Monthly Archives: February 2009

The Fate of Expertise after Wikipedia

Posted on February 21, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Larry Sanger, founder of Citizendium, deliberated in a paper published on Episteme Journal (2009) about the role of experts in Wikipedia. (Thanks to Open Access News) Abstract: 

Wikipedia has challenged traditional notions about the roles of experts in the Internet Age. Section 1 sets up a paradox. Wikipedia is a striking popular success, and yet its success can be attributed to the fact that it is wide open and bottom-up. How can such a successful knowledge project disdain expertise? Section 2 discusses the thesis that if Wikipedia could be shown by an excellent survey of experts to be fantastically reliable, then experts would not need to be granted positions of special authority. But, among other problems, this thesis is self-stultifying. Section 3 explores a couple ways in which egalitarian online communities might challenge the occupational roles or the epistemic leadership roles of experts. There is little support for the notion that the distinctive occupations that require expertise are being undermined. It is also implausible that Wikipedia and its like might take over the epistemic leadership roles of experts. Section 4 argues that a main reason that Wikipedia’s articles are as good as they are is that they are edited by knowledgeable people to whom deference is paid, although voluntarily. But some Wikipedia articles suffer because so many aggressive people drive off people more knowledgeable than they are; so there is no reason to think that Wikipedia’s articles will continually improve. Moreover, Wikipedia’s commitment to anonymity further drives off good contributors. Generally, some decisionmaking role for experts is not just consistent with online knowledge communities being open and bottom-up, it is recommended as well.

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Open Policy Forum

Posted on February 19, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Education Support Program of the Open Society Institute just launched the Open Policy Forum and call for contributions. Find more details bellow and in the Initiative Site.

“Open Policy Forum – Discussion Forum on Open Education Resources.

The purpose of the Open Policy Forum project is to provide platform for ongoing interactive discussions on the policy implications of ICT in general education in countries across the world. The Open Policy Forum will provide space for discussing and explaining different opinions on such key issues as the use of open source software and provisions of open source educational materials. The discussions could also serve as basis for developing new ideas and proposals.

The Open Policy Forum, similarly to the Cape Town Declaration, currently focuses on the critical role of Open Educational Resources to improve education access and quality.

Every month we open discussions on two new topics in English and one topic in Slovak. For each topic we ask a few experts to provide their initial opinions and start a discussion. If you are interested to become an expert, please contact us.

We would like to know your opinions on the use of open source software in education, on the methods and aspects of using open source educational materials in schools and all other issues concerning the huge and growing field of open source educational resources.”

The discussions started in January, 2009 on two main topics:

(1) Open source and global revolution in teaching and learning – We might be entering a whole new era where also pedagogy will take a new shape – students and teachers will be creating, shaping and evolving knowledge together, learning and gaining experience, skills and understanding as they go. Is this really a reason for radical change? Can it be called a revolution?

(2) Benefits of open education – for students, teachers, administrators, governments – A new world is being created, where everybody can access and contribute to the human knowledge. How exactly is this going to benefit teachers, students, administrators and governments?

Are we ready for 21st century teaching and learning? You can share your thoughts with them here.

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CC Licensing Your Dissertations

Posted on February 19, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Ian Elwood, via The Daily California, noted the commendable precedent set by two UC Berkeley students who CC licensed their PhD dissertation (Thanks to Creative Commons) Excerpt:

This license opens up many possibilities in the academic world such as free online course readers, zero cost educational multimedia, gratis online tutorials-even the price of paper textbooks could be drastically reduced. Perhaps more important than cost, however, by using Creative Commons you are essentially “paying it forward” by sharing your intellectual output with the academic community because future generations of scholars will have greater access to your work.

Two recent Berkeley students to file their dissertations using a Creative Commons license are Joseph Lorenzo Hall and danah boyd. Hall navigated through much bureaucratic red tape, but found that most of his difficulty came from simple formatting issues, not any ideological disagreement by the university. Another School of Information graduate, danah boyd, also filed her dissertation under Creative Commons shortly thereafter.

On Jan. 28, the Dean of the Graduate Division committed to make Creative Commons licensing available to future students. All students interested in contributing to the effort to make education more affordable and accessible should consider using Creative Commons instead of traditional copyright.

Participating in this movement is as simple as making two modifications to a dissertation or thesis. First, the author writes, “Some Rights Reserved” instead of “All Rights Reserved” on the copyright page. Second, they include the full legal text of a Creative Commons license in an appendix.

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A survey on how scholars use Wikipedia

Posted on February 19, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Wikimedia Foundation is undertaking a survey of Wikipedia use among the scholarly community.  (Thanks to Open Access News). Here is the survey cite:

Welcome to the first survey about professional usage and opinions of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, within the scholarly community. The goal of this survey is to increase understanding of the use and opinions about Wikipedia among this group. Completing this survey will only take 3 minutes of your valuable time. The results will be used to inform possible future decisions about new ways to enhance Wikipedia to make it more valuable to scholarship.

This survey will be open until February 26 midnight PST.

