT? Find out who the lucky recipients of Campies are this year, awarded to the best and the worst in the world of technology and academia. Tom, Mills, Amanda, and Dan make their selections, as well as their predictions for 2013. The Digital Campus crew has often been right in the past, so be sure to tune in and know the future. (Past performance is no guarantee of future results.)

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Tumblr growth
Peter Brantley, “You Have Two, Maybe Three, Years”
Lorcan Dempsey, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Libraries, Discovery, and the Catalog: Scale, Workflow, Attention”
Calling a Quorum — for Real
Buffeted by the Web, but Now Riding It
Amazon Is a Great Company Because It Has the Most Generous Shareholders in the World

Running time: 56:50
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Episode 93 — A JSTOR and Jerry Springer Thanksgiving

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 21:34:40 +0000

What we do is news, of course (of course!), and so is what our friends do, and so is what “Friends of the Court” do. In the warm and friendly spirit of Thanksgiving, then, the four regular Digital Campus commentators (Mills, Dan, Tom, and Amanda) focus mainly on what you might call local news. First we address the decidedly non-local implications of JSTOR’s announcement that it will provide free access to a small community of Wikipedia editors, but then we get down into the news from closer to home. We’re pleased at the release of “Commons in a Box,” a turnkey open source blogging and social networking package built on BuddyPress by our buddies at CUNY Academic Commons, and we’re similarly pleased about the implementation of similar BuddyPress technology on the website for THATCamp, The Humanities and Technology Camp. We then hear reports from pundit Mills and troublemaker Dan about the Future of Higher Education Conference that recently took place at GMU, where passions ran as high as on your average daytime talk show. Dan ends by telling us all bit about a recent contribution he made to the question of whether the Authors’ Guild can be said to speak for academic authors, and then we adjourn, headed over the river and through the woods.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

Running time: 46:29
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Episode 92 – After the Storm

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 14:40:08 +0000

The regulars welcome the new month with a discussion of last month’s emphatic district court ruling in favor of HathiTrust in the Authors Guild’s copyright infringement case against the digital library project. We also discuss the potential and potential pitfalls of the ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) project and the official launch of Windows 8. We close with a discussion of (what else?) Star Wars.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

‘U’ wins copyright lawsuit against Hathitrust digitalization project, The Michigan Daily
A Legal Sweep, Inside Higher Ed
ORCID Launches Registry
What’s In A Name, Melissa Terras’s Blog
How to Make Windows 8 Look Like Windows 7, CNET UK
Why Is Dad So Mad
Weird Al, The Saga Begins [YouTube]

Running time: 38:27
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With very best wishes to our listeners and friends affected by Sandy — Tom, Amanda, Dan, and Mills

Episode 91 — The Black Helicopter Edition

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 17:47:48 +0000

While President Obama spoke on the other side of campus and the security helicopters buzzed the Digital Campus studio, Tom, Dan, and Mills (Amanda was at a secure and undisclosed location–so undisclosed we couldn’t get her on the show) discussed Dan’s iPhone fetish–yes, he has an iPhone 5–and what the constantly changing landscape of new devices like the iPhone 5 might mean for the humanities. We also breathed a huge sigh of relief that one part of the never ending litigation over Google’s book scanning project has come to an end. If only it were the last chapter in that saga! Is it news that Facebook now has more than 1 billion users? Or that they are using your tagging of family and friends to improve their facial recognition algorithms? Give the podcast a listen to find out what we thought about these topics and more.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

Google’s book settlement website
Google buying Viewdle
A newly discovered photograph of Emily Dickinson
Facebook tops 1 billion
A humorous analysis of the Facebook Billion

Running time: 44:54
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Episode 90 – Back to School Special

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 23:25:12 +0000

It’s time for a new school year and another year of news and views from the Digital Campus regulars and irregulars. Tom, Mills, Amanda, and Dan are joined by Audrey Watters and Bryan Alexander to do a post-mortem on the “summer of MOOCs” and a pre-mortem on the Twitter-esque service App.net. (With Mills finally joining Twitter over the summer it was time for the rest of us to leave.) We also make our picks for the hardware that you’ll see everywhere on campuses this fall–if we were doing the buying.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Stefan Fatsis knows a lot about team handball
Dozens of Plagiarism Incidents Are Reported in Coursera’s Free Online Courses
Principles of Macroeconomics: The Online Version
App.net
Glenn Fleishman on what App.net could be
Only 250 users of App.net have generated half of the posts
Amazon to Apple: the game starts now
Microsoft Surface

Running time: 49:36
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Episode 89 — Strategic Humanism at UVA

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:22:54 +0000

We’re joined this week in our last episode before our traditional summer hiatus by Bethany Nowviskie, Director of Digital Research and Scholarship at University of Virginia Libraries and president of the Association for Computers in the Humanities. We mainly discuss what’s going on at UVA, agreeing that it’s a good thing we’re having nationwide discussions now about what universities are doing, have done, and should be doing in the digital age with regard to scholarship and learning, and wondering whether ~~the farmer and the cowman should be friends~~ academics and businesspeople can find a common language. Back by popular demand is our old “pick of the week” segment, featuring UVA’s own ongoing archive of events taking place there.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Sullivan Resigns from UVa: Complete Coverage – The Chronicle of Higher Education
reality bytes – Bethany Nowviskie
Syllabus Journal
ReadLists.com
Encyclopedia of Connecticut History
Archive of Materials Relating to the Resignation of President Teresa Sullivan

Running time: 54:36
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Episode 88 – Live from THATCamp Prime 2012

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 20:31:41 +0000

Our second annual live podcast from THATCamp Prime was as fun as the first, full of audience questions and comments in addition to our normal discussion of the news from the prior two weeks. We talked about new models of science publishing and contrasted those models with what’s going on in the humanities, mentioned the French settlement with the Google Books project, and detailed the first five digital things we look at in the morning. Mills also debriefed us on the blowback from his historical hoax class. There’s also a recorded video of the podcast over at Ustream, although viewers should be forewarned that 1) in the first few minutes you can’t hear any audio and 2) you get to see our bare legs.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
First 5
PeerJ
French Publisher Group Strikes Deal With Google Over E-Books

Running time: 51:11
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Episode 87 – You Guys Sound Fantastic

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 18:05:34 +0000

Our friend Steve Ramsay rejoins the regulars to pore over the Facebook IPO and its fallout for the markets and the gossip pages. Reluctantly, we turn to more familiar turf with updates on the Google Books and George State e-reserves cases. We then take a moment to lament the closure of the University of Missouri press before ending the show with a discussion of the push toward minimalism and readability in digital humanities web design.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Facebook (NASDAQ:FB)
Judge Certifies Authors as Class in Google Book-Scanning Lawsuit
GBS: Authors Guild Goes for an Early Knockout
Publishers and Georgia State See Broad Implications in Copyright Ruling
University of Missouri Press to close, after 54 years
Jeffrey Zeldman’s Web Design Manifesto 2012

Running time: 38:03
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Episode 86 — Ya Big MOOC

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:19:14 +0000

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “mook” (with a ‘k’) as “An incompetent or stupid person”; apparently it’s a word that achieved notoriety from its use in the 1973 film Mean Streets. But we’re not discussing that kind of “mook,” no sir: on this episode of Digital Campus, we’re discussing Massive Open Online Courses with Audrey Watters of Hack Education. We argue that there are MOOCs and then there are MOOCs, speculate about the purpose and future of MOOCs, and (at least in Audrey’s case) relate our own experiences as MOOC students. It’s a MOOC-a-palooza. (And don’t forget that Dan predicted that 2012 would be the year of MOOC-o-mania last December: we’re proud.)

P.S. As promised at the start of podcast, Mills has now revealed the educational hoaxes perpetrated by his students in his course “Lying About the Past.” Well played, all.

Links:

Running time: 44:24
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Episode 85 — Book ‘em, Bezos

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:49:39 +0000

In this edition of the podcast, Dan, Amanda, Tom, and Mills are joined by Tim Carmody, senior writer for Wired, and it was very refreshing to record what we called a “fact-based” podcast for a change. At the top of the show, we got Tim’s take on the lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against Apple and several of the major book publishers. Sharp-eared listeners will remember that we discussed this topic in the previous podcast–when it had first arisen. This time around, we were able to take advantage of Tim’s deep knowledge of this complex topic. In particular, we discussed why the average ebook consumer should care and whether the end result would be Amazon.com taking over the world. In addition, we discussed rental fees being recommended to Canadian universities for the use of digital journals, and whether Google Drive (yes, we said “Google” this time) would become part of our lives, or would it end up in the dustbin of history along with Google Wave and other such fails by the search giant.

Links:

DOJ Announces Terms of Settlement With 3 Publishers in E-Book Lawsuit
The most expensive copyright insurance policy in Canadian history
Introducing Google Drive…yes, really
Google Drive: A step closer to no-fuss cloud storage?

Running time: 1:12:35
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Episode 84 – The One Where We Didn’t Say G****e

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:19:58 +0000

This week we consider the question of whether Apple and five major publishers colluded to fix e-book prices and the prospect of a Department of Justice Anti-trust suit against them. We also argue the question of whether buy-in from Blackboard will be good or bad for open source learning management projects Moodle and Sakai and join the chorus of praise lauding the online release of the 1940 U.S. Census. On the lighter side, we check in on the ongoing saga of @FakeElsevier. Finally, we celebrate our unintentional, but surely very welcome, neglect of a certain not-evil web search and services company.

Late update: Since we recorded this episode on April 4, 2012, the DOJ showed its hand and officially filed suit against Apple and its partners in the publishing industry, announcing terms of a possible settlement with at least three publishers.

