Public Praxis

Register here for this class. No tuition required.

Public Praxis is an autonomous course offered through the Art School in the Art School (1003 East Fayette Street, Apartment 8, above the Spark Art Space) where we try to build the library of the future. We meet at 1pm (for about 3 hours or so) every Saturday starting Jan 28, 2012. If you’re interested in joining the class (or the work we’re trying to do) sign up here. Or send us an e-mail at backus [dot] meg [curly pig's tail] gmail [dot] com, or thomasgokey [curly pig's tail] gmail [dot] com.

We will post more info (syllabus, schedule, readings etc.) shortly.

For more on the need for a networked, autonomous accreditation system, see our Public School NY course description.

The Roundhouse Journal of Critical Theory and Practice, which is based in the UK, has a special edition dedicated to Re-imagining the University. What I like about the Roundhouse Journal is that they are not just interested in thinking about things, they are interested in actually doing things. They want to take these ideas and close the gap between theory and practice. This issue is being released in the midst of the large tuition battle in the UK, so hopefully some of these ideas won’t just get talked about, they will actually become tools in the fight.

I have an article in this issue called “What Does Recognition look like?” where I propose the creation of an alternative accreditation agency, one that would allow students to study in ways that still “count” without getting buried under decades of crushing debt.

I’m not sure if we will teach “Innovation in Public Libraries” again or not, but if we do one possible way of teaching it might be at the Art School in the Art School, for actual credit that would then be transferred to the iSchool. We would teach exactly the same thing (of course we would try to develop and improve the class). Why should such an education count at the iSchool but not count at the Art School in the Art School? What makes SU different than the AS in the AS? Just two things 1) SU exploits its students and teachers and the AS in the AS does not, and 2) SU is accredited in way that counts whereas right now there is no accrediting agency to ensure quality at schools like the AS in the AS. I want to change that. It’s time to break the monopoly that corporate universities have on the ability to notarize our brains.

The journal was just released and I haven’t gotten a chance to read the other articles yet, but it looks like there is a lot of great stuff in here.

Roundhouse Journal

This has been one of the main themes of our classes and Lauren Meg and I are all very excited that the project might actually happen. Please help us spread the word (tweet it, FaceSpace it, MyPlace it, blog it, etc.) I think this is a potentially revolutionary idea and it would be nice for librarians all over the country to see it and start to see the potential here.

They did a pretty good job on this:

Sign the petition here.

or, Cute Cats of the World Unite

I’ve assigned The Cute Cat Theory of Internet Activism to one of my art classes this semester. It was given as a talk in 2008 about the way that activists use social media and about the way censoring activists leads to the death of many cute lolcats as collateral damage, which thereby leads to greater awareness of what the activists are fighting for.

I was re-reading it so that we could talk about it in class and I wanted to see how the Cute Cat Theory holds up in light of the recent democratic revolutions in north Africa and the Middle East. So how does it hold up? It is just about the smartest take on the Internet I’ve ever seen. What I forgot about was that many of the examples he used were from Tunisia and Egypt. This was back in 2008! The Cute Cat Theory really did predict the future. Far from needing revising, it needs to be held up as the key to the secret of the Internets.

Have a read.

The Librarian in Black’s eBook User’s Bill of Rights is making the rounds. This sounds good to me:

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights is a statement of the basic freedoms that should be granted to all eBook users.

The eBook User’s Bill of Rights

Every eBook user should have the following rights:

* the right to use eBooks under guidelines that favor access over proprietary limitations
* the right to access eBooks on any technological platform, including the hardware and software the user chooses
* the right to annotate, quote passages, print, and share eBook content within the spirit of fair use and copyright
* the right of the first-sale doctrine extended to digital content, allowing the eBook owner the right to retain, archive, share, and re-sell purchased eBooks

I believe in the free market of information and ideas.

