Shreds and Patches

Aug 12

More Groundlevel News from the Tel Aviv Protests

Our friend in Tel Aviv continues to share news and views and video and photographs from the Tel Aviv protests at White City Streets. Check out the latest “Adding Fuel to the Fire (Literally)”.

Aug 11

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A Note on Predatory Open Access Publishing

One of the worst developments in the emergence of open access as a set of practices and goals for the progressive reform of scholarly communication is the emergence of new commercial firms that are combining the worst traits of open access strategy, vanity publishing, automation of editorial and production tasks, and a predatory approach to meeting the publishing “needs” of foolish and/or desperate-to-be-published scholars and would-be scholars. Typical is the email that I received recently from a firm that included a section where I could click a link through which I could become not just an author with this publisher but could become a reviewer, an editorial board member, and even the Editor-in-Chief of a new journal. Such firms are, or hope to become, cash cows via author fees. One sign of such a firm is the announcement of a large number of not-yet-extant journal titles spanning a wide range of fields almost randomly. These vaporware journals are often announced before the identity of an associated journal editor is established. Another simple sign is the frequency of typos in communications and on websites. Lots of typos. Open access is too important for the scholarly community to become distracted by these marginal cases. Beware.

For discussions of predatory open access, see here and here.

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 7

More on the Protests in Israel, Ethnographically

White City Streets continues to report from the field in Tel Aviv where the multifaceted protests continue to unfold. Anthropologi.info offers a rich post remixing these reports with news accounts and additional reflections.

Aug 5

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Thanks @ColoradoCollege

In a few moments the students in my Introduction to Folklife course will arrive and take their final exam. I will then head home to Indiana, eager to see my family and enjoy the little bit of summer that is left before the fall semester at Indiana begins. I am very thankful for the opportunity that Colorado College provided to me. Teaching folklore/anthropology in a very different campus and classroom context was very valuable to me and I already know some of the ways that the new undergraduate courses that I will teach this coming year will benefit from my experiences here. It was also wonderful to spend time with my old friend Vicki Levine and her family and to become friends with new-to-me folks, especially Ginger Farrer. For facilitating my visit, special thanks go to the staff of the CC Department of Anthropology (including its chair, my distinguished folklore colleague Mario Montaño), the CC Office of Summer Programs (where everyone was so helpful), and the Tutt LIbrary (where Daryl Alder and her colleagues were an amazing support to my students and to me in my research too). Of course I wish to thank my students too for taking a chance on what might have seamed an enigmatic course taught by an unknown professor. To everyone at CC, have a great new school year.

Photos below the fold. Read more

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 5

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Preprint: The Story of Colonialism, or Rethinking the Ox-hide Purchase in Native North America and Beyond

It will be more than a year and a half before my paper on the ox-hide purchase story is published in the Journal of American Folklore. Since my revisions are now complete, I am happy to temporarily post a preprint here. I am a big advocate for institutional repositories such as IUScholarWorks Repository and my fellow repository boosters may wonder why I have not (as I so often preach) placed the preprint there. In this case, the American Folklore Society is transitioning to a new author agreement that will, when the time comes, allow me to post the final published version to IUSW. For that reason, I am making the preprint available in a way that will be easy to take down once the paper is published.

This is a paper that many great people helped me work on over many years. To all of them, thank you!

Aug 4

Wars and Rumors of Wars @Philbrook Museum of Art

Excited to see this promotional video with my friend Christina Burke, Curator of Native American and Non-Western Art at Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa. Christina is a great curator stewarding a great collection in a great museum. This video introduces the new exhibition Wars and Rumors of War. The exhibition is built out of the museum’s fine collection of Native American works on paper. Congratulations Christina, congratulations Philbrook. I hope I make it back to Tulsa in time to see the show.