Other links mentioned on the podcast:
Bigger Than Agency, Bigger Than E-Books: The Case Against Apple and Publishers
Blackboard Buys 2 Leading Supporters of Open-Source Competitor Moodle
Fake Elsevier’s complaints about academic publishing leads to fake takedown notice
Big Day for Family History Hunters: 1940 U.S. Census Is Online

Running time: 45:38
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Episode 83 – Spring Broke

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:32:34 +0000

Get out your sunglasses and tanning lotion, because it’s time for the spring break edition of the podcast. Tom, Mills, Amanda, and Dan bask in the warm retina-screen glow of the new iPad and wonder if tablets are about to take over the classroom. We revisit our slightly mocking pronunciation of certain new online education start-ups, and whether their model of video instruction actually instructs. Finally, we pour libations for the print edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Tablet Ownership Triples Among Students
ASU Professors Sue Over Online Course Ownership
Khan Academy releases iPad app
TED, Known for Idea Talks, Releases Educational Videos
Universities Cracking Down On Social Media
Spring Break Gets Tamer
Encyclopaedia Britannica Halts Print Edition

Running time: 48:53
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Episode 82 – Haranguer for Hire

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 16:24:47 +0000

We report on a new CLIR / NITLE project to develop a technical infrastructure for publishing new-model digital scholarship, what’s coming in the next version of Mac OS X and other operating systems and what their cloud centrism might mean for universities and their privacy concerns, and canvas the current (and historic) situation with regard to open access. All best wishes for speedy recovery of your voice, Mills.

Editor’s Note 2/27/2012: Soon after we recorded the podcast on 2/24/2012, Elsevier withdrew its support for the Research Works Act, and news subsequently spread that indeed the entire Act would not go forward. See http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/intro.cws_home/newmessagerwa and https://plus.google.com/u/0/107980702132412632948/posts/a4DzVk9n7fG.

Links to stories mentioned on the podcast:

Plans for new publishing platform “Anvil”: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/13/anvil-academic-aims-provide-platform-digital-scholarship
Looking ahead to Mac OS X Mountain Lion: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-57378751-248/apple-mac-os-x-mountain-lion-takes-more-bites-out-of-ios/
Why Mozilla is entering the smartphone war: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/why-mozilla-is-entering-the-smartphone-war/
Mozilla’s Persona Project: http://www.webmonkey.com/2012/02/mozillas-persona-project-wants-to-help-manage-your-online-identity/
Apple address book data accessed by many apps: http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/15/applebook/
Google Chromebooks in schools: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57365703-264/27000-google-chromebooks-headed-to-u.s-schools/
Australia mandates open access to biomedical research within 12 months: http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/australia-to-open-publicly-financed-biomedical-research/35505?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Elsevier boycott continues: http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/library-babel-fish/why-are-we-boycotting-elsevier
Letter from @FakeElsevier: http://fakeelsevier.wordpress.com/2012/02/19/dear-elsevier-employees-with-love-from-fakeelsevier/

Running time: 59:10
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Episode 81 — Is There a Story Here?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:31:01 +0000

Sometimes we wonder to ourselves (and to those of you listening) whether some of the biggest “stories” in the world of digital media really are stories. Maybe it’s just us, but is it really news that Google is combining all of its user data into one big file? Or did Apple really revolutionize the textbook market? Dan, Amanda, and Mills asked these and other really, really big questions during the most recent podcast. Among those other questions were whether the growing boycott of Elsevier publications by scholars was really going to make a difference and why it should (or shouldn’t)? We also speculated on what it would be like to take an online course with 64,999 of your closest friends at a university called U-Da-City? To find out where we ended up on each of these very pressing issues of the day, give a listen and tell us what you think in that comment field below.

Links:

European Union Presses Google to E.U. to Delay Privacy Policy Changes
On (Not) Learning to Code
Elsevier Boycott Gathers Pace

Running Time: 46:40

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Episode 80 – Law Soup

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 20:51:25 +0000

Friend of the podcast Peter Hirtle stands in for Amanda to give Tom, Mills, and Dan some much needed legal education as we take on SOPA, PIPA, the Research Works Act, and the Supreme Court’s decision in Golan v. Holder [PDF]. We also consider Apple’s attempts to shake up the textbook market and the sad fate of two very old University of Nevada at Reno students’ Facebook pages.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Apple Introduces Tools to (Someday) Supplant Print Textbooks
Apple’s mind-bogglingly greedy and evil license agreement
How Wikipedia Turned Off the Lights
Publishers Applaud Research Works Act
Supreme Court Upholds Law That Pulled Foreign Works Back Under Copyright
Facebook Deletes University’s History Project for Violating Social Network’s Rules

Running time: 1:00:31
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Episode 79 – The 2011 Campies

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:54:24 +0000

Roll out the red carpet, because it’s time once again for the Campies, Digital Campus’s beloved year-end review of what has passed and what is to come. Tom, Amanda, Mills, and Dan reveal their picks for the best and worst of the year, and shine their crystal balls to predict with vague and partially satisfying accuracy what will come in 2012. And the Digital Campus accountants force the podcast crew to be accountable for last year’s predictions. Were they right on or way off? Listen in to find out.

[Editor's note: We recorded this podcast on December 16, 2011, but released it on December 21. On December 19, MIT announced something directly related to Dan's prediction for 2012. Dan had no prior knowledge of this announcement but is looking forward to the 2012 year-in-review so he can gloat.]

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Whitehouse RFP on Digital Data
DML Competition
Cathy Davidson on badges
Eric Hellman on libraries and purchasing
Gates Foundation – Post-Secondary Education
MLA – New Office of Scholarly Communication

Running time: 51.23
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Episode 78 – Death Knell for the Paywall

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:05:53 +0000

The clock strikes noon, and that sound might just signal the end of the bright morning for closed systems in higher education. On this week’s podcast, we discuss Coursekit, a free (for now) learning management system built by dropouts from the University of Pennsylvania; Commons-in-a-Box, a free (funded by the Sloan Foundation) academic social networking system of blogs and wikis that will be built by non-dropouts from the CUNY Academic Commons; and the Berlin 9 Open Access Conference, which seems to have convinced not only several universities but also the White House that peer-reviewed scholarly publications should be, what else, free. Our honored guest is journalist Audrey Watters of Hack Education.

Links

What Does Coursekit Say About the Future of the LMS?
“Commons in a Box” and the Importance of Open Academic Networks
Beyond the Iron Triangle: Containing the Cost of College and Student Debt
Berlin 9 Open Access Conference
Open Access Policy Adopted at Princeton
Open Access to Knowledge at Wesleyan
Request for Information on Public Access to Digital Data and Scientific Publications (submit your comments by January 2, 2012)
HASTAC Annual Meeting 2011

Running time: 50:35
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Episode 77 – #FERPANUTS

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:35:50 +0000

In an age of course wikis and blogs, is a law written in 1974 up to the task of controlling where student information might go? Why does Google want us to register on their new citation service? And can the recorded lectures of Mills Kelly be remixed to make him look foolish (or is it already too late for that)? Find out on this episode of everyone’s favorite podcast featuring a trio of people named Tom, Mills, and Dan.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Georgia Tech Invokes FERPA, Cripples School’s Wikis
University of Missouri to limit lecture recording
Google Scholar Citations Open to All
JSTOR’s Data for Research

Running time: 39:02
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Episode 76 – Siri? How Do I Fix Academic Publishing?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 19:51:23 +0000

Is it just us, or does it seem kind of strange to see people walking around campus, the mall, or the local park talking to their phones as if those phones were actually sentient? Even if it is a little strange, Dan, Tom, Amanda, and Mills spent some time speculating about what such “talk to me” apps might mean for museums, historic sites, and other places digital humanists care about. We also had generally nice things to say about the developer build of Windows 8 and about the recent meeting about the Digital Public Library of America. Our discussion of free content then led to a conversation about how much money is being made publishing academic journals by just a few publishing houses and why open access scholarship is so necessary to the circulation of knowledge. Our outrage about journal publishing profits burned itself out when we turned to a brief look at the newly launched (and free) Digital Humanities Now, a CHNM project. We finished with perhaps the world’s shortest conversation about Google+. Why? Give a listen and find out.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

In Public It’s Rude, In Private It’s Creepy
Why Indoor Navigation is so Hard
Building Windows 8
Download Windows 8 Developer Preview
DPLA: First Things First
Copyright Office on Mass Digitization
Economics of Open Access Publishing

Running time: 58:45
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Episode 75 — The Kindle Crack’d

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 19:27:37 +0000

In this episode of Digital Campus, Tom, Mills, and Amanda (sans Dan) touch briefly on the passing of Steve Jobs and discuss Apple’s announcement of iOS5, the release of the Kindle Fire and other new Kindle products, the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Project Directors meeting, and one university’s brief ban on social media sites. We also agree that “Nickerson” probably isn’t the best name for a razor company.

Links:

Jobs, Apple co-founder and visionary, is dead, New York Times
Apple releases iOS5, CNET News
Amazon unveils $199 Android Kindle Fire tablet, $99 e-ink Kindle Touch, Ars Technica
The Promise of Digital Humanities, Inside Higher Ed
Back in Blackout, Inside Higher Ed

Running time: 41:35
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Episode 74 – Tin Badge for the Authors Guild

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 16:12:38 +0000

The regulars are joined this week by the great Tom Merritt of Tech News Today and TWiT fame. We discuss in depth the surprising lawsuit by the Authors Guild against five universities and HathiTrust, related to the ongoing Google Book Search legal saga. We also look at whether a “Netflix for books” is possible or desirable. And Dan gets a little too badge-happy. You’ll get a badge for listening to this week’s freewheeling podcast.

