The landscape of scholarship has changed dramatically with the rise of digital technologies, yet we train scholars as if it's 1983. We, must begin to reimagine scholarly communication for the public good in the digital era. If academe can find a way to be digitally engaged and more fluent in the digital lexicon of the 21st century in which we find ourselves,
then, there is hope I believe for scholars to be a force for social good -- that is, an engaged citizenry & a more democratic, equal and just society.
So.... We have a real, pressing need for social justice, almost no matter where you look…
We have dramatically increasing economic inequality – that has all sorts of disastrous societal effects, including shortening people’s lives and ruining health….
Source: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/charts-of-the-day-where-d-all-the-income-growth-go-to-the-1-percent
A significant problem with guns….and misogyny, which turns out to be a deadly combination.
Source: http://www.policymic.com/articles/89909/father-of-ucsb-shooting-victim-has-a-message-for-the-nra-that-everyone-needs-to-hear
LGBT teens are 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide and 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression compared with their peers.
Image source: http://www.thetrevorproject.org/pages/facts-about-suicide
LGBT teens are 8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide and 5.9 times more likely to report high levels of depression compared with their peers.
Image source: http://www.thetrevorproject.org/pages/facts-about-suicide
I want to draw a parallel... use language that they use in journalism to describe the kinds of changes they are dealing with...and apply it to academia. In journalism, they talk of “legacy” news organizations -- such as The Philadelphia Inquirer (now defunct) ~ which was based on print publication and newsstand purchase or home delivery option for economic viabililty. “Legacy” journalism.
We have our own “legacy” model of academia with distinct characteristics...
(Describe...then) I would argue that this is mostly going away, but in piecemeal fashion.
What did this look like?
This was the only option for publishing.
NYPL
Image from here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyefruit/792178/
We typed words & paragraphs on paper.
Image from here: http://www.toledoblade.com/Opinion/2006/08/15/As-changes-in-technology-speed-up-what-will-workplace-of-2056-be-like.html
That technology had some problems.
Image from here: http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6237/6209984672_61af9b2c7f.jpg
This was “cut and paste.”
Image from here: http://cms.colum.edu/demo/Backstory-1983.jpg
This is where we would go to find & read information.
NYPL Rose Reading Room
Image from here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebeuselinck/122394082/
Lovely, but mostly gone now.
Card Catalog
Image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/prettydaisies/869135605/
danah boyd, Adrian Chen
More about the event in the NY Observer: http://betabeat.com/2013/03/theorizing-the-web-adrian-chen-danah-boyd-david-lyon-reddit-free-speech/
Image source: https://picasaweb.google.com/111664843315056907652/TtW13FridayMarch1st
Hybrid scholars = those who are trained in traditional academic scholarship, as well as in digital methods, journalism, activism.
Such “hybrid scholars” require “hybrid training.”
Another initiative within JP365 is the open, online course....
My favorite session...”What is the future of public housing?” with longtime NYCHA housing advocate, Ethel Velez.
We made sure that all the videos, the real-time livestream as well as the edited, archived videos were open to anyone that wanted to view them (without registration).
Likewise, we wanted to make *all* of the readings available to anyone that wanted to read them - even if they didn’t have a CUNY login and even if they weren’t registered for the course on our site.
This sort of commitment to “openness” is one of the major distinctions between our efforts and the large, corporate MOOCs, which among other short-comings, are not very “open.”
Making *all* these readings truly “open” turned out to be an enormous amount of work.
Doing this work was led by our gracious, heroic, rock star librarians: Polly Thistlethwaite + Shawnta Smith.
Incredibly proud of the collaborative effort to make this course truly OPEN.
Taken together, the various elements of the JP365 project seek to reimagine scholarly communication in the digital era for the public good, and this is, fundamentally, how I see public sociology.
It might be useful to think about the way scholarship is changing in the digital era - as a shift from 20th c. models of creating “knowledge products” - to 21st century model of creating “knowledge streams.” With products - you count their impact once - with “knowledge streams” – you can also count various aspects of distribution - such as number of downloads, unique visitors to your blog, number of Twitter followers - which can have a much wider impact.