Latest activity → Feed

November 2016

Short thought

Tweet important stuff all week and the most engagement is with the onion salad disaster™. Oh well, I'll take it,

Short thought

Decided it would be ultra-healthy to grate an entire raw red onion into my salad for lunch today. Truly foul but I now feel so virtuous.

Short thought

I think the precise words were "how do we even know they're there" but hey. Whatever our editors are doing, it's working.

Short thought

Fantastic Beasts was quite fun. But can't wizards apparate overseas? And why do they need a complex death chamber when they have spells?

Short thought

I mean, yeah, if you carve up the current landmass of the world and give everyone an equal share to begin with then maybe but good luck.

Short thought

But I hate so much talk of blockchain. I've just read of how inscribing property rights in an immutable ledger is a social justice project.

Short thought

Actually thought of a legitimately useful thing to do with blockchain yesterday: distributed citation networks/logging. #firstforeverything

Short thought

There's a "residency model" at @BL_Labs to allow access to material that cannot be shared online for any reason #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

The most important thing is to "learn the story behind a collection"! - @mahendra_mahey #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

The backstory of a collection object determines the challenges of making it open - @mahendra_mahey. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Philosophical background to @BL_Labs was interdisciplinary digital humanities says @mahendra_mahey #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

The point of @BL_Labs is to get people to DO THINGS with the British Library's digital collections says @mahendra_mahey #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Giving cataloguers guidance on what granular information they store can help determine copyright status notes Horricks. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

"Await claim" items, says Horricks, was a way to mark completely unknown material as open to claim. Bit risky. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Differentiating between real and theoretical risks in digitisation projects was key, says Horricks. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Diverse types of rightsholders says @fredsaunderson: nuns, noise abatement society, oil companies. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

CC BY-NC-ND license chosen by Horricks's team to persuade rightsholders to allow digitisation & generate income for museum #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Identifying where single copyright holder covers multiple works leads to biggest gains, noted Horricks #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Bernard Horricks from Tate now talking about their risk strategy in relation to digitisation #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

.@fredsaunderson asks about challenge of the hoof originality and (c) status of faithful digital reproductions #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Clarity around messaging on licensing is really important, says @fredsaunderson. Users need to know what they can do. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Libraries are there to be *used* says @fredsaunderson. Unclear whether this is happening to full potential in digital space #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

.@fredsaunderson outlines licensing categories at the National Library of Scotland #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Winning over Birkbeck Bloomsbury audience @fredsaunderson shows overlays of historical London maps #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

.@fredsaunderson notes cunning clearance for material using on-site preservation exception. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

.@fredsaunderson notes that it is policy NOT to digitise material for which large-scale copyright clearance is required. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Saunderson notes that digitisation efforts focused on "low-hanging fruit" in copyright terms. Eg Scottish Historical Soc #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

First up is Fredric Saunderson, IP specialist at the National Library of Scotland #bbkculturaldata: some nice BL rivalry to kick us off!

Short thought

. @nd_kane invites us to ask what a postcolonial or feminist search engine might look like. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

.@nd_kane shows (potential hoax) video of apparent guerilla digital scanning of Nefertiti bust. Undoing colonial art theft. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Ah, Kane is @nd_kane on Twitter. Now talking about 3D printing as strange cultural reconstruction. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Kane also points out that is often acts of cultural destruction that lead to creation of digital versions for preservation #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Comes with problem of ingest of crowdsourced material, of course, says @mia_out. Eg official collection management systems. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Data flows both ways, notes @mia_out. Giving away leads to clean data coming back. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Also gives participants a chance to moan about the quality of the data! - @mia_out #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Humanities hackathons bring programmers, cultural experts, and academics together to forge connections - @mia_out #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