Be sure to check out Tom Merritt’s new book, United Moon Colonies, available in multiple formats for your reading (and listening) pleasure.

CORRECTION FROM AMANDA: I mistakenly said on the podcast that public domain works in Hathi Trust are not publicly available: in fact, public domain works in Hathi Trust can be *read* by the public, although not *downloaded.* Moreover, works in Hathi Trust published between 1870 and 1923 that are in the public domain in the U.S. are not available to be read outside the U.S. See Hathi Trust’s copyright FAQ for more precise information. — Amanda

Other links mentioned on the podcast:
Digital Media and Learning Competition 4
Think You’re An Auditory Or Visual Learner? Scientists Say It’s Unlikely
Sigil, A WYSIWYG ebook editor

Running time: 1:02:50
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Episode 73 — Farewell Steve Jobs

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:49:29 +0000

A few days before we recorded the latest episode of Digital Campus, Apple visionary and guru of all things cool in digital technology Steve Jobs announced that he would step down as CEO in what we assume will be the end of his adept micromanaging of the business. Tom, Dan, Amanda, and Mills mused on what Jobs’ legacy will be and how the tech world may or may not be different without him. Will we feel like orphans now that the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Sphere can no longer descend upon us at times of severe tech ennui? And what about those other digital orphans — the “orphan books” we hear so much about? Amanda reviewed for us the latest on this subject coming out of the University of Michigan Library and some of us agreed that we will henceforth banish the term “orphan work” from our vocabulary. Why? Listen and learn. And from what we learned about student searching skills, someone should start teaching students more about online quests for information. That someone could be you.

Links to stories covered in the podcast:

Stanford Silicon Valley Archives
Orphan Books Online
Student Searching Skills

Running time: 37:56
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Episode 72 – May the Swartz Be With You

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:47:55 +0000

Lisa Spiro and Jeff McClurken join Amanda, Mills, and Tom for a high summer episode of Digital Campus. (Dan Cohen did not join us this time, choosing instead to remain incommunicado in an undisclosed location while he writes some book or something.) There is no avoiding the story of Aaron Swartz, the 24-year-old Harvard researcher arrested for hacking MIT’s JSTOR subscription, which raised for our panel, among other concerns, ongoing questions about open access and the viability for libraries of “big deal,” multiple-journal subscription packages. We also mourn (or celebrate) the demise of the big box bookseller Borders, share thoughts about the next generation of operating systems (including Mac OS 10.7 “Lion” and Windows 8), and hold our collective breath as we await major cuts to humanities funding from Congress.

UPDATE 8/17: There was a stretch of dead air in the recording we first posted that we’ve gotten rid of. The corrected recording is below; in a podcast manager such as iTunes you can delete the old recording and refresh your feed to get the new, corrected one. You might need to unsubscribe and resubscribe to the feed. Also, check out this terrific article on the Swartz affair by Maria Bustillos over at The Awl.

Running time: 56:58
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Episode 71 — The Ninth Circle of Google Plus

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:54:03 +0000

If there’s one theme in this episode of the podcast, it’s content being hidden from the open web. The new social network Google+ lets you create “circles” that will allow you to post certain content to certain people and hide it from others, but just as with Facebook, it’s not at all certain that future historians will be able to see any of it, or at least not in context. Computer scientists at Old Dominion University are working to estimate how much of the open web is backed up, and we’re happy to learn that at least thirty percent of it might be available for future study. Blackboard, the original turnkey for course content, is no longer a publicly traded company, and according to the well-read Mills Kelly, that’s because Blackboard may be losing market share to free and open source software. Finally, Tom and Dan tell us a little about PressForward, the Center for History and New Media’s new publishing initiative, which is made possible precisely because so much good work is not in fact locked down, but is freely available on the web.

UPDATE: Google+ does indeed have URLs for individual posts — thanks, Stephen, for pointing that out in the comments. Also, we’d like to give proper credit to Tim Carmody for his remark on Twitter that Google+ “is the first general-purpose social network actually designed for post-collegiate grown-ups.”

Links to stories covered in the podcast:

Audrey Watters, Google Plus: Is This the Social Tool Schools Have Been Waiting For?
Jeff Young, Professors Consider Classroom Uses for Google Plus
Josh Lowensohn, Google+ Access Coming to Google Apps, Eventually
Jie Jenny Zou, Old Dominion U. Researchers Ask How Much of the Web is Archived
Audrey Watters, How the Library of Congress is Building the Twitter Archive
Steve Kolowich, Blackboard Gets Bought
Dan Cohen, Introducing PressForward

Running time: 53:50
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Episode 70 – Live from THATCamp

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 17:06:51 +0000

On Friday, June 3, we live-streamed Digital Campus from the first day of THATCamp CHNM, The Humanities and Technology Camp at the Center for History and New Media. About half the live audience of seventy-five or so people said they had heard the podcast before — it was great to see the listeners in person, not to mention one another.

We discussed at some length the trial of the copyright lawsuit brought against Georgia State University by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Sage Publications, agreeing that if the publishers were to win their suit, teaching faculty would certainly have to become more aware than ever before about the costs of the readings they assign. Also on the table (more briefly) were Google’s cessation of its mass digitization of newspapers, the major search engines’ support for structured data with http://schema.org, the Library of Congress’s plans to transition away from MARC, YouTube’s announcement of Creative Commons licensing, and Amanda’s alternative solution to the Open Researcher and Contributor ID.

Special thanks to Chris Preparato, who managed the audio recording and livestreaming. And, with proof that we’re at least as good-looking as you always imagined, here’s video of the episode 70 of Digital Campus, kindly provided in high definition by George H. Brett (whom you can also hear making a comment about parallels between the GSU case and the early days of Electronic Theses and Dissertations). Thanks so much, George, for capturing this.

Stories or projects mentioned on the podcast:

What’s at Stake in the Georgia State Copyright Case

Google Ditches Newspaper Archive Plan

Google, Bing & Yahoo’s New Schema.org Creates New Standards for Web Content Markup

Open Researcher and Contributor ID

Library of Congress May Begin Transitioning Away from MARC [Machine-Readable Cataloging]

Google Rolls Out YouTube Creative Commons Licenses

Running time: 50:25
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Episode 69 – Strange Bedfellows

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 19 May 2011 19:23:19 +0000

Steve Ramsay joins us on the podcast as we scratch our heads over some strange decisions by the big tech companies, namely Microsoft’s $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype and Google’s entry into the netbook (or “Chromebook”) market. We also mourn the death of the Flip camera, killed by its similarly unlikely owner, Cisco. To end the show we return to our bread and butter of digital libraries to catch up with the Digital Public Library of America, which announced a summertime “beta sprint.” Perhaps they heard our frequent pleas for “less talk, more grok” and “less yak, more hack”?

Additional links related to the podcast:

Flip Video Vlog: A Tale of Two Formats

Digital Public Library of America: Prelim Plans for “Beta Sprint” Released

Will Chromebooks for Education be a Good Deal for Schools?

Running time: 56:14
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Episode 68 – OMG No GBS

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 14:23:01 +0000

Two big stories dominate this edition of the podcast: the rejection of the Google Books settlement and the request for a professor’s personal email. Tom, Mills, Amanda, and Dan discuss why the settlement between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers didn’t pass muster, and what the ramifications of the ruling are. We also look in-depth at what it means to have an university-provided email address given the Wisconsin GOP’s request to gain access to William Cronon’s email messages. On a lighter note, the Digital Campus team tries to decide if the addition of OMG and LOL to the OED spells the end of civilization.

[Editor's Note: We recorded this podcast on 3/31/11, before the resolution of the Cronon affair.]

Additional links mentioned on the podcast:
‘Academic Freedom’ Offers Little Protection Against New Efforts to Obtain Professors’ E-Mails
Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide

Running time: 50:05
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Episode 67 — Get Your Dan Brown Ebooks Here

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:42:31 +0000

Joined by new podcast irregular Audrey Watters, educational technology writer for ReadWriteWeb, the Digital Campus crew discusses a whole passel o’ news for this episode. Dan Cohen gives us an eyewitness report from the first meeting of the Digital Public Library of America initiative, identifying three (only three?) chief tensions: how “public” and how “American” such a library could be; how centralized such a library should be; and how such a library could help fulfill our national yen for free Dan Brown ebooks. Tom thinks the iPad 2 shows that Apple is a little behind the curve (cough, cough, Android), but Audrey thinks that consumers are going to prefer Apple to Android (cough, cough, apps), especially since you can get Dan Brown ebooks in the iBooks store. We do all agree that the iPad 2 is a lot more classroom-friendly than the first iPad, though. Mills gives us his take on Bill Gates’s influence on education, and promises Bill that for an educational technology grant of a mere $20 million, he won’t buy an iPad 2 after all. Finally, we claim that we don’t want UniLeaks, the WikiLeaks for higher education, to degenerate into a gossip site like Juicy Campus, but we might be lying just a little bit.

Links to stories and articles mentioned in the podcast:

Dan Cohen, What Scholars Want from the Digital Public Library of America
David Weinberger, Questions From and For the Digital Public Library of America
Amanda French, Imagine a National Digital Library: I Wonder If We Can
Josh Hadro, HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations
Marianne Takle, The Norwegian National Digital Library
Audrey Watters, Will the iPad 2 Make the Grade for Classroom Usage?
Kara Swisher, Kno Student Tablet Start Up in Talks to Sell Off Tablet Part of Business
David Rapp, Internet Archive Tests New Ebook Lending Waters: In-Library, and License-Free
Jeff Young, Professor’s Online Lecture Gets Lift from Bill Gates
Bill Gates, How Teacher Development Could Revolutionize Our Schools
Bill Gates on Big History
Marc Parry, A WikiLeaks Clone Takes On Higher Education

Running time: 54:26
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Episode 66 – The End of Big Search As We Know It?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 16:08:42 +0000

In this edition of the podcast Tom, Amanda, Dan, and Mills considered whether recent news stories about spammers gaming the Google search engine algorithm herald the end of big search as we know it. Is it really the case that Google engineers are being out-coded by their counterparts at “content farms” and other spam generating locations? And if they are, what does that mean for educators, students, and cultural institutions like museums, libraries, and archives? We also looked at Q&A site Quora (we weren’t bowled over) and Google Art Project (everyone but Tom was bowled over).

