Jay Gillette

CICS Human Factors Institute Announces 2009-2010 Weblog Awards

The Human Factors Institute of User-Centered Design, Development and Deployment (HFI-UCD3)
is a research enterprise within the Applied Research Institute of the Center for Information and Communication Sciences.

HFI has built a weblog community as part of its Distributed Collaborative Community (DCC) research initiative, founded by alumni Joel Patrick and Charles Tuite when they were masters candidates at the Center.

The cicsworld.org weblog community is the largest and longest-running blog project at Ball State University, and one of the largest academic blog initiatives in information systems education in the United States.

With the input of HFI's Distributed Collaborative Community researchers, this year's weblog awards follow:

Mark Twain's Autobiography now published in scholarly edition: controversy sure to follow

I was delighted to see that the Autobiography of Mark Twain is being published in a carefully edited scholarly series. Here's a writeup from the New York Times of 10 July 2010, "Dead for a Century, Twain Says What He Meant." Then and now, these literary reflections are controversial, sometimes made so deliberately, by Samuel Clemens, the American writer who shielded his identity under the pen name "Mark Twain."

This is another in the scholarly editions of The Mark Twain Papers and Project
of the University of California, Berkeley. I was privileged to work there early in my career and have never forgotten the scholarly quality and intellectual integrity of the people and the project. Some of those people still work at "MTP" in this premier research, writing and publishing enterprise. It is supported by the university, its donors and sponsors, and the United States National Endowment for the Humanities.

Below is an excerpt the New York Times published:

"Deferred Judgment": Stanley Fish on the perceived value of education & misguided educational reforms

Here is an important New York Times column by Stanley Fish on the perceived value of education, and on a Texas initiative to change the value-proposition of higher education: "Deep in the Heart of Texas."

Stanley Fish taught in my department when I was a graduate student. We sometimes found ourselves in disagreement with his methods and his rhetoric, though no one disputed his intellectual abilities and insights. He moved on to Duke and Illinois-Chicago, and now in retirement is a New York Times columnist.

His latest column is right on the mark, as I read it. When it comes to the educational experience of good schools doing good teaching, the students may only realize its value in retrospect.

Note the more “immersive” the educational experience, the less immediate perspective we would expect from the students, as they emerge from it.

This is particularly the case in the cauldron of the Center for Information and Communication Sciences experience, whose intensity is a challenge for the professors as well, in my view.

We are at risk from misguided educational approaches here as are the universities in Texas. What happens in Texas doesn’t stay in Texas.

“What does not destroy me, makes me stronger. " Friedrich Nietzsche quote source

From the New York Times Freakonomics blog today, 27 May 2010, written by DWYER GUNN:

Who said “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”?

This very familiar quotation does not even appear in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. The Yale Book of Quotations sources it as follows:

“What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols “Maxims and Arrows” sec. 8 (1888) (translation by Walter Kaufmann). Popularly rendered as ‘Whatever does not kill me makes me stronger.’”

This is often quoted in different ways. We all get the meaning, and it makes us stronger.

A new point of view: Citizen journalism, Web 2.0, Good & bad blogging & commenting

Quick post on some thoughtful reflections of "citizen journalism" with Web 2.0 implications.

This is also to point to a new weblog to me that I've just encountered, "Monday Note: Media, Tech & Business Models," written by Frédéric Filloux and Jean-Louis Gassée, who have impressive credentials.

Here is Filloux's text on blogging issues:

Liveblogging Intelligent Community Forum conference in New York City (1)

I'm back at the Intelligent Community Forum's annual conference at its base in New York City.

This is where they announce the winner of the Intelligent Community of the Year award. In Network World I have covered this event and the winning communities during the last few years.

I will report on the winning community for 2010, with a dispatch after the conference ends on Friday afternoon, when they announce the winner.

Here is the list of the seven finalist communities; all of them have representatives here in New York for the conference. Top Seven finalists:

Liveblogging Ball State University Copyright Conference: Issues, Hot Topics, Trends in Fair Use (4)

Janice T. Pilch
Associate Professor of Library Administration, Humanities Librarian
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

There is trend: new wave of efforts to establish best practice for fair use ... flexibility and more expansive interpretation

First wave of guidelines in 1970s - 1980s in connection with 1976 Copyright Act, not with force of law; Guidelines from U.S. Copyright Office, plus Kastenmeier Guidelines (1981), and ALA Model Policy (1982). Plus many more.
Such as CONTU (1970s); National Commission on New Technological Uses of Copyrighted Works, finished in 1979, especially for Inter-Library Loan (ILL) use. Then CONFU (1994-1998), Conference on Fair Use; voluntary adoption by some institutions, like Ball State University in a re-edited and summarized version. Focused on quantitative guidelines. Example: 10 percent or 3 minutes of media.

Prof Pilch approach: "From guidelines to best practices"

Liveblogging Ball State University Copyright Conference: Issues of Fair Use (3)

Dwayne Butler, J.D., (Endowed Chair for Scholarly Communication, University of Louisville)
on Fair Use Topics for Colleges and Universities.

Note on Statute of Anne--transferred copyright from booksellers to authors.

His approach now is on distribution--this is the new issue, since distribution of information is being revolutionized.

DB--today is 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death, 21 April 1910. Mark Twain was involved in copyright and testified before Congress on it, and was most concerned with rights of authors.

Speaks of "bipolar" nature of copyright issues today, as in UCLA and streaming videos cases from early 2010.

Here are some basic questions:

Liveblogging Ball State University Copyright Conference: Copyright Basics (2)

Michele Cooper, Esq. is giving a talk on Copyright Basics

The rights of authors are better than ever; you don't need to put up notices and so on as in previous eras. However, notice, like the copyright symbol, give you advantages if there is conflict over your rights.

Two key things that make a work copyrightable:

-- Original works of authorship
-- Fixed in a tangible medium of expression

This is what keeps you from copyrighting ideas, for example--they aren't fixed in a tangible medium of expression.
There are a number of things NOT copyrightable:

Liveblogging Ball State University Copyright Conference: Introduction to the Conference (1)

At Ball State University Alumni Center, for the annual copyright conference, chaired by Dr. Fritz Dolak
and the BSU University Libraries organization, led by Dean Arthur Hafner.
There are about 115 people registered for the conference, mostly from the midwest, Missouri to Ohio.

Stuart Brotman is here, as Visiting Distinguished Professor. He opens the conference
and says this is the 300th anniversary, this month, of the Statute of Anne
This was the original copyright act, from which the rest descend.
Here is some information from the wiki site linked above: