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Posts from the ‘open folklore’ Category

Aug 10

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The Program for #AAA2011

Just got access to the preliminary program for the 2011 American Anthropological Association meetings this November in Montreal.

I will be participating in a AAA organized forum called The Future of AAA Publishing: A Forum for Discussion. In this event, I will address issues associated with green open access and the use of institutional (and other kinds of) repositories. This event begins at 1:45 on Friday afternoon.

I will also be part of a panel titled Digital Anthropology: Projects and Projections that has been organized by Kim Fortun. My presentation is Another World Is Possible: Open Folklore As Library-Scholarly Society Partnership. This panel happens first thing on Sunday morning.

I have only begun scouting out the program, but I see a lot of friends are scattered across it. I look forward to figuring out what is what and to attending.

Aug 5

AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus Now Part of @openfolklore

An exciting development in the Open Folklore project is the inclusion of the AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus within the Open Folklore portal. This great advance was announced on the AFS website and at the Open Folklore portal. The ET is a valuable resource for folklore studies, ethnomusicology, cultural anthropology, and other ethnographic disciplines. Thanks to everyone at AFS, LoC, and IU who worked to make this next phase of both projects possible.

Aug 1

New Topics for the Open Folklore Screencast?

Its time to start work on one or more new informational screencasts for the Open Folklore portal site and project. The first (posted below in case you have not seen it) focused on using the search tools at the Open Folklore portal site. What topics would be most useful to the folklore studies community? To students? To interested folks in general? Your feedback is welcome in comments here or via the Open Folklore project email address openfolklore(at)gmail(dot)com.

May 6

Ruth Finnegan’s New Book on Quotations Available in Gratis OA Form

Ruth Finnegan’s book Why Do We Quote? The Culture and History of Quotation has just been published by Open Book Publishers, a not-for-profit, academic run publisher that combines no-cost online access to published works with the sale at modest cost paper and PDF versions. The no-cost online version is (interestingly) accessible via the Google Books platform. I highlight this book both because it is a contribution to the fields in which I work by a very senior and well respected scholar and because it is the first instance of an Open Book Publishers title that I have learned about and have had an chance to study. The business model, goals, and production framework of the publisher are all noteworthy and worth further study. It is important to note that the World Oral Literature Project, a “Friend of Open Folklore” organization is announced as a partner on the Open Book Publishers website where a new Oral Literature Series is announced.  These are major developments for the Open Folklore and open anthropology communities. Congratulations to everyone involved in these efforts.

(Thanks to D.N. for the tip.)

Mar 5

Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights

My review of Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights by former NEA Chairman (and AFS President) Bill Ivey was recently published in JFRR (Journal of Folklore Research Reviews). JFRR is an open access fork of the established toll access folklore journal Journal of Folklore Research. JFRR publishes reviews of diverse media in folklore studies and circulates the reviews via email.  They are also available in search-able form online at http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/reviewsearch.php.

My review can be found online here:  http://www.indiana.edu/~jofr/review.php?id=715

Feb 3

Kim Fortun Reflects on the Open Folklore Project

Anthropologist and science studies scholar Kim Fortun has written an essay discussing the Open Folklore project for Anthropology News. Her piece is currently accessible (toll free) via the AAA website. Kim is the outgoing co-editor of  Cultural Anthropology and a thoughtful advocate for rethinking scholarly communication work in anthropology.

Jan 28

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Outstanding Collaboration Citation for Open Folklore

The Open Folklore project, a collaborative effort between the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries and the American Folklore Society, is the recipient of the 2011 Outstanding Collaboration Citation. The honor comes from the Association of Library Collections and Technical Services within the American Library Association.

The award recognizes and encourages collaborative problem-solving efforts in the areas of acquisition, access, management, preservation or archiving of library materials, as well as a demonstrated benefit from actions, services or products that improve and assist with the management of library collections.
Open Folklore debuted in October 2010 to provide open online access to many useful — but heretofore difficult to access — research materials in the field of folklore studies, including books, journals, “gray literature” (unpublished) and web sites.

“Open Folklore is extraordinary in its vision and its promise. A true example of the spectacular things that can be achieved together but which are entirely impossible alone,” said Julie Bobay, Associate Dean of IU Bloomington Libraries.

“Ultimately, Open Folklore will become a multifaceted resource, combining digitization and digital preservation of data, publications, educational materials and scholarship in folklore; promoting open access to these materials and providing an online search tool to enhance discoverability of relevant, reliable resources for folklore studies,” said Kurt Dewhurst, president of the American Folklore Society.

“As it grows, Open Folklore will provide a vehicle — guided by scholars — for libraries to re-envision our traditional library services centered on collections — selection, acquisition, describing, curating and providing access to a wide range of materials, published or not,” said Brenda Johnson, Dean of IU Bloomington Libraries. “The progress of this experiment will, in a very real way, illuminate the path academic libraries must take in supporting collection development in the digital age.”

Primarily, Open Folklore was developed so quickly and productively because of the close match between the collection development and scholarly communications priorities of the IU Libraries and the American Folklore Society, Dewhurst said.

Barbara Fister of Inside Higher Ed blog Library Babel Fish, said the project is drawing “a terrific map for societies unsure of how to proceed” with open access.