Running time: 37:09
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Episode 65 – Conference Season

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 12:47:24 +0000

It’s January, and that means air travel, interviews, ball rooms, and exhibit halls. This year Digital Campus recognizes conference season with an extended discussion of digital humanities at the annual meetings of the American Historical Association (AHA) and the Modern Language Association (MLA). We also take time to discuss the latest tech news coming out of Las Vegas and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Links to stories covered in the podcast:

Dan Cohen, Digital History at AHA 2011
Mark Sample, Digtital Humanities at MLA 2011
Pannapacker at MLA: Digital Humanities Triumphant?
Steve Ramsay, On Building
Android at CES: strong growth as platform jumps to new devices
iPad 2 Rumor Roundup
6 Top Smartphone Apps to Improve Teaching
14-year old developer takes top spot in App Store
Lua programming language
Google App Inventor for Android

Running time: 48:04
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Episode 64 – Year in Review 2010

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 18:56:18 +0000

It’s time once again for the tuxedos, red dresses, and closely guarded envelopes as the Digital Campus team reveals the top stories of 2010. In a twist this year, each co-host unveils their biggest flop and biggest hit of the year. Amanda, Tom, Mills, and Dan also gaze into their trusty crystal balls—which we can proudly say have been incredibly accurate in years past—for their predictions for 2011. The wait is over—tune in for the cheers and jeers, the laughter and the tears.

Running time: 58:09
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Episode 63 – Never Do Anything That Involves Human Beings

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 21:05:56 +0000

What would Google eBooks do? Nothing that involves human beings, says Dan: don’t look for “staff picks” from this long-awaited “cyberinfrastructure for distributed e-book sales” (which used to be called Google Editions). Your local independent bookseller will be more than happy to give you recommendations, but Dan and Tom are still worried that Google eBooks might hurt indie booksellers and university presses — though perhaps no more than Amazon already has. Mills, meanwhile, as befits a true “podcast intellectual,” can and does give many good reasons why keeping government documents secret for twenty-five years hurts historians and public policy makers; maybe if the U.S. government declassified things earlier, there wouldn’t have been such a frenzy over the illegally downloaded diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks. In any case, the cables are pretty mundane — if you consider acute analysis of diplomatic affairs mundane — and chances are that there’ll be even less salacious gossip in government correspondence from now on. Thanks a lot, Wikileaks. Finally, Tom wonders why the heck we need Chrome OS when we have Android; Google’s announcement that they’re releasing a Google Chrome notebook seems to have missed out on the fact that we’ve had a tablet revolution. Still, maybe students will like it. Students in first grade, that is.

Oh, yes, and Amanda hosts the podcast for the first time, in which multitasking capacity she expresses few opinions about anything. That loud typing is hers. Sorry about that.

Links to stories covered in the podcast:

Google Enters the E-Book Market at Last
Amazon enhances Kindle for the Web
Why Wikileaks is Bad for Scholars
Google shows Chrome notebook, Web Store

Running time: 51:11
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Episode 62 – PDA? In the Library?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:41:59 +0000

In this episode of Digital Campus, Dan, Amanda, and Mills (Tom was unavailable), were joined by Jennifer Howard from The Chronicle of Higher Education to discuss the latest trends in digital media, higher education, and in particular, libraries. We began by reprising a story from so long ago we could hardly remember it–college professors assigning their students to write or edit Wikipedia entries. Then we moved on to much more important topics, like Robert Darnton’s recent proposal to create a “national digital library.” We also discussed a rising trend among librarians–enthusiasm for “patron driven acquisition,” also know as PDA. Please don’t confuse this PDA with prior uses of that acronym! Amanda then chimed in with her take on Amazon’s plan to offer limited lendability for e-books. Regular listeners won’t be surprised by her take on this proposal. And we wrapped with Dan introducing us all to Omeka.net, CHNM’s newest way of making it easy for web users to create and manage archival and museum collections online.

Other links mentioned in the podcast:
Wikipedia’s Public Policy Initiative
National Digital Library proposal in The Chronicle
National Digital Library proposal in Libraryjournal.com
Patron driven acquisition in The Chronicle
Amazon.com’s ebook lending program

Running time: 52:13
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Episode 61 – Fantastic Four

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 22:48:07 +0000

Digital Campus expands its roster to four with the addition of Amanda French as our newest co-host. It’s a busy week to start the new era, and we jump right in with news that Amazon is trying to revive the venerable pamphlet for the digital age. We turn next to three stories out of EDUCAUSE, including the Gates Foundation’s big splash, Second Life’s big flop, and Sherpa’s big promise. We applaud UVa and NARA’s announcement of open access to the Founding Father’s papers, and setting aside our iEverything for a change, we discuss some interesting new offerings from Microsoft, including Windows Phone 7 and Bing’s new Facebook-powered social search. We wrap things up with a some ideas to help you deal with the distractions of the online world.

Running time: 58:10
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Episode 60 – Stimulus Plan

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 17:21:36 +0000

Dan, Tom, Mills, and Amanda return to discuss what’s new for faculty this semester, including some welcome hiring in digital humanities. We discuss the trend of “cluster hiring” at big universities such as the one being advertised at Iowa and parallel developments at smaller colleges like Hamilton and Amherst [.doc]. Other topics include Google Instant and rumors of a Facebook phone. Oh, yeah, and something big was announced by Team Zotero.

Episode 59 — Digital Replacements

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 13:46:54 +0000

For our fourth annual back-to-school edition of Digital Campus Tom, Dan, and Mills invited podcast irregulars Amanda French and Bryan Alexander to join in on a discussion of what we can expect in the year ahead. Mills wondered whether news from Facebook central that the ubiquitous social networking platform was losing its grip on college students meant it might be replaced by something new, but was shot down by others on the podcast. But we did speculate on what potential competitors like Diaspora might mean for the future of social networking among students. We also wondered whether this was the year that e-books begin to really replace textbooks on campus. The sudden demise of the digital version of Rice University Press also left us wondering whether digital imprints might ever replace the bricks and mortar/paper and glue university press. To find out what we concluded about all these possible digital replacements, you’ll just have to sit back and listen.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

How not to run a university press
Clay Shirky on the future of print
Mobile textbooks

Running time: 54:04
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Episode 58 – Anthologize LIVE

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:15:13 +0000

In our first-ever live broadcast, Digital Campus hosts the big reveal of what came out of One Week | One Tool, a National Endowment for the Humanities-sponsored institute at the Center for History and New Media that brought together a diverse group of developers and scholars to produce a useful software application for the humanities (and beyond) in just one week. Joining the regulars on the podcast are four members of the One Week team, Boone Gorges, Kathie Gossett, Effie Kapsalis, and Steve Ramsay. The tool revealed, Anthologize, is a WordPress-based platform for book publishing. Regular Mills Kelly finds Anthologize as beautiful as his Hawaiian vacation.

Running time: 36:48
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Episode 57 – Fight Club Soap

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:54:16 +0000

Returning from a post-THATCamp hiatus, podcast regulars Dan, Mills, and Tom are joined by original irregulars Amanda French and Jeff McClurken to discuss the new iPhone, a nascent course management offering from Google, and the launch of Microsoft Office Web Apps. The panel applauds the University of California/California Digital Library in its showdown with Nature Publishing Group over subscription costs and weighs in on students buying and selling course spots on Craigslist. Hat tip to our good friend Bethany Nowviskie for this episode’s inspired title.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
ProfHacker
Letter from UC to faculty [.pdf]
Nature Publishing Group responds, via Ars Technica

Running time: 57:41
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Episode 56 – Past Play

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:47:18 +0000

While sitting in our offices and wishing we were outside in the beautiful spring weather, Tom, Dan, and Mills took a virtual journey north of the border to talk to Kevin Kee and Bill Turkel about their recent conference Playing With Technology in History at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Kevin is the director of the Simulating History Lab at Brock University and Bill is the guru of the Lab for Humanistic Fabrication. In addition to discussing the conference and Kevin’s and Bill’s work on the cutting edge–perhaps even bleeding edge–of digital humanities, we also debated the pros and cons of the unconference model for academic meetings and whether we thought that “play” was an appropriate objective for history teachers. Kevin also gave us a sneak preview of the mobile history app he and his team are developing to coincide with the bicentennial of the War of 1812. If you don’t have any idea what “humanistic fabrication” is or if you’ve never pondered whether or not you need a MakerBot, you definitely need to listen to the podcast.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
History Education Network/Histoire et Éducation en Réseau
CraftRobo
Arduinos
Rob MacDougall on Barely Games

Running time: 50:01
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Episode 55 – Social History

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:29:55 +0000

Bryan Alexander of NITLE joins Tom, Mills, and Dan for a spirited discussion about what this week’s news about three services used by many educators–Twitter, Facebook, and Ning–tells us about how faculty and students should approach online services. We dig into the meaning of the Twitter archive going to the Library of Congress, Facebook announcing how it will spread to the rest of the web, and Ning closing its doors to non-profits. Many questions are raised (and a few answered) about the significance of social media becoming a dominant part of our online existence.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Library of Congress Acquires Entire Twitter Archive
Facebook Launches New Privacy Section That May Make Your Head Hurt
National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program
Pew on Social Media and Young Adults
Dan on sustainability in last section of “The Idols of Scholarly Publishing”

