All posts by Adam

Did you Know?

CIA following Twitter, Facebook

Beware the ‘vengeful librarians’ [which is pretty much an oxymoron, if you ask me]

In an anonymous industrial park in Virginia, in an unassuming brick building, the CIA is following tweets — up to 5 million a day.

At the agency’s Open Source Center, a team known affectionately as the “vengeful librarians” also pores over Facebook, newspapers, TV news channels, local radio stations, Internet chat rooms — anything overseas that anyone can access and contribute to openly.

via AP Exclusive: CIA following Twitter, Facebook – Yahoo! News.

Did you Know?

“It’s Time to Stop Talking About Copyright” – Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow says

I inaugurated this column in 2008 with an editorial called ‘‘Why I Copyfight’’, which talked about the tricky balance between creativity, culture, and the relationship between audiences and creators. These have always been hard subjects, and the Internet has made them harder still, because the thing that triggers copyright rules – copying – is an intrinsic part of the functioning of the Internet and computers. There’s really no such thing as ‘‘loading’’ a web-page – you make a copy of it. There’s really no such thing as ‘‘reading’’ a file off a hard-drive – you copy it into memory.

…

But a funny thing happened on the way to the 21st century: copyright policy ceased to exist. Because every copyright policy that we make has a seismic effect on the Internet, and because you can’t regulate copying without regulating the Internet.

via Locus & Cory Doctorow.

Did you Know?, General

2011 Man Asian Literary Prize longlist

 

 

In a press release, the organizers called the list “the most diverse to be announced in its five year history, showcasing a panoply of tales from right across Asia.”

Here’s the full list:

• JAMIL AHMAD, Pakistan – The Wandering Falcon (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
• TAHMIMA ANAM, Bangladesh – The Good Muslim (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
• JAHNAVI BARUA, India – Rebirth (Penguin India/Penguin Books)
• RAHUL BHATTACHARYA, India – The Sly Company of People Who Care (Pan Macmillan/Picador)
• MAHMOUD DOWLATABADI, Iran – The Colonel (US: Melville House, UK: Haus Publishing)
• AMITAV GHOSH, India – River of Smoke (John Murray/Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)
• HARUKI MURAKAMI, Japan -1Q84 (Harvill Secker)
• ANURADHA ROY, India- The Folded Earth (Quercus/Maclehose Press/Hacehette India)
• KYUNG-SOOK SHIN, South Korea – Please Look After Mom (Alfred A. Knopf)
• TARUN J TEJPAL, India – The Valley of Masks (HarperCollins India/4th Estate)
• YAN LIANKE, China – Dream of Ding Village (Grove Atlantic)
• BANANA YOSHIMOTO, Japan – The Lake (Melville House)

“What this longlist shows is that if we are looking for books of the epic scale and stature of the great European nineteenth century novels, we must turn to Asia,” David Parker, chair of the directors of the prize. He says the nominees “have a scale and ambition we don’t often see in Western writing these days. Could it be that as the world’s economic centre of gravity is moving eastwards, so too is its artistic energy and ambition?”

via Melville House Books

Did you Know?, General

Citation Obsession? Get Over It! [The Chronicle of Higher Education]

 

My university recently convened an emergency “summit” for librarians, tutors, and concerned faculty members to solve a citation crisis. Our library help desks reportedly cannot complete their core mission of assisting students with information literacy (finding, choosing, and using sources) because students keep pestering them with questions about how to format obscure citations: “I’m analyzing poetry for my ‘Punk Literature’ seminar. Using MLA style, how do I cite a limerick scribbled in the third-floor toilet?”

Meanwhile, the writing center stinks of fear as students struggle to decipher APA, MLA, AP, and Chicago (or is it Turabian?) documentation styles, which seem as alien and absurd to them as using a typewriter. Academic departments and even whole colleges consistently beg the library and writing center for workshops to rehabilitate their worst citation transgressors. Bibliographic citation has apparently eclipsed perfect grammar and the five-paragraph theme as the preoccupation of persnickety professors.

What a colossal waste. Citation style remains the most arbitrary, formulaic, and prescriptive element of academic writing taught in American high schools and colleges. Now a sacred academic shibboleth, citation persists despite the incredibly high cost-benefit ratio of trying to teach students something they (and we should also) recognize as relatively useless to them as developing writers.

Agree or disagree?

via Citation Obsession? Get Over It! [The Chronicle of Higher Education].

Did you Know?

A National Digital Public Library Begins to Take Shape…

 

The Digital Public Library of America doesn’t exist yet, but it’s closer to becoming a reality.

At an energized meeting held here at the National Archives on Friday, representatives from top cultural institutions and public and research libraries expressed robust support for the proposed library, which would create a portal to allow the public to get easy online access to collections held at many different institutions.

Two foundations said they would together give $5-million in grant money to help get it up and running by April 2013. A major European digital library announced it will work with its planned American counterpart to make their technical structures compatible. And nine technology teams showcased online frameworks they built for a “beta sprint” contest to develop ideas for the technical framework the library will require.

But organizers and observers made it clear that there’s still a long way to go before the digital public library goes online, and that its final shape—and just how public it will really be—remain up in the air.

via The Chronicle of Higher Education.