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Stimulus Package Funds Libraries as Economy Boosters

Posted on February 19, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The American Library Association emphasized that the $787-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act signed by President Obama comprises several economic-stimulus provisions that promote libraries (Thanks to ResourceShelf). Excerpt:

  • $7.2 billion to increase broadband access and usage in unserved and underserved areas of the nation, including $200 million in competitive grants for expanding public-computer capacity at public libraries and community colleges. This includes $650 million for DTV, $90 million of which may be used by organizations, including libraries, for education and outreach to vulnerable populations;
  • $53.6 billion for the State Fiscal Stabilization Fund, including $39.5 billion to local school districts using existing funding formulas; among the permissible uses is school modernization, which could benefit school libraries; $5 billion to states as bonus grants for meeting key performance measures in education; and $8.8 billion to states for high-priority needs such as public safety and other critical services, which may include public libraries and the modernization, renovation, and repairs of the facilities of public schools and institutions of higher education;
  • An additional $120 million for the Senior Community Service Program to provide community service jobs at nonprofit and public facilities, including libraries, to 24,000 older Americans;
  • An additional $130 million for the Rural Community Facilities Program to provide loans and grants for rural community facilities, including libraries.

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European Commission Allocates 25 Million Euros for Digital Libraries

Posted on February 19, 2009 by | Leave a comment

The European Commission CIP-ICT Policy Support Programme has earmarked 25 million euros for digital libraries in 2009. (Thanks to DigitalKoans) Excerpt:

A budget of 25 million euros is allocated to digital libraries in the 2009 call. The main goals of this call are contributing to Europeana (the European digital library) and maximizing the impact of European research results. The specific objectives are:

  • Developing services to improve the usability of Europeana
  • Aggregating content for Europeana
  • Digitising content for Europeana
  • Open access to scientific information
  • Use of heritage content for education

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Collaborative Online Medical Encyclopedia Goes Live

Posted on February 18, 2009 by | Leave a comment

David Shieh, via Chronicle: Wired Campus, highlighted the launching of Medpedia, a new collaborative online medical encyclopedia.

Medpedia, a new online medical encyclopedia relying on user-generated content from anyone with an M.D. or a Ph.D. in a biomedical field, officially became available today. The venture, which has the backing of numerous leading medical schools, was explored in an earlier Chronicle article that takes a detailed look at issues for contributors and users of the site.

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Boston University Council Approves Open Access Plan

Posted on February 18, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Boston University embraces open access to academic scholarship and research, reported Art Jahnke and Jessica Ullian, via BU Today.

Boston University took a giant step towards greater access to academic scholarship and research on February 11, when the University Council voted to support an open access system that would make scholarly work of the faculty and staff available online to anyone, for free, as long as the authors are credited and the scholarship is not used for profit.

“We believe this is the first time that a university as a whole has taken a stand on behalf of the university as opposed to a single school or college,” says Wendy Mariner, the chair of the Faculty Council and a professor at the School of Law, at the School of Public Health, and at the School of Medicine. “We are looking forward to new forms of publication in the 21st century that will transform the ways that knowledge and information are shared.”

“The resolution passed by our University Council is a very important statement on the importance of open access to the results of scholarship and research created within the University,” says BU President Robert A. Brown. “The digital archive called for in the resolution will become a great repository for the creativity of our faculty and students.”

The council vote has approved an initiative to establish an archive of the research and scholarship produced by the faculty of the University. Mariner says that one goal is to make it easier for faculty to be able to share their own research with students and colleagues.

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Over two centuries of British Periodicals now online

Posted on February 18, 2009 by | Leave a comment

Over 500 British Periodicals are now accessible online free of charge, announced JISC. Excerpt:

Over 500 British Periodicals – representing over 250 years of content – are now available free of charge to UK colleges, universities and research councils courtesy of a new agreement between JISC Collections and ProQuest.

This rich online resource features British journals from the 1680s through the Victorian ‘age of periodicals’ to the 1930s, with six million keyword-searchable pages covering the arts, the built environment, humanities and the social sciences.

A wide array of different types of periodical are represented, from magisterial quarterlies and scholarly and professional organs through to coterie art periodicals, penny weeklies and illustrated family magazines. These are all now accessible as part of JISC Collections’ UK National Academic Archive.

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Facebook faces furor over content rights

Posted on February 18, 2009 by | 1 Comment

Caroline McCarthy, via CNET, posted a story about the public hysteria over Facebook’s recent revision in policy about content rights. Snippet:

… the brouhaha arose on Sunday over a revision in the wording of Facebook‘s policy over what happens to profile content–shared items, blog post-like “notes,” photos–when members delete their accounts.Consumer advocacy blog The Consumerist phrased Facebook’s fresh policy as “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever,” pointing out that Facebook’s ToS spruce-up removed several sentences in which the company said its licenses on user content expired upon account deletion.

And that’s where the hysteria began.

“Facebook should now be called The Information Blackhole,” one Consumerist commenter proclaimed. “What goes in never comes out. Be careful what you huck in there.”

Truth be told, most Facebook users won’t give a hoot, the same way that the flurry over the Beacon advertising program in late 2007 was fueled by a few vocal privacy advocates while the general population didn’t seem to care about it one way or the other.

But for advocates of copyright reform and privacy, not to mention photographers and writers who may want the photos they upload or “notes” they write on Facebook to eventually lead to some kind of profit, the news was alarming.

Some prominent Twitterers and bloggers, like New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, announced that they were deleting their Facebook accounts or pulling all uploaded content.

So Facebook issued somewhat of a clarification on Monday to explain what the change really meant.

“We are not claiming and have never claimed ownership of material that users upload,” a statement from Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt read. And indeed, Facebook’s terms of service do say that “User Content and Applications/Connect Sites” are exempt from its claims on content ownership.

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