Running time: 52:50
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Episode 54 – Birds in the Background

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:32:37 +0000

Mills, Tom, and Dan welcome Lisa Spiro back to the podcast to talk about the much ballyhooed launch of Apple’s iPad, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision against “net neutrality,” and—to the sounds of spring’s first robin song twittering through Mills’ open window—the role of the Twitter backchannel at the University of Virginia’s recent Shape of Things to Come conference. Other stories include the National Endowment for the Humanities announcement of 18 Digital Humanities Start-up Grants and Yale’s decision to delay its switch to Gmail.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

David Pogue’s New York Times review of the iPad
In Our Time, “The City”
New NEH Digital Start Up Grants at edwired.org
JISC crowdsourcing projects
Integrating Digital Papyrology Project
Civil War Washington

Running time: 1:06:50
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Episode 53 – Open and Shut

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:30:47 +0000

The podcast regulars Dan, Tom, and Mills are joined this week by irregular Jeff McClurken, who discusses how he used videos of TED talks in his class last fall. We also talk about the impact of the technology lawsuits and patents awarded recently, which put a cloud over many platforms academics and museums use. It also makes us wonder about the sustainability of digital creations, both from a technical standpoint and from a financial one. And no podcast would be complete without a crazy Facebook post.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Jeff’s TED Talks class
As Grants Run Out, Universities Pony Up Cash for OpenCourseWare
East Stroudsburg U. Suspends Professor for Facebook Posts
Apple sues HTC
Facebook Gains News Feed Patent to Secure Its Social Network

Running time: 48:52
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Episode 52 — What’s the Buzz?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:04:21 +0000

The Internet is buzzing about Google Buzz and so why should Digital Campus be any different? With Mills as host, we welcome Amanda French from our Corps of Irregulars to help us sort out the challenges to personal privacy posed by Buzz. We also considered whether Facebook rants against a teacher by a student should be considered protected speech and all four of us were more than a little shocked by a story about a school district that used security software in laptops given to students to spy on those same students by turning on the laptop webcams without anyone knowing. In an age when your movements can be tracked via the GPS capabilities of your cellphone, managing privacy is becoming more and more of an issue for universities and students. We also dipped our toes back into the eBook reader waters long enough to wonder whether or not the iPad and its inevitable imitators meant a new day for academic libraries.

Links:

Google’s response to public outcry about Buzz
Are Facebook rants protected speech?
Schools spying on their students via laptop webcams
eLibrary Economics
Tracking your movements via your cellphone

Running Time: 50:36
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Episode 51 – The Inevitable iPad

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:58:16 +0000

Jennifer Howard of The Chronicle of Higher Education joins the podcast as the regulars give Dan a rest and Tom takes a turn at hosting for the first time. On the morrow of the big Apple announcement, the Digital Campus crew offers its thoughts on the possible impact of the iPad for teaching, publishing, and research. In other news, the Cornell library asks fellow institutions to pony up to help with costs of maintaining ArXiv.org, Flickr Commons closes its doors to new members until 2011, and publishers make more money by dropping copy protection.

Also mentioned on the podcast:
Monty Python’s free web video increased DVD sales by 23,000 percent
The iPad shows up the Kindle; will Apple’s iBooks store challenge Amazon?
5 Ways the Apple iPad Could Change e-Books
The Public Domain Manifesto
Google Editions Embraces Universal E-book Format
Collections in the Cloud?
MuseumMobile Pocast

Running Time: 51:26
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Episode 50 – The Crystal Ball Returns

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:02:28 +0000

For our golden anniversary podcast, regulars Tom, Mills, and Dan look into their crystal ball to see what the future holds for 2010 and the coming decade. We also look back at the biggest stories of 2009 and the prior decade. Via Twitter, we also share prognostications from our very smart audience.

Running time: 1:01:18
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Episode 49 – The Twouble with Twecklers

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:57:04 +0000

Does Twitter make conferences more productive, less hierarchical, and more friendly, or does it just give new voice to confidence-crushing comments from the peanut gallery? Steve joins Mills, Dan, and Tom to talk about the phenomenon of “twecklers” and Google’s efforts to speed up the Web, including a SPDY internet protocol, a new DNS (Domain Name System) service, and a new systems programming language. And, by popular demand, we bring back our picks of the podcast.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Danah Boyd on Twecklers
Conference Humiliation from the Chronicle of Higher Education
The Overbite Project brings Gopher to Firefox
The Art of Community, by Jono Bacon
Readability
Zotero File Storage

Running Time: 53:53
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Episode 48 – Balkanization of the Web?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:33:54 +0000

What will be the impact of the loss of non-Anglophone books in the revised Google Books settlement? How about the loss of News Corporation content in Google’s search? Or the loss of physical books from the library? And what exactly does the loss of tens of thousands of editors mean to Wikipedia? Mills, Amanda, and Dan discuss these changes to our information environment in a special Thanksgiving edition of the podcast.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Revised Google Books Settlement
News Corp. Weighs an Exclusive Alliance With Bing
Report: Wikipedia losing volunteers
Syracuse University Library Considers Relocating Books
Citizendium
Top 100 Books Cited by Wikipedia

Running Time: 49:38
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Episode 47 – Publishers Bleakly

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:01:30 +0000

On this podcast we’re delighted to introduce another two “irregulars,” Jennifer Howard, a writer for the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Josh Greenberg, the director of digital strategy and scholarship at the New York Public Library. Jennifer and Josh give us terrific insights into the challenges that digitization and open access are posing to libraries and publishers, and speak of new models that are emerging out of the chaos, including coalitions of publishers and the Internet Archive‘s BookServer.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Research Librarians Discuss How to Sell Scholars on Open Access, and More
Columbia and Cornell Libraries Announce ‘Radical’ Partnership
Open Access to Research Is Inevitable, Libraries Are Told

Running time: 44:25
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Episode 46 – Theremin Dreams

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:43:30 +0000

How and why do a critical mass of people adopt new technologies such as virtual worlds or the Theremin? That’s just one of the issues we discuss on a freewheeling podcast featuring another two “irregulars,” Steve Ramsey and Bryan Alexander. The news roundup includes an analysis of the Nook and the Droid, among other oddly-named devices, and an exploration of what real-time search could do for researchers.

Running time: 54:10
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Episode 45 – Wave Hello

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 00:51:55 +0000

While Dan is distracted and rendered unintelligent by his first experience with Google Wave, Mills, Tom, and newcomer Lisa Spiro manage to have a cogent discussion of whether Wave will have any (positive) impact on education, update the ongoing Google Books saga, examine Chrome within Internet Explorer, highlight the Kindle underperforming on campus, debate the FTC’s ruling on bloggers accepting gifts (including university presses giving free books to bloggers), and look at advance of net neutrality. Picks of the podcast include a wiki for seeing into the future, an assessment of collegiate internet use, tools for Twitter and RSS, and a time-waster of a blog.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Horizon Report wiki
Everyday life, online: U.S. college students’ use of the Internet
Twitter Feed
RSS Digest (WordPress Plugin)
Futility Closet blog

Running time: 43:45
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Episode 44 – Unsettled

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:38:00 +0000

In this installment of Digital Campus, we couldn’t decide if we were happy with Google or mad at Google. Tom, Dan, and Mills were so confused about our feelings on the whole Google issue that we invited two new “irregulars” to join us — Jeff McClurken and Amanda French — but they proved to be just as unsettled as we were. Even though they didn’t help us much on our core problem, we enjoyed having them on the show so much that we’ve decided to ask them back on the show again along with some other irregulars to be named later. All five of us also discussed the future of libraries in the digital age and a new raft of picks you should check out.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Libraries of the Future conference
Google study tips
Invincible Cities
Planned Obsolescence
TED talk: Schools Kill Creativity
TED talk: The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen
Jeff McClurken and Tim O’Donnell’s seminar using TED talks
Social Media Governance

Running time: 51:01
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Episode 43 – Summer Wrap-up

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:07:30 +0000

The Digital Campus team is delighted to be back after a summer hiatus with a new podcast covering the many important developments from the past few months related to academia, libraries, museums, and technology. We cover and make pointed (and occasionally wisecracking) commentary upon the status of the Google Books settlement, ebook readers, and cameras on student devices, among other topics. We also cover shiny new things like Google Wave, RSSCloud, and PubSubHubbub. Picks include a new blog, an article on the future of journals, and how to take command of the command line. We’re looking forward to another year of the podcast, and hope you are too!

Other links mentioned on the podcast:
Sugar on a Stick
ProfHacker.com
Learning Unix
Is There a Future for Journals in the Humanities?
Cool-er ebook reader

Running time: 50:21
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Episode 42 – The Real World

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:17:08 +0000

Dan and Mills welcome Tom back from paternity leave with a whirlwind roundup of the last month’s news. The regulars try to keep it real, exposing a scandal in scientific journal publishing, assessing the buzz surrounding the launch of a new computational search engine, questioning recent applications of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and delving once again into the Google Books settlement and some late breaking developments at the University of Michigan Library.

Episode 41 – Interview With Stan Katz

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:02:17 +0000

While Tom was out on paternity leave, Dan and Mills took the opportunity to interview Stan Katz (Princeton University). For those who don’t know Stan, he is the past president of the American Council of Learned Societies, an accomplished legal historian and Vice President for Research of the American Historical Association, and a lifetime Chicago Cubs fan. Stan is also, in many ways, one of the fathers of digital humanities. In the interview he discusses the past, the present, and the future of digital humanities from a perspective few can offer. We also ripped our way through the news of the past two weeks, including the incredible news that spending time on Facebook can lower your grades. Who knew?