“Partnering with Indiana University Libraries, the American Folklore Society is identifying where their literature is and how much of it is accessible, bringing attention to existing and potential open access journals, asking rights holders if material can be set free, digitizing gray literature so it will be preserved . . . these folks are sharp,” Fister said. “And they’re doing what scholarly societies should do: promoting the field and sharing its collective knowledge for the greater good.”

“As a librarian deeply involved in building digital collections of the future, I view Open Folklore as a stunning example of the value of, and opportunities presented by, new developments in scholarly communication,” said John Wilkin, executive director of HathiTrust Digital Library.

The award will be presented at the Association of Library Collections and Technical Services Awards Ceremony at the Annual Conference in June 2011.

(From an IU Bloomington press release.)

Jan 17

#OpenFolklore Presentation from #AFS2010

At the 2010 AFS meetings I gave a presentation about the Open Folklore project. It was part of an experimental panel built around 7 minute talks keyed to 21 slides set to auto-advance every 20 seconds. This format is the one that will be introduced at-large at the 2011 meetings under the name Diamond presentations. (See the recent AFS announcement here.) In the video here, I re-recorded my talk as an audio track with the slide show.  Acoustically, my voice is hardly dynamic or interesting, but I have hope that the words and images help explain what Open Folklore is all about. Converting the slides to a short movie and uploading it to YouTube was good practical experience.

Thanks to everyone who attended the original session at AFS 2010. The panel of these short format presentations was really exciting.

Nov 21

Fall Conference #3: American Folklore Society

A couple of days after returning from Oklahoma, I turned around and headed out again to the Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society.  Three main tasks filled my time during these meetings.  As was the case when I went to the American Anthropological Association meetings as a society editor, my AFS meetings are now mainly composed of business meetings taking place within the time and space of the scholarly meeting.  I saw very few scholarly presentations and I ate all of my lunches out of boxes inside the conference hotel, but the meeting was really productive from a work point of view.  The domains of my activity were focused on:  (1) the AFS Executive Board (of which I am a member), (2) the Teagle Foundation funded “Big Questions and the Disciplines” project on improving undergraduate instruction in folklore studies and (3) the launch of the Open Folklore portal site.

It is a honor to represent the AFS membership as a member of the society’s board. The crux of the story from my perspective as a board member is that the society and thus the board are in the midst of a very very busy and very positive time.  The broader context of our work as scholars in North America and in the United States is troubling, but our society has never been stronger. At the meetings, we heard an abundance of good news from the field, recognized many excellent people and projects with well deserved awards, and pushed forward on a number of initiatives. The Teagle grant project is one of these and Open Folklore is another, but great progress is being made on many fronts. I am thankful for all of the people who are helping the society thrive.

As a participant in the Teagle project, I had the pleasure of participating in a lively and rich panel discussion and then a working lunch meeting in which we reviewed our work of the past year and planned for further efforts in the year ahead. I am learning from all of the project’s participants and am especially grateful to Dorothy Noyes and Tim Lloyd for leading our efforts.

I have discussed the Open Folklore project and the portal launch in previous posts. I’ll just note again here how exciting I think that this project is and how appreciative I am for the chance to participate in it.  I had planned on discussing the Southeastern Native American Collections Project as part of an experimental panel in which colleagues and I were trying out a seven minute-twenty-one slide speed format panel. As the conference approached, I proposed a change in which I would present on Open Folklore instead.  The slides are available here and I hope to work up an audio slidecast very soon.  The experimental panel was a big success and we are planning to include the format in the 2011 AFS meetings in Bloomington.

Thanks to everyone who worked to make the Nashville meetings a success.

 

Nov 21

Fall Conference #1: Indiana University Statewide IT Conference

This fall has been really busy. For the last couple of months, conferences of all sorts have occupied me more than I had anticipated. My original plan was to only attend the American Folklore Society meetings where I would pursue my work as a board member and promote the Open Folklore project. Other opportunities came along…  One of these was the Indiana University Statewide Information Conference. Here is the first in a series of brief reports on these conferences.

At the very end of September, I participated in the Indiana University Statewide Information Technology Conference. I was encouraged to propose a presentation by Robert McDonald, Associate Dean for Library Technologies and Digital Libraries at the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries. I shared a one hour slot with William Cowan, a developer on the EVIA (Ethnographic Video for Instruction and Analysis) Digital Archive who was discussing the associated Ethnomusicology Multimedia Project. As noted briefly earlier, I gave my first overview of the Open Folklore project. The presentation was well received and it was great to have a chance to try out explaining the project to interested audiences before attending the American Folklore Society Meetings where we would be launching the OF Portal.

My presentation drew upon consultation with Open Folklore project team members Garett Montanez, Moria Smith, Jennifer Laherty, Tim Lloyd, and Julie Bobay.

This was my second time participating in, and presenting at, this IT conference. I enjoy it because it is so different from the normal events that I attend. One thing about it is that it is rather inspiring. IU has an excellent IT organization and this event has a pep rally quality that is very effective. The event extends beyond the core IT departments and encompasses a diversity of IU community members involved in information technology projects, issues, and infrastructure. As a faculty member, I am in the minority as a presenter but have been made very welcome. I certainly learn a great deal as a participant. Because my engagements are at the library-IT interface, I participate alongside my library collaborators and friends, which is always fun.

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