Presentation slides from Depository Library Council
I had a great time at last week's Fall 2008 Depository Library Council in Washington, D.C. (well actually Arlington, VA). Rebecca Blakeley and I had a good time live blogging DLC with a nice little free Web app called CoverItLive. It's awesome the GPO posted the proceedings and slides on fdlp.gov! I also started a space to upload presentation slides on slideshare, and have so far gotten 8 presenters to post their slides there. Slideshare is a public repository of presentations, so having everyone's slides up there would be a good way for the public to find them. DLC presentations on slideshare have been viewed from 35 to 227 times already, so if you were a presenter, I hope you'll consider uploading your slides to the dlcfall08 event. That is all. (I admit, I coopted that from John Hodgman, PC of those PC/Mac ads and guest blogger on boingboing. That's how John ended his posts, and I can only *hope* to be 1/100th as funny as him)
Free E-Book on Copyright
Cory Doctorow, co-editor at boingboing.net, Fellow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and contributor to Wired, Popular Science, the New York Times, etc., has published a book called Content: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future and it's available for download on his website...for free! Cory is an advocate of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licenses for his own books. Here is an excerpt:
Back in 1985, the Senate was ready to clobber the music industry for exposing America’s impressionable youngsters to sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. Today, the Attorney General is proposing to give the RIAA legal tools to attack people who attempt infringement. Through most of America’s history, the U.S. government has been at odds with the entertainment giants, treating them as purveyors of filth. But not anymore: today, the U.S. Trade Rep is using America’s political clout to force Russia to institute police inspections of its CD presses. (Savor the irony: post-Soviet Russia forgoes its hard-won freedom of the press to protect Disney and Universal!) How did entertainment go from trenchcoat pervert to top trade priority? I blame the “Information Economy.” No one really knows what “Information Economy” means, but by the early ’90s, we knew it was coming...Continue reading
Guide of the Week: Immigration
Today's Guide of the Week from the ALA GODORT Handout Exchange comes to us once again from Bert Chapman: Government Documents on Immigration (Bert Chapman, Purdue University, 1999) Last updated 6/18/2008 As Bert points out in his introduction, "Immigration has been and remains an important and controversial issue in U.S. history and contemporary public policy." After pointing helpful subject headings with which to search the Purdue library catalog, he turns to highlighting a number of sources including:
- Administrative Decisions Under Employer Sanctions & Unfair Immigration Related... HSSE DOC J 1.103:
- Immigration: Analysis of the Major Provisions of the REAL ID Act of 2005 (Congressional Research Service)
- Office of Immigration Statistics
- United Nations High Commisioner for Refugees
- New Zealand Immigration Service
Studs Terkel passes
[w:Studs Terkel], one of the greatest American characters of the last 100 years, passed away today. The Chicago Tribune obituary is a moving tribute. John Stewart called Studs the "premier chronicler of American life." He gave voice to working people and he will be missed. I could spend hours listening to his stories and even longer reading his books. Please check them out! We'll miss you Studs!!
Live blogging: Ian Wilson: Digital History: Revolution or Revelation?
This week at University of Illinois has been very profitable. I'm attending a talk by Ian Wilson, Librarian and Archivist of Canada. His talk is entitled "Digital History: Revolution or Revelation?" Let's see what he has to say! Here's the talk announcement.