Other links mentioned on the podcast:
Crowdsourcing on Twitter
The Twitter Revolution That Wasn’t

Running time: 48:15
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Episode 40 – Super Models

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 20:21:22 +0000

In a freewheeling news roundup we discuss the significance of a number of major changes in academic publishing, including MIT going open access, the University of Michigan Press going digital, Sony putting 500,000 books on their digital reading device, and the impact of budget cuts on presses and journals. We explore new models for academic publishing in the face of the economic downturn and the digital revolution. Picks of the week include a way for new Twitter users to find others in their discipline, documents from the National Security Archive, and a deadline for an unconference.

Other links mentioned on the podcast:
Stan Katz, “A Computer is Not a Typewriter”
UVA phasing out computer labs

Running time: 40:15
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Episode 39 – Upgrade in the Downturn?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:50:13 +0000

The Digital Campus crew finally tackle the Great Recession: the significance of the financial meltdown on universities, libraries, and museums. What will change and what will stay the same? Are there technologies that can help us in our time of need? We also talk more about e-books, campus iPhone apps, and lecture podcasts.

Links mentioned in the podcast:
Google Apps For Your Domain
Duke U. Unveils Application Suite for iPhone
‘iTunes university’ better than the real thing
Tip Jar
Digital Archivists, Now in Demand

Running time: 44:41
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Episode 38 – E-Book Redux

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:56:57 +0000

In a very special timetraveling episode, the Digital Campus crew journey back to 2007 to hear from their old selves–specifically, what they said about e-books when Amazon’s Kindle was released–and whether their present selves agree with their ghosts from the past in light of the release of the Kindle 2 and the mobile version of Google Books. Also covered on the podcast are the demise of rumor site Juicy Campus and music site Ruckus, the impact of Creative Commons and downloads on YouTube, and the addition of history to Google Earth. Picks for the episode include a programming interface for New York Times articles, a blog on the futures of learning, a search engine for open journals, and a site for medieval manuscripts.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Kindle 2
Google Book Search Mobile
New York Times Article Search API
Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts
Futures of Learning blog
Google Earth 5′s Historical Imagery
JURN search engine

Running time: 49:18
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Episode 37 – Material Culture

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:40:32 +0000

Aside from the technical challenges of moving museums online, there’s the cultural challenge of squaring the curator’s focus on the actual, authentic object with the free-for-all, non-hierarchical nature of the web. That’s the tension addressed in the feature story on this episode, a follow-up to concerns expressed at the Smithsonian 2.0 conference. We’re lucky to be joined in the discussion by Sharon Leon, Director of Public Projects at the Center for History and New Media. In the news roundup, we assemble our own stimulus package, talk about Creative Commons on the White House website, look at the impact of Gmail going offline, and debate a possible change to Wikipedia’s moderation policy. Picks include a new grant, Omeka training, museum awards, and (despite protests by Mills) a Twitter client.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Broadband, Computers Part of Stimulus Package
Wikipedia Co-Founder Calls for Major New Moderation Policy
New White House Copyright Policy
Smithsonian 2.0
National Postal Museum’s Arago website
Best of the Web at the Museums and the Web 2009 meeting
Digging into Data Challenge
TweetDeck
Omeka Workshops
Gmail Goes Offline

Running time: 45:14
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Episode 36 – Tweeting into 2009

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 21:24:11 +0000

Tom and Dan kick off the new year by annoying Mills with tales of Twitter and tweets. In our newly extended news roundup, the panel looks at the use of Twitter at academic conferences; assesses the Palm Pre and the future of mobile apps for education, museums, and libraries; wonders about touch screens and the blind; thinks once again about the use of e-book readers on campus; discusses the end of Google Notebook and what it says about putting your research in services that might fail; debates the wisdom of putting academic articles on Wikipedia; and gives an update on Europeana, the EU digital library.

Other links for the episode:
Amanda French on the digital MLA experience
HearPlanet iPhone application
The American Association of History and Computing
ReframeIt and Web Annotation

Running time: 49:32
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Episode 35 – Top Ten of 2008

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:37:12 +0000

Dan, Mills, and Tom round out 2008 with the top ten most significant stories, trends, and technologies of the year. The regulars discuss how netbooks, Google Books, e-books, and iPhones made 2008 a year to remember. What will make the list in 2009? The regulars offer some predictions as well.

Running time: 51:30
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Episode 34 – Extra, Extra!

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:47:35 +0000

This Thanksgiving week in the U.S. we have a cornucopia of news, starting with the reaction of Harvard to the Google Book Search settlement and including the end of email service for students at Boston College and two efforts to create an “academic Google.” We also launch a new segment, “We Told You So,” to gloat over the predicted death of Google’s virtual world, Lively, and over continuing problems in Second Life. Picks for this episode include a new site on place-based computing, a couple of easy (or bizarre) ways to write a book, and an easy-to-learn programming language.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Harvard on Google Book Search settlement
Lively No More
“Eric Reuters” on Second Life
Europeana
Boston College Will Stop Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts
RefSeek
Reference Extract
Google SearchWiki
Processing 1.0
Place-based Computing
FortyChapters
QuillPill

Running time: 44:27
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Episode 33 – Classroom Action Settlement

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:15:18 +0000

The big news this week was the announcement that a settlement had been reached between Google and authors and publishers over Google’s controversial Book Search program, which has scanned over seven million volumes, including many books that are still copyrighted. The Digital Campus team takes a first pass at the agreement and tries to understand how it might affect higher ed. Other news from a busy week include the release of the first phone based on Google’s Android operating system, and Microsoft’s conversion to “cloud” computing. Picks for this podcast include a new report on teenagers and videogames, a new version of Linux for the masses, and a program to help you focus on the Mac.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Google Book Search Settlement Agreement
Open Library
Ubuntu
Think for the Mac
Android
Microsoft Azure
Pew report on teens and videogames

Running time: 49:29
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Episode 32 – Going Native

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:52:20 +0000

This time on Digital Campus the regulars tackle the notion of “digital natives,” the conventional wisdom that says children born during the Internet era (say, since the late 1980s) understand digital technology intuitively. Are today’s students naturally fluent in the language and customs of digital technology, or are they more like the rest of us, who have to work hard to make computers work for us? We take a look at both sides of the debate. In the news roundup we discuss Google’s latest digitization project (newspapers this time), the publishing lobby’s attempt to close NIH’s open access research portal, and two new foundations to support good things on the web.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Google to Digitize Newspaper Archives, New York Times
Backlash Against Open Access, Ars Technica
Digital Promise
World Wide Web Foundation
The Generational Myth, Chronicle of Higher Education
Harvard Professor Sees Answers to Nagging Web-Youth Issues, Cnet
A Companion to Digital Literary Studies
What to Look for in Tech Staff, Tech Therapy
Many Eyes

Running time: 48:49
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Episode 31 – Back to School

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:30:55 +0000

The Digital Campus crew was lucky to be joined by Bryan Alexander, the Director of Research of NITLE, on this episode. Bryan tracks emerging trends in technology and higher ed, and gives us the inside scoop on what’s up and coming for the 2008-2009 school year. Our wide-ranging discussion in that feature segment and the news roundup covers the latest in mobile technology, ebooks, digital scholarship, course-management-systems, virtual worlds, gaming, and audio, video, and image-sharing, among other topics. We also obsess a bit about the significance of Google’s new web browser, Chrome. Join us for another year of Digital Campus!

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Making the History of 1989
Synthasite
Jason Calacanis on demoing digital products, part 1, part 2
NITLE Prediction Markets
The Shadow IT Department
Google Chrome

Running time: 1:05:53
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Episode 30 – Live From Egypt!

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:53:19 +0000

On this episode we were lucky to have a live link to Alexandria, Egypt, for Wikimania 2008, the international meeting of those who work on Wikipedia and related open collaborative projects. In the feature segment we talk with Liam Wyatt of Wikipedia Weekly, who gives an insider’s scoop of the issues, debates, and future of Wikipedia. In the news roundup we discuss Yahoo’s new open search service, BOSS, and Google’s new virtual world, Lively, among other things. Picks of the week include some advice from Google’s blogs, some rich web-based applications, and Gmail power user tweaks.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Wikimania 2008
Wikipedia Weekly
Yahoo BOSS
Google Lively
Aviary
Google Labs Gmail tweaks
Requesting reconsideration using Google Webmaster Tools
Technologies Behind Google Ranking

Running time: 48:03
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Episode 29 – Making It Count

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:04:22 +0000

As forms of scholarship move from the analog world of paper to the digital realm of the web, a debate has begun about how to give credit—if at all—to these new forms for the purposes of promotion and tenure. What will happen to peer review? What kinds of digital work should “count,” and how? That’s the featured discussion on this episode. We also cover the launch of Firefox 3, university presses putting their books on Amazon’s Kindle device, and the release of better copyright records.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Google publishes copyright status of books from 1923-1963
U.S. Copyright Office Record Search
Mills on “Making Digital Scholarship Count”
Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage
Creative Commons Case Studies
MozillaZine on “about:config”

Running time: 44:02
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Episode 28 – Raising the BarCamp

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 15:40:13 +0000

Might there be an alternative to the conventional meetings and conferences academics, librarians, and museum professionals go to every year, where papers and panels—and often bored or distracted attendees—are the norm? This episode’s feature story tackles that question by looking back at the experience of THATCamp: The Humanities and Technology Camp, a less structured “unconference” or “barcamp” that turned everyone into active participants. The roundtable discussion of the news includes a discussion of what the iPhone 3G and iPhone apps mean for educational and cultural institutions. Picks of the week include a new site on the Soviet Gulag, a way to avoid distractions on the Mac, and an open source mapping site.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
THATCamp
GreenNote
OS X Spaces
Gulag: Many Days, Many Lives
Open Street Map