. @mia_out talking about crowdsourcing transcriptions but also small fragmented crowd projects; often less invisible #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Later today we have @mahendra_mahey from @BL_Labs to follow on from what @mia_out has started #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Until we have scholars with computational knowledge about structured data, we won't see users of material. - @mia_out #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Only 1-2% of collection digitised notes @mia_out. Huge resource requirement to catalogue. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Challenge for British Library and open cultural data is one of scale. 3 million new items added per year says @mia_out. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Linked open data identifiers help with disambiguation, notes @mia_out. Without, just a series of overlapping strings. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

"Metadata is exciting for a very small percentage of the population. Most of them are probably here today now!" - @mia_out #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Ha! @mia_out notes challenge of translating open cultural data into monetized "innovation"-esque outputs gov desires. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

What we call "data" in cultural space is often less clean than in other spaces. Bad metadata/OCR for example. - @mia_out #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

. @mia_out points out the gap between reality and expectation in dirty open cultural data. Often not a treasure trove. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Good point from Sinker re problems of retaining expertise after grant funding ends. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Sinker: Tate partnered with Khan Academy to bring cultural learning to new audiences. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Sinker: broad notion of an "archive" - personal social media as archive, for instance. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Reminds me that "build it and they will come" is the exception not the rule. You have to build it and do much outreach #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Sinker: had to link up with other national collections/produce videos as part of outreach programme #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Sinker: 99% of Tate Archives and Access material cleared for public use under Creative Commons licenses. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Sinker: huge, complex network of departmental dependencies for the Archives and Access project. #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Sinker: in 2014, 50% of visits to the Tate website were for research. Other 50% were for Kraftwerk tickets? #sorry #badjoke #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

Sinkers describing "Archives & Access" project. Tate has largest collection of British Art in world. How to allow access? #bbkculturaldata

Short thought

First up at #bbkculturaldata is Dr Rebecca Sinker from the Tate on the affordances of technology for learning in art history.

Short thought

Today is #bbkculturaldata! Sold out conference on the challenges and benefits of open cultural data. @VasariCentre @birkbeck_arts

Short thought

Tomorrow I will be at the Open Cultural Data event at Birkbeck that we have organised. We'll be on #bbkculturaldata!

Short thought

In happier news, though, the basics of the draft first OLH charity report have been achieved this morning.

Short thought

My bad days since the stroke have become fewer & further between. Shattered today though, out of the blue. Seems once every six weeks or so.

Short thought

Actually, I'm maligning SWORD. It's eprints's implementation that doesn't follow the spec, returning incorrect response codes.

Short thought

It gets better, though. It has nonetheless created the record and uploaded the file. But doesn't return the new record receipt/address.

Short thought

"Green OA and mandates have failed!" they cry. Uh huh. Downloads from a UK English department IR. Mandate announced 2014.

Short thought

Managed to put in 2007 so far. It's going to be a long and painful process. Depositing full markdown of all posts along with metadata.

Short thought

Health scare earlier this year made me wonder what would happen to my decade of eclectic blogging if I died. Begun depositing them in IR.

Short thought

Can't remember who first pointed this out to me this week but now I see it everywhere. Maybe @kfitz.

Short thought

Right become v good at adopting the language of the left. If you're racist and called out on it, apparently "victimised". Now "safe spaces".

Short thought

May stop ranting soon. But so annoyed by continued liberal humanist narrative for HE when we don't make our work available to read.

Short thought

Historians: if only people would learn from history. Historians: there are so many issues with letting people read our work for free online.

Short thought

"How did you counter the flood of fake news on the Internet that anyone can read?" / "I published my research in a £20 per article journal"

Short thought

Had a blast at #KUOASymp16 with some great people. Thanks so much to the organisers. Now a long trek back to London via Detroit.