I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can flourish when their works are readily available on the widest range of media. I believe that authors, writers, and publishers can thrive when readers are given the maximum amount of freedom to access, annotate, and share with other readers, helping this content find new audiences and markets. I believe that eBook purchasers should enjoy the rights of the first-sale doctrine because eBooks are part of the greater cultural cornerstone of literacy, education, and information access.

Digital Rights Management (DRM), like a tariff, acts as a mechanism to inhibit this free exchange of ideas, literature, and information. Likewise, the current licensing arrangements mean that readers never possess ultimate control over their own personal reading material. These are not acceptable conditions for eBooks.

I am a reader. As a customer, I am entitled to be treated with respect and not as a potential criminal. As a consumer, I am entitled to make my own decisions about the eBooks that I buy or borrow.

I am concerned about the future of access to literature and information in eBooks. I ask readers, authors, publishers, retailers, librarians, software developers, and device manufacturers to support these eBook users’ rights.

These rights are yours. Now it is your turn to take a stand. To help spread the word, copy this entire post, add your own comments, remix it, and distribute it to others. Blog it, Tweet it (#ebookrights), Facebook it, email it, and post it on a telephone pole.

To the extent possible under law, the person who associated CC0 with this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work

This makes me happy to no end to see other librarians in training who are thinking about the same kinds of things that we are trying to do in this class. Hacking, 3D printing, the Public School, these really are the future of public libraries and you’re doing it now.

The Web is our Campus.

This is an invitation to participate in the redefinitions of library school using the web as a collaborative space outside of any specific university or organization. Imagine standards and foundations of the profession that we will create, decided upon by us, outside of the institutional framework. Ideas like the democratization of the semantic web, crowdsourcing, and folksonomies allow projects like this to exist and we should be taking advantage of it. What will the information professions be next year if we define it for ourselves today? If we had a voice in the development of curriculum, what would that degree entail? This is our challenge to you; participate or come up with a better idea. How would you hack library school?

Keep your eyes on these Hack Lib Schoolers, and get involved yourself.

Here is a great game called Spent. I can’t recommend it enough. It is designed to help people understand what it is like to live on a low-income budget and the impossible choices you’re constantly forced to make. You can read more about it at Sociological Images.

Depending on how you play the game you might run into a question about Internet service where you have to make the choice of spending your limited money on an Internet connection, go without the Internet, or get the Internet at your local public library. It then brings up the statistics about how many people rely on public libraries for Internet connection, which is also one of the best ways to find better jobs.

I’ve just played it about five times and I think it is a great idea, a good fund raising idea and a good educational tool. Please give it a try.

In the Guardian:

One challenge facing observers of the uprisings spreading across north Africa and the Middle East is to read them as not so many repetitions of the past but as original experiments that open new political possibilities, relevant well beyond the region, for freedom and democracy…

These Arab revolts ignited around the issue of unemployment, and at their centre have been highly educated youth with frustrated ambitions – a population that has much in common with protesting students in London and Rome. Although the primary demand throughout the Arab world focuses on the end to tyranny and authoritarian governments, behind this single cry stands a series of social demands about work and life not only to end dependency and poverty but to give power and autonomy to an intelligent, highly capable population…

The organisation of the revolts resembles what we have seen for more than a decade in other parts of the world, from Seattle to Buenos Aires and Genoa and Cochabamba, Bolivia: a horizontal network that has no single, central leader. Traditional opposition bodies can participate in this network but cannot direct it. Outside observers have tried to designate a leader for the Egyptian revolts since their inception: maybe it’s Mohamed ElBaradei, maybe Google’s head of marketing, Wael Ghonim. They fear that the Muslim Brotherhood or some other body will take control of events. What they don’t understand is that the multitude is able to organise itself without a centre – that the imposition of a leader or being co-opted by a traditional organisation would undermine its power. The prevalence in the revolts of social network tools, such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, are symptoms, not causes, of this organisational structure. These are the modes of expression of an intelligent population capable of using the instruments at hand to organise autonomously.