Running time: 45:19
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Episode 27 – All Atwitter

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 01:04:59 +0000

As Dan finally buckles under and joins in the most hyped Web 2.0 site of the moment, Twitter, Tom and Mills join him to debate the merits—and demerits—of the “microblogging” craze. Do services like Twitter merely increase the distractions and noise from the web, or might they be helpful for communication and community building in academia? In the news roundup, we cover Microsoft’s exit from book digitization and the significance of the tech layoffs at the University of Washington. Picks of the week include a podcast series from Harvard, a blog post explaining the semantic web, and a wiki for digital research tools.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Mills on Twitter
Media Berkman
Semantic Web Patterns
Digital Research Tools (DiRT) wiki

Running time: 47:21
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Episode 26 – Free for All

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:17:13 +0000

At a time when everything seems to be trending toward being freely available online, how can education and digital resources and tools for academia, libraries, and museums sustain themselves? Tom, Dan, and Mills discuss models for sustainability in the age of the free in the feature segment of this week’s podcast. In the news roundup, we cover the RIAA’s newfound love of the lawsuit and the University of Chicago Law School’s newfound hate of the laptop. Picks of the week include a proportional mapping tool, a thesis repository, and a site that helps non-techies understand and use RSS.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Mills on free education
Laura Dewis, “Money makes the world go… open?”
RSS Day
Harvard Thesis Repository
World Mapper

Running time: 43:07
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Episode 25 – Get With the Program

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 14:00:22 +0000

Tom and Dan are joined this week by Bill Turkel and Steve Ramsey, who provide fascinating insights into the nature of computer programming and how those in the humanities, museums, and libraries can get started with this foreign language. Bill and Steve were also kind enough to add their comments to our news roundup discussion of the launch of Google App Engine, which raises questions about outsourcing, and myLOC.gov, which raises questions about whether digital collections should have their own personalization tools. Picks for the week include two books on programming, an organizational tool for Thunderbird, and a map for browsing American history.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
The Programming Historian
Google App Engine
myLOC.gov
Network in Canadian History & Environment
Social Explorer
MIT Simile’s Seek
Beautiful Code
The Mythical Man-Month

Run time: 48:17
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Episode 24 – Running from the Law

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 13:00:27 +0000

In the feature story of this episode, Tom, Mills, and Dan finally get to vent about the increasing annoyances of legal restrictions and threats that face those trying to do digital work in academia, libraries, and museums. Copyright—both in its traditional form and in modern incarnations like the DMCA—has made it more difficult than ever to figure out how and when to post something online, and for those creating digital tools, the further threat of patent lawsuits awaits. In the news roundup we talk about another threat—that of online predators and a new Virginia law intended to thwart them—and note the launch of offline Google Docs, which now provides a more compelling alternative to Microsoft Office. Links for the week include a museum podcast that’s good for the classroom, a tech blog for students, and a declaration for open access to educational materials and technology.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Virginia Schools Start To Teach Internet Safety
DMCA
Fair Use
Open Access News
NIH’s Public Access Requirement
Restriction: No Text Mining of PubMed
Professor Sues Student Over Lecture Notes
Elsevier Lets MIT Use Copyrighted Materials
Patent Office Rejects Blackboard’s E-Learning Patent in Preliminary Ruling
Google Docs Launches Offline Support
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum @ iTunesU
Hack College blog
Cape Town Open Education Declaration

Running time: 47:24
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Episode 23 – Happy Birthday

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 14:37:48 +0000

On the first birthday of the podcast, Tom, Mills, and Dan discuss how they produce the podcast and reflect on what they’re doing right, what needs improvement, and what they might do in the coming year—and ask the audience to write in with their own criticisms and suggestions. The news roundup looks at a new campus gossip website, the expulsion of a student for using a Facebook study group, and the significance of iPhones coming to campuses in the fall along with the new iPhone SDK (software development kit). Links for the week include an easy way to collaboratively markup and critique websites, a detailed description of a good web design and development setup, and one journal’s take on Web 2.0.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Audacity
Call Recorder
Twiddla
Jeremy Boggs’s Design and Development Setup
First Monday issue on Web 2.0

Runtime: 44:38
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Episode 22 – Demanding Print on Demand?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 11:22:15 +0000

Can print on demand shake up academic publishing, book buying, and reading habits? Another terrific guest joins us on the podcast for a feature segment on the promise and perils of print on demand: Yakov Shafranovich, a software developer who specializes in print on demand services including PublicDomainReprints.org, covered in several prior Digital Campus episodes. We spend most of the news roundup debating the impact of the Harvard faculty vote in favor of open access scholarship, while also covering Blackboard’s victory in a flimsy patent case. Picks of the week include a good new podcast, a flashy historical website, and an easy way to add images to your blog posts.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Harvard Open Access Policy
PublicDomainReprints.org
New Academia Press
European Navigator
First Monday Podcast
PhotoDropper

Run time: 58:32
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Episode 21 – To Read or Not To Read

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:44:20 +0000

Is reading declining in the digital age, or is it simply changing? The Digital Campus team is joined by two guests in our feature segment, Sunil Iyengar of the National Endowment for the Arts and Matt Kirschenbaum of the University of Maryland, to debate the future of reading—and its past. The news roundup covers Microsoft’s courtship of Yahoo and what it means (if anything) for campuses, provides an update on a problematic U.S. House of Representatives bill, and covers the new Horizon Report on digital technologies that will affect universities in the coming five years.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
2008 Horizon Report
College Opportunity and Affordability Act
Aluka
Today’s Front Pages at the Newseum
Amistad Digital Resource

Running time: 50:49
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Episode 20 – Open to Change

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:43:06 +0000

Are open educational resources such as iTunes U and thought-provoking dot-coms such as BigThink.com a distraction from the mission of professors and universities, or the wave of the future? Tom, Mills, and Dan debate the merits of “open access” intellectual content in the feature story. We also follow up on Dan’s experience with buying a book from PublicDomainReprints.org, compare the MacBook Air with the small, cheap laptops discussed on the last episode of Digital Campus, and discuss the launch of Flickr Commons. Our picks of the week point to three great ways to use RSS feeds more effectively.

Links mentioned on podcast:
PublicDomainReprints.org
Flickr Commons
MacBook Air
iTunes U
BigThink.com
Berkeley’s YouTube Channel
Google Reader Sharing
ReadBurner
Yahoo Pipes
FeedJournal

Runtime: 51:15
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Episode 19 – Big Things in Small Packages

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 18:05:16 +0000

On our first podcast of the new year, we look at the rise of the small, cheap laptop and its significance for education and cultural sites. In addition to a full rundown of the latest news about the One Laptop Per Child project and its $188 XO laptop, we cover the wildly popular Asus Eee PC and the forthcoming Everex CloudBook, both costing under $400. In the news roundup we note the end of the line for Netscape, mention the darker alleyways of social networking, and congratulate ourselves for predicting the decline of Second Life. And at the end of the podcast we highlight a great new word processor for the Mac, a service to print out-of-print books, and the digitization of a gigantic medieval bible.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
One Laptop Per Child
Pixel Qi
Asus Eee PC
Everex CloudBook
Scrivener
Codex Gigas
Public Domain Books Reprints Service
THATPodcast
THATCamp

Running time: 45:48
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Episode 18 – Top Ten of 2007

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 20:50:41 +0000

The regulars close out the first calendar year of Digital Campus with a countdown of the top stories of 2007. In a year when lines formed for the iPhone, social networking went mainstream, Vista battled with Leopard (and XP), and virtual worlds beckoned, find out which stories made Mills, Tom, and Dan’s top ten list. What flew, what fizzled, and what will 2008 hold for technology at universities, libraries, and museums? We reveal the answers on our year end special.

Running time: 53:32
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Episode 17 – Can You Hear Me Now?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:25:09 +0000

On this podcast we finally put to rest the Great Facebook Controversy of 2007. We tell listeners how to turn off Facebook’s intrusive Beacon advertising system, and note LinkedIn’s attempt to capitalize on Facebook’s stumble. We also assess the importance of privacy for search engines given Ask.com‘s move to make it easier to search anonymously, and revisit the rise of the podcasting of lectures now that commercial companies are entering the market. Our featured story examines the potential educational uses of cell phones on campus and in museums and libraries, looking ahead to Google’s Android cell phone operating system and other application platforms. Our links for the week include exhibition software for museums, a great new academic blog from Stan Katz, and a simple way for libraries and museums to turn cell phones into audio tour handsets.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Omeka
Podlinez
Brainstorm: Stan Katz

Running time: 52:00
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Episode 16 – Steal This E-Book

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:01:04 +0000

Amazon.com‘s release of its new e-book reader the Kindle has set off a frenzy of speculation about the future of books, reading, and publishing. The Digital Campus team debates the promise and problems of the Kindle and e-book readers in general. In the news roundup we express outrage at a possible new U.S. bill that would remove funds from universities that fail to stop online piracy and at Facebook‘s new feature that allows everyone to see what you’re buying. A cranky holiday-season podcast for listeners new and old!

Other links mentioned on the podcast:
Marvel Comics Archive
Vixy
phillyhistory.org
OpenCast

Running time: 44:02
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Episode 15 – Exposing Yourself

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:18:23 +0000

Think Google is scary with all of the information it gathers about you through your web searches? Wait until Facebook starts its advertising platform based on all of the likes and dislikes you’ve given it, and combines that with the power of Microsoft, which just bought a stake in the biggest social network on campus. We tackle privacy, anonymity, and giving away personal information in this week’s podcast. In the news roundup we celebrate the release of Apple’s new operating system upgrade, Leopard, and whether it and Ubuntu can begin to steal market share from a faltering Windows Vista.

