For anyone interested, my pictures of the UNC SILS graduation are up now.
We’ll return to our regularly scheduled updates and musings shortly.
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Category: Personal
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Congratulations!
To all the 2004 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science Master’s Degree recipients!
I look forward to seeing tons of you over the summer, and many more over the course of the next bunch o’ years at conferences and such.
Thanks to everyone who helped me get this far (you all know who you are).
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File in the “Free Country?” category….
Miramax, a film company owned by the Walt Disney Corporation and home to such diverse films as Kill Bill and Shakespeare in Love has pulled the distribution of Michael Moore’s latest film Farenheit 9/11.
Why? Because they “expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush’s brother, Jeb, is governor” according to the story via the NYT.
Wow…this is wrong on so many levels that I can’t even begin to list them. Isn’t there something that should protect this speech from political retaliation of this sort? A company, based in a state, fears retaliation from the governor because the film that said company is producing is critical of his brother, who happens to be the president of the US.
Wow.
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The beauty of Sewanee
….sold our house! I guess technically we’re under contract, closing July 23rd. Nearly perfect, since it means that we can move our stuff, and not be homeless while doing it. Very exciting stuff!
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House hunting in Sewanee
Well…yesterday was spent looking at houses around out new school, The University of the South (aka, Sewanee) and boy, did we see some stuff. The pic above is from a freaking amazing house, with the best location I’ve ever seen. Too bad the interior is shite. Take a look at the gallery to see more shots of our travels in home searching.
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You mean I’ve got more papers?
Since the master’s paper furor has died down, my drive to get stuff done has just gone through the floor. Finishing the paper, then having such a great response to it…..then realizing that I’ve got like 3 more papers to finish before the 25th…really quite the stab in the face with a sharp stick.
But we’re nearing graduation, so gotta get the stuff done and turned in. Does anyone out there have any drive left at all?
And speaking of graduation…is everyone attending? I wanna see everyone I can there! Come on, people, show just for the silly gowns and hats!
Thanks for the attention, and I hope you enjoy the Perils of Strong Copyright. I’m somewhere over 1500 hits since this time last week, so I thought maybe people felt funny about jumping in in the middle of the original posts below.
If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear it. I thought it would be easier for people just reading it to leave comments here, rather than getting buried in last weeks dialogue. So feel free to let me know what you think….good or bad. Both will help when I try to work this into an article for publication in some (open access) journal.
In reply to Commons-blog and Rick Emrich’s thoughtful response to “Perils of Strong Copyright” I’d like to address just a couple of points.
First: I fully agree with his statement that further research would be helpful in supporting my case. Had I more time to devote fully to the paper, and had I chosen a different research strategy, I could have developed a much stronger case than currently laid out in Perils. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with “research base is insufficient to deal with the range of issues he addresses.” The range of issues is broad, but the central issue is very simple, and very clear.
The ALA seems to be saying one thing, and doing something very different.
I think that the evidence submitted shows this.
I kept asking myself during the planning portion of the paper, and then through the research and into the writeup: “How far should I go in gathering information?” I made a conscious effort to rely on publically available information that the ALA provides, and NOT to contact members of the publishing industry. The statements that the ALA has made in regards to Open Access publications were public statements. Why is giving the copyright information the same level of focus a negative? I would expect there to be some measure of agreement between the information available to authors on the websites noted in Perils and the Open Access statements that the ALA has made. I found little to none of this agreement in the publically available information. That is what interested me initially, and thus what I focused on.
I was very surprised at the speed with which Perils was distributed. I was expecting to show it to a few people, gain some feedback, and revise it into something new. However, I am very proud of the fact that the vast majority of the feedback has been and continues to be positive. I am extraordinarily pleased that people are discussing this topic, and hope to play a role in these discussions.
In a reply on Commons blog, Eli Edwards suggests “a virtual symposium/defense of the paper for people to share opinions and ideas” on the topic. I hope that this happens, and I hope that the discussion continues long after the week or so that this stays on the radar. I would be happy to take part in something of this sort, if anyone out there is interested.
- Total unique hits on blog since posting master’s paper =
880980110013001500+ - Places paper has been mentioned:
This is all in addition to the feedback I’ve gotten from the UK, Canada, and various schools here in the US. To make things REALLY interesting, Eli, of “Confessions of a Mad Librarian” above, gave a copy of the paper to Michael Gorman when he spoke at Stanford San Jose State yesterday. Needless to say, I’m interested to see what that brings.