Dell Hymes Remembered in NYT
At last, a New York Times obituary for Dell Hymes has appeared. Find it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/us/23hymes.html?_r=1
Posts from the ‘For the Record’ Category
Nov 23
Mayer Kirshenblatt (1916-2009)
I just learned that Mayer Kirshenblatt, a remarkable human being and the father of folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has passed away. If you have not seen it yet, I strongly recommend their jointly composed book They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust (University of California Press, 2007). The paintings and stories gathered therein (and in the companion exhibition) are simply amazing. (The book was reviewed in Museum Anthropology Review here.)
My condolences go to Barbara and to everyone whose life Mr. Kirshenblatt touched. His memory, and his memories, will live forever.
Karl Kroeber (1926–2009)
In the Native American communities in which I live off and on, it is a common observation that deaths–always deeply felt–often seem to occur in groups or clusters. This pattern seems characterized by my discovery just now that Karl Kroeber, another leading student of Native American verbal art, has just passed away. Professor Kroeber long taught at Columbia University, where his father, A. L. Kroeber, earned his doctorate in anthropology under Franz Boas. His sister, author Ursula K. Le Guin, is well known to many. His son Paul pursues his own studies of American Indian linguistics here at Indiana University, where he and I are both affiliated with the American Indian Studies Research Institute.
Karl Kroeber’s linked the Americanist tradition of Native American verbal art studies (in folklore, ethnopoetics, field linguistics, etc.) to the wider field of literature studies. Representative works include Artistry in Native American Myths (University of Nebraska Press, 1998) and Traditional Literatures of the American Indian: Texts and Interpretations (University of Nebraska Press, 1981). Like his mother Theodora, he (with his brother Clifton Kroeber) sought to make sense of the story of Ishi, with whom his family’s life entwined. (See: Ishi in Three Centuries, with Clifton Kroeber. University of Nebraska Press, 2003.)
Condolences go to the whole Kroeber family.
Google Books Meets Stith Thompson
Craig Fehrman has published an essay in Nuvo: Indy’s Alternative Voice that looks at the state of the Google Books project through the lens of the Indiana University Library’s wonderful and legendary Folklore Collection. (Much of) the Folklore Collection has been digitized in partnership with the Google Book project. Its greatness as a collection stems from the efforts of long-serving Distinguished Service Professor Stith Thompson (1885-1976), the founder of what is today the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. Fehrman uses the story to make a case for copyright reform and is particularly disturbed by the way that vernacular culture becomes enclosed through publication.
Henry Glassie Named Haskins Prize Lecturer
Great news for my Department in the form of a ACLS press release circulated today.
Henry Glassie, College Professor Emeritus of Folklore at Indiana University, Bloomington, will deliver the 29th Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture at the 2011 ACLS Annual Meeting in Washington D.C.
Named for the first chairman of ACLS (1920-26), the Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture series, entitled “A Life of Learning,” celebrates scholarly careers of distinctive importance. The lectures are published in the ACLS Occasional Paper series. The list of previous lecturers includes John Hope Franklin, Gerda Lerner, Helen Vendler, Peter Brown, Clifford Geertz, and William Labov. Historian of science Nancy Siraisi will deliver the 2010 Haskins Prize Lecture at the ACLS Annual Meeting on May 7th in Philadelphia. Read more
Nov 4
Awesome, Wonderful News from Utah State University Press!
I am a folklorist and Utah State University Press has long been an important scholarly publisher in this field. I am also a scholarly communications activist who is committed to the view that research libraries will play an expanding and crucial role in building a better and more open scholarly communications system. For me, this news is the best imaginable outcome for Utah State University Press. Congratulations to everyone involved. My willingness to help the press succeed has gone from a diffuse and general interest to a focused and specific commitment. I am totally enthused. I learned this news at the 2009 AFS meetings last week and thrilled to see yesterday’s announcement. Yea! Here is the press release:
UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS MERGES WITH MERRILL-CAZIER LIBRARY
LOGAN — Joining a growing national trend, Utah State University Press will merge with the administrative structure of Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University. The transition has begun, with the arrangement officially taking effect at the start of fiscal year 2010-11.
The move was recently approved by USU’s Executive Vice President and Provost Raymond T. Coward, following a proposal from Richard Clement, dean of USU Libraries, and Michael Spooner, director of USU Press.
The merger of a scholarly press with a university library has been used at other institutions to innovatively address a number of trends in scholarly publication, Clement and Spooner said.
Digital publishing, for example, will play an important part in the future of scholarly publication, and university libraries and presses are both deeply interested in its potential for transforming the way research is distributed.
“Many university presses are moving toward open access, often under the administration of the library,” Clement said. “The most conspicuous example in the recent past is the University of Michigan Press which moved into the library and is now focusing on OA and other forms of digital publication. We propose to move the USU Press along the same path.”