Other links mentioned on the podcast:
New York Public Library Labs
Anthony Grafton on “Future Reading”
Kids, the Internet, and the End of Privacy

Running time: 51:11
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Episode 14 – Where is the Art?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 20:24:34 +0000

The second most frequently asked question at museums after “Where are the restrooms?” is “Where is the art?” In this episode we ask whether those artifacts belong on a museum’s website, and if so, how, as we debate the proper relationship between a museum’s virtual and physical manifestations. Our news roundup covers the opening up of Harvard’s scholarship, Berkeley’s YouTube channel, iTunesU, and two software projects that aim to improve the library catalog and the museum exhibit. We also highlight Errol Morris’s blog posts on truth in photography, a great museum blog, and a tool for converting one type of digital file to another.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Omeka
Scriblio
Harvard Crimson editorial on open access
Berkeley’s YouTube channel
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Errol Morris on two Crimean War photographs (part 1; part 2)
Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 blog
YouConvertIt

Running time:51:35
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Episode 13 – Everything in Moderation?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 18:33:03 +0000

Is the moderated environment of email discussion lists still the best way for scholars to communicate with others in their field? Or is the time ripe to move those conversations onto blogs and less mediated and more open formats? That’s this week’s debate in the feature segment. In the roundup we cover news about greater competition for Microsoft Office and the significance of the New York Times dumping its pay-for-certain-content model. Picks of the week include a great podcast from the BBC, a blog for bizarre and interesting maps, and a way to overlay historical (and other) maps onto current ones.

Links mentioned:
The End of H-Net
In Our Time
Strange Maps
MapMixer

Running time: 51:59
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Episode 12 – Productivity and Connectivity

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 15:51:24 +0000

We begin the news roundup this week with a bit of embarrassing news from Dan, then dig into several stories about big media companies entering the online learning market and Google Books becoming more useful for scholarship. In our feature segment, Tom and Mills explain how they try to stay productive in a world of constant digital distractions like email and blog feeds. Helpful links this week include a terrific site for teaching through famous trials, a way to customize Google, and a dead simple online to-do list. And we remember 9/11 through our own site, the September 11 Digital Archive.

Running time: 48:34
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Episode 11 – Risky Business? Blogs on Campus, Part II (fixed)

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 00:09:47 +0000

We continue our discussion of blogging, this time with a closer look at the challenges and difficulties of starting and maintaining a blog, attracting and keeping an audience, and making sure it doesn’t get in the way of other academic pursuits. In the news roundup, we compare the iPhone and Facebook platforms, examine two software projects that mine Wikipedia for trustworthiness, and wonder once again if anyone is home in Second Life.

Case Western Finds Few Takers in Second Life
Hackers Make the iPhone Better
WikiScanner
Wikipedia Trust Tool
Firefox Campus Edition
Museum Blogs directory
The Hawaii Nisei Story

Running time: 49:04

[Apologies for the audio quality this week. We were affected by the problems Skype has been having.]

[Update: Further technical difficulties led to a gap in the audio. Apologies again. Please update your versions.]

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Episode 10 – Risky Business? Blogs on Campus, Part I

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:54:17 +0000

Dan, Mills, and Tom celebrate the tenth edition of Digital Campus with part one in a new series on blogs and blogging. In this episode, we take a look back at how we became bloggers, examine questions of subject matter, voice, and style, and debate the risks and rewards of blogging in a scholarly context. We also report on problems posed by the iPhone for wireless network administrators, the subversive role of SMS in China, and ups and downs for humanists in Second Life. Picks of the week include Flock, a “social” web browser, the David Rumsey collection of nearly 16,000 historic maps, and the launch of plain text Google Books.

Episode 09 – Too Much Information

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:58:43 +0000

What are students, researchers, and librarians supposed to do with the tremendous volume of digitized scholarly materials now available to them? We discuss the problem of information overload in this week’s feature segment. The news roundup turns into an iPhone-fest–or is it an iPhone-bashing? Dan tries not to go near an iPhone for fear of an impulse buy, while Tom and Mills debate the true value of Apple’s new gadget. Helpful tips for the week include a site for getting to know “learning 2.0,” a great new blog on museums and technology, and a digital Time Magazine archive.

Links mentioned on the podcast:
Learning 2.0
Electronic Museum
Time Magazine, 1923-2007
Enable dictionary and thesaurus on Google Docs

Running time: 51:07

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Episode 08 – Basic Training

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:48:34 +0000

How can you learn technical skills such as web design, programming, and related methods and technologies for work in the digital humanities? We tackle that difficult question on this week’s show, while also covering the top IT issues that universities face (according to CIOs), transcribing books the new fashioned way, and analog and digital news about Abraham Lincoln.

Links mentioned on the podcast:

Your Archives
The Museum of Underwater Archaeology
Google PageRank: What do we really know about it
Is Computer Science an Outdated Term? from Wired Campus
reCAPTCHA
Lincoln to Halleck from Footnote.com
What Al Wishes Abe Said
Top Ten IT Issues from Educause Review

Running time: 55:09

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Episode 07 – History Appliances

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 30 May 2007 21:36:42 +0000

Bill Turkel joins us on the podcast to discuss his fascinating work on “history appliances,” or the possibility of making history more real by creating physical environments and interfaces that truly immerse us in the past. In the news roundup we ponder whether the opening of Facebook to outside developers means possibly better integration with academic services or merely the end of its pretty interface, applaud Google’s new “universal search” for returning video and other media in addition to text, express skepticism that Google has crushed the market for online term papers, and wonder if a university might soon suffer the same fate as Estonia, which saw its computer networks swamped by “hactivists”–or the Russian government.

Sites mentioned on the podcast:
Digital History Hacks
Dave Lester’s Blog
Seashore
Phixr
Scratch
Place-based Computing

Running time: 45:26

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Episode 06 – Designed to Make You Think

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 16 May 2007 14:03:07 +0000

Web design guru Jeremy Boggs joins Dan, Tom, and Mills to discuss the past, present, and future of designing websites for academia, museums, and libraries. In the news roundup, we cover a number of situations where information and images have shown up at inopportune times and in inopportune places, including the case of the MySpace photo that got a student in hot water, a chart on a blog that caused a copyright furor, and the “liberation” of class-related documents that got some Harvard students in trouble.

Sites mentioned in the podcast:
Molly.com
SimpleBits
mezzoblue
meyerweb
Color Blindness Simulator

20 Usability Tips for Your Blog
Google Earth Overlays of Greensburg, Kansas
Directory of Open Access Journals

Running Time: 50:24

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Episode 05 – Tragedy and Technology

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 02 May 2007 20:54:05 +0000

We take a break from our normal format to spend the entirety of this episode thinking about the role of technology—its great power to forge social bonds and enable a new kind of memorialization, as well as its unfortunate ability to underscore the separation of those who remain outside social circles—in the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech. We discuss the April 16 Archive website and Omeka, the software that runs it, as well as issues related to social networking sites, online gaming, and text messaging.

Running time: 29:28.

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Episode 04 – Welcome to the Social

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 19:16:34 +0000

Can social networking sites like Facebook play a productive role in the humanities? In this episode Dan plays the old fogey, while Tom and Mills talk about how to use these sites in an advantageous way. We also report on recent meetings on the digital humanities and digital museums, and discuss Google’s My Maps and Creative Common’s Learn initiative. And Mills and Dan plot an intervention to get Tom off of Twitter.

Also discussed were iGTD, Scenemaker, and the new digital humanities PBWiki.

Featuring: Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Tom Scheinfeldt.

Running time: 47:57.

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[Editor's note: This podcast was recorded before the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech--thus our normal, jovial tone and failure to mention that horrible day. Our hearts go out to the entire Virginia Tech community, some of whom are now or have been our colleagues at the Center for History and New Media.]

Episode 03 – CI: Cyberinfrastructure

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 19:38:40 +0000

Our third podcast begins with some discussion of April Fools’ pranks, including a great one about Google acquiring the OCLC, and how blogs and the internet can foster hoaxes. This week’s feature takes a look at the hot topic of cyberinfrastructure. We also take a look at Turnitin, and the larger issue of plagiarism. Links for the week include Librivox, Swivel, and the Center’s own research tool Zotero.

Featuring: Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Tom Scheinfeldt

Running time: 55:16

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Episode 02 – The Old and the YouTube

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 21:22:03 +0000

In our second podcast, we revisit the debate over Wikipedia, including hearing from Mills about how Cambodians are using it (and whether you can find a WiFi signal in the jungle of Cambodia). Our feature story explores whether and how YouTube is useful in the classroom. Links for this week include a podcast on Byzantine rulers, the Documentation Center of Cambodia, and a tool for making timelines. And we make a solemn pledge not to discuss Vista for a long time.

Featuring: Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Tom Scheinfeldt

Running time: 43:52

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Episode 01 – Wikipedia: Friend or Foe?

feedback@digitalcampus.tv (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media) — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 21:36:44 +0000

In our inaugural podcast our feature story covers the controversy over whether Wikipedia is a useful or problematic resource for students. In the news roundup, we wonder if the launch of Windows Vista has any significance, ponder the rise of Google Docs as an alternative to Word, and cover recent stories about Blackboard‘s patents and their social bookmarking site, Scholar.com. And at the end of the podcast, we share links to the best wiki software and sites on digital maps and books.

Featuring: Dan Cohen, Mills Kelly, Tom Scheinfeldt

Running time: 40:25

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