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Arcadia Seminar: "The Serendipity Engine" by Dr Aleks Krotoski
The Serendipity Engine is a physical manifestation of theoretical and technological interventions that can be used to enhance serendipity on the World Wide Web. It is a working machine that uses bike parts, flower pots, cake, pulleys, lightbulbs and other concrete objects to articulate the processes that could be translated into digital “solutions” that will re-engineer the potential dystopian social trajectories of current (social) software trends. It has been theorised, devised, designed, developed and welded together by Dr Aleks Krotoski and Dr Katrina Jungnickel.
Each of the components of The Serendipity Engine highlights problems observed by digital theorists, designers and technologists with the way the Web currently works – linguistic barriers, echo chambers – by proposing one vision of how the technology can be re-tooled to increase serendipitous encounters. The aim of the machine is to inspire insight into the social and cultural effects of the decisions that developers make – often for commercial reasons and at the (explicit or implicit) requests of consumers – through simple, lateral demonstration.
About the Speaker
Aleks Krotoski is an academic and journalist who writes about and studies technology and interactivity. Her PhD thesis in Social Psychology (University of Surrey, 2009) examined how information spreads around the social networks of the World Wide Web. She is a Research Associate at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Researcher-in-Residence for the British Library’s Growing Knowledge exhibition.
She completed the 4-part, prime time BBC 2 series Virtual Revolution in early 2010, about the social history of the World Wide Web. She blogged for the project, outlining her manifestos about the social, political, economic and psychological impact of the 20 years of the Web.
Aleks writes for The Guardian and Observer newspapers, and hosts Tech Weekly, their technology podcast. Her writing also appears in Nature, BBC Technology, New Statesman, MIT Technology Review and The Telegraph.
Date: Tuesday November 29
Time: 17.30-18:45 (refreshments from 17:15)
Venue: Morrison Room, University Library
(Note to regular attendees: this is a new venue, and a slightly earlier time for this seminar)
Arcadia Lecture: "Revolutions (and Elephants) in the Library", Prof. Paul Courant
Digitization is seen variously as a boon and scourge, depending on the viewer, the issue at hand, and sometimes even the time of day. As with many polarizing phenomena, there is merit on both sides. If we look carefully at the functions that we want libraries to perform, we see that although most (but not all) are made technically easier with digitization, many are made organizationally more difficult, both within libraries and within the institutions that support them and use them. Preservation, which I will argue is an essential function of academic libraries, is the most straightforward example of something that is much more difficult to organize with digital media than it was with print. Scholarly publishing, without which libraries would have little to do, is stuck with a set of institutions and practices that are ill-suited to take advantage of digital technologies. And then there is copyright. Taking as given that we now live in a world where it is extremely inexpensive to copy, distribute, search, mix, and remix, it is still not entirely clear how best to respond to what should be good news. The answers depend on what we want and how willing we are to collaborate in the interest of achieving what we want. In libraries as elsewhere, successful exploitation of changes in technology requires changes in the way activities are organized.
About the Speaker
Paul Courant is the University Librarian and Dean of Libraries at the University of Michigan. He has authored half a dozen books, and over seventy papers covering a broad range of topics in economics and public policy, including tax policy, state and local economic development, gender differences in pay, housing, radon and public health, relationships between economic growth and environmental policy, and university budgeting systems. More recently, he is studying the economics of universities, the economics of libraries and archives, and the changes in the system of scholarly communication that derive from new information technologies.
All welcome, but please RSVP to Michelle Heydon on mh569@cam.ac.uk
Date: Friday 9th December, 2011
Venue: Riley Auditorium, Clare College Memorial Court,
Queen's Road, Cambridge
Time: 17:30-19:00 (refreshments from 17:00)
Arcadia Seminar: "The power of the voice in the age of the Internet", Nigel Warburton
The first Arcadia Seminar of the year will be given by Nigel Warburton, the philosopher behind the very popular Philosophy Bites website.