Post

Questions about APC-free models

I'm here at the Kansas University conference on "Envisioning a world beyond Article/Book Processing Charges". One of the first things we were asked to do was a two-minute lightning talk on what we don't yet know about a world beyond APCs. I thought that I would share my questions here, for…

Short thought

Just heard scepticism re scholar-led publishing b/c they are up against giant corporations. But don't UPs face same challenge? #KUOASymp16

Short thought

They even have mitigation of the "reverse network effect" of overload built in through scarcity. #KUOASymp16

Short thought

Wonder whether thinking re "network effect" of ScholComms domination by few entities could be profitable theoretical direction. #KUOASymp16

Short thought

Forgetting the microphones are still on & that I have a VERY loud voice, just broadcast my chocolate addiction to the room #KUOASymp16

Short thought

. @AprilHathcock put this SO well. OA & APCs are the problem/fault of the Global North. We have the problem that needs fixing #KUOASymp16

Short thought

A question: even if it's at the core of WHY we do OA, should /strategies/ to get OA attempt to fix the social ills of HE? #KUOASymp16

Short thought

With much discussion focusing on success of OA in Global South, question for me is: what's blocking uptake of similar models? #KUOASymp16

Short thought

But the labour to provide, support, preserve, and index those new forms is not abundant. It's tied to scarce economics. #KUOASymp16

Short thought

Because the digital space is abundant we assume utopian new forms are possible and desirable #KUOASymp16

Short thought

Been thinking about Neil's beyond APCs/beyond the PDF conflation. This strikes me as a challenge of the digital #KUOASymp16

Short thought

. @CharlotteRock asks for a longer genealogy of academic publishing. For whom was it built and whom does it privilege? #KUOASymp16

Short thought

Saw /The Man Who Knew Infinity/ on the plane yesterday. Obviously heavily romanticised & far from unproblematic but Ramanujan story is great

Short thought

Something that I'm really looking forward to discussing at #DAHRG this evening: third-party rights clearance and OA for Art History.

Short thought

So far today: submitted two book chapters that I have been writing; inbox zero; PhD supervision; OLH finance work. Later talk on OA & OLH :)

Short thought

Quote a while back... Something like "article w/out data is just marketing". Can anyone point me to source? @McDawg @mbeisen @Protohedgehog

Short thought

Been building back up very slowly from virtually nothing (being able to walk for 3 mins) to this over 8 months. Feel good though.

Short thought

Stroke recovery has gone v. well. Now up to 50 mins either step climbing (60 SPM) or 50 mins stationary biking (interval) 3x per week.

Short thought

I'll be giving the Digital Art History Group Keynote at the Courtauld Institute on Monday. Hope to see some of you there. #DAHRG

Short thought

I know it rarely is -- because: profit -- but if it were, would more clearly focus on the labour in providing publishing services.

Short thought

Someone said something to me this week that made me think, though. What if the final "C" in APC was "cost" not "charge"?

Short thought

Is it that the "Overton window" has shifted so far to the right or that the Overton window doesn't actually exist?

Short thought

Have an amazing money-making plan to place a series of £100 bets against everything I believe and hope for in politics.

Short thought

There's also forthcoming news that I have heard of fee-waivers and scholarships for asylum seekers at Birkbeck. This is such great news.

Short thought

It's actually painful, particularly sweet things, and totally overwhelming. Very difficult to describe. It's like it just keeps amplifying.

Short thought

One of the weirdest things since my stroke: my taste occasionally feels amplified to a painful degree. Like "brain freeze" on my tongue.

Short thought

I receive several requests per week on this & I simply do not have time to provide detailed instruction beyond what I have already written.

Short thought

Also, with my regrets, my 2012 guide to starting an open-access journal now kindly asks that you please do not email me for help on this.

Short thought

Then spent the afternoon reading the work of two of my brilliant PhD students. A most enjoyable experience.

Short thought

This morning I discovered that there is a whole field on history of accountancy and financial record keeping. Shouldn't have surprised me!

Short thought

The best thing about flying to Gatwick is that you can increase the length of your journey by a third waiting for your bags to arrive.

Short thought

Critique of taxpayer argument for OA from @Stephen_Curry: "but many of our citizens, particularly the wealthier ones, are not taxpayers".

Short thought

A warm introduction for @Stephen_Curry here. Although he doesn't know what was said whereas I have translation!

Short thought

Here at the opening of the 7th Portuguese-Brazilian Open Access conference in Viseu. @Stephen_Curry up next.