In its simplest definition, open access publishing (OA) provides access to material via the Internet that is free for all users to read and use.
“Among universities with presses, there is an emerging trend in this direction, and Utah State University Press now joins the first dozen or so university presses to pursue this relationship,” Spooner said.
While the decision to move USU Press to Merrill-Cazier Library was not completely budget-driven, it will result in significant savings, Clement said. With a larger staff in place, the library will assume a number of support activities for the press, including accounting, IT support, graphic design and public relations.
“We are truly integrating USU Press into the library family of programs,” Clement said. “We will be able to do some exciting things together.”
Both Clement and Spooner see the move as positive, creating a synergy where the sum of the two units coming together is greater than the individual parts.
USU Press will adopt a new publication model, with open access as a central component and will move toward increased digital delivery of books. The library’s position will be enhanced as well, as academic libraries nationally take on a stronger role in the evolution of scholarly publishing.
“This move directly serves the needs of the university,” Clement said. “Open access allows us to go back to where university presses began — to publish work by all faculty in every discipline.”
At the same time, USU Press remains a refereed scholarly press, with the standards of rigorous peer review appropriate to a university publisher.
“This is a work in progress, and we are taking it one step at a time,” Clement said. “Utah State University Press has an established reputation that we want to preserve, yet we see exciting possibilities ahead.”
During the coming months, the staff and physical operation of USU Press will move to Merrill-Cazier Library, with the transition scheduled to be complete by July 1, 2010. “The staff at USU Press looks forward to this move,” said Spooner, who, as director of the press, will become a department head within the library’s administrative structure. “We see this as a significant institutional commitment by USU to provide a secure home for its press, and we look forward to working with our new colleagues there.”
Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009)
Although we never met, I was greatly impacted by the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss. I am very saddened to learn of his passing, but I recall how happy I felt upon his reaching his 100th birthday last November. He was a giant.
Oct 28
The University of Illinois Press Signs Agreement with JSTOR
What follows is a press release circulated today. This is a big deal in that it shows JSTOR continuing to move aggressively into the space occupied by ProjectMUSE. I appreciate the scale work that JSTOR is doing and that it is a not-for-profit effort in support of other not-for-profit efforts, but I am concerned about the ways that JSTOR/ITHAKA represents a growing consolidation of voices and resources. I am not convinced that JSTOR/ITHAKA hegemony is in our collective interests. I certainly think that the ITHAKA-JSTOR merger itself undermined any claim that ITHAKA had been able to make about being a neutral but interested party in scholarly communications research and consulting. This agreement is of special interest to disciplines (like my own) that are represented on the Illinois journal list or journal co-publishing list. One wonders what form the blessing from UI librarians, discussed in the release, took.
The University of Illinois Press signs agreement with JSTOR, joining a new effort to improve access to current scholarship for faculty, students, and librarians.
October 27, 2009 – Champaign, IL and New York, NY –The University of Illinois Press, the not-for-profit publishing division of the University of Illinois, and JSTOR, the preservation archive and research platform that is part of the not-for-profit ITHAKA, announced an agreement today to make leading journals from the Press available worldwide as part of the Current Scholarship Program.
The Current Scholarship Program is a new collaboration initiated by University of California Press and JSTOR and first announced on August 13, 2009. Together, participants in this Program aim to create an improved online work environment for faculty and students by bringing complete journal runs from multiple publishers together in one place, to ease the burden on librarians of negotiating separate license agreements with a multitude of publishers and independent titles, and to promote a more cost-effective publishing environment for the scholarly community.
“For the last several years the University of Illinois Press and JSTOR have worked together through the History Cooperative, building strong ties of respect and trust,” said Willis G. Regier, Director of the University of Illinois Press. “We take this step with the blessings of our colleagues in the University of Illinois Library and with high anticipation for our journals.” Read more
Research Fellowship in Museum Anthropology
The Bard Graduate Center and the American Museum of Natural History announce a Research Fellowship in Museum Anthropology. The fellowship provides support to a postdoctoral investigator to carry out a specific project over a two-year period. The program is designed to advance the training of the participant by having her/him pursue a project in association with a curator in the Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). The Fellow will also be expected to teach one graduate-level course per year at the Bard Graduate Center (BGC). The Fellow will thus be in joint residence at BGC and AMNH, beginning in September 2010 and continuing through June 2012. The fellowship includes free housing.
Read more
Compact for Open-Access Publishing
I was quoted in today’s issue of Inside Higher Education in an article dealing with the Compact for Open-Access Publishing Equity. I offer a bit more of my thinking on this new development at Open Access Anthropology, where Stevan Harnad has already left a comment that can also be found here.
Shreds and Patches 