Abstract: The combination of digital audio recording and editing with simple means of worldwide distribution has opened up new possibilities for academics. It is possible to reach very large audiences without having to produce the infotainment beloved of conventional radio commissioners. Most academics are content to leave any audio recording and editing to technical 'experts' , but new technology makes audio production almost as straightforward as word processing. Too many universities are simply recording conventional lectures and distributing them un-edited on iTunesU. The academic of the future should be adept in recording, shaping, and editing their own audio content.
Date: Tuesday November 1
Time: 17.30
Venue: Morrison Room, University Library
(Note to regular attendees: this is a new venue, and a slightly earlier time for this seminar)
Arcadia Seminar: "Why Communicate?", Dr Richard Harper
ABSTRACT
When new communication technologies are invented, what is the idea that lies behind them? Something to do with what the human will do with them: the idea that the technology will make them, the ‘user’, more efficient, for example? Or are the reasons behind these technologies to do with the engineering of them, something that makes them cheaper to build, as an alternative example?
In this talk I want to present a sketch of some of the reasons why new communications technologies are invented (and include reference to some developed over the years here in Cambridge) and suggest that most often it is an idea about human need that generates them, not engineering. I then ask what tends to happen to these technologies when they get introduced and ask whether they do, in fact, satisfy the human need in question (such as making people more efficient). I will show that there is little evidence that communications technologies do this, certainly not very often. Indeed, I will go on to show that there is little evidence that the introduction of new channels in recent years has led to any improvement in communicative efficiency at home, in work, in private or public affairs, one of the claims often made for them. The oft-heard complaint that we are all suffering from communications overload seems to grow worse despite these new technologies. Given this, I will then ask why people seem so keen to adopt these same new communications technologies. It cannot be that the technologies do ‘what they say on the can’. So why?
About the Speaker
Richard Harper is Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research in Cambridge and co-manages the Socio-Digital Systems group.
Richard is concerned with how to design for ‘being human’ in an age when human-as-machine type metaphors, deriving from Turing and others, tend to dominate thinking in the area. Trained as a sociologist and with a strong passion for ordinary language philosophy, he has published over 120 papers and recently published his 10th book, Texture: Human expression in the age of communication overload (MIT Press).
Amongst his prior books is the IEEE award winning The Myth of the Paperless Office (MIT Press,2002), co-authored with Abi Sellen. He is currently working on an edited collection entitled At Home with Smart Technologies: the future of domestic life (Springer, due Summer 2011).
His work is not only theoretical or sociological, but also includes the design of real and functioning systems, for work and for home settings, for mobile devices and for social networking sites. Numerous patents have derived from his work.
Prior to joining MSR , Richard helped lead various technology innovation and knowledge transfer companies, while in 2000 he was appointed the UK’s first Professor of Socio-Digital Systems, at the University of Surrey, England. It was here he also set up the Digital World Research Centre. Prior to this he was a researcher at Xerox PARC ’s fifth lab, EuroPARC, in Cambridge. He completed his Phd at Manchester in 1989.
This talk is part of the Arcadia Project Seminars series.
Please confirm intent to attend to mh569@cam.ac.uk
Date: Tuesday 28th June 2011
Time: 18:00-19:15 (refreshments from 17:45)
Venue: Seminar Room, Wolfson College
Arcadia Seminar: "Google, Crowds and Mobs", Tom Simpson
In this paper I look at what we want from a search engine, and what we’re currently getting (with Google, pre-eminently). I argue that piggy-backing search results on past users’ behaviour means that, instead of following a wise crowd, users are increasingly following foolish mobs. The result is that search is very useful indeed in many ordinary contexts, but in more specialised contexts – and particularly the contexts that academics are often in – search is of increasingly limited use.
About the speaker
Thomas Simpson is engaged on a PhD entitled ‘Trust on the Internet’ at the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, and is sponsored by Microsoft Research Cambridge. Before returning to philosophy, he served five years with the Royal Marine Commandos (NI; Baghdad; Helmand Province). His research interests are in testimony and social epistemology, trust, applied ethics in the philosophy of technology, and the ethics of war.
Please email your intent to attend to Michelle Heydon, mh569@cam.ac.uk
This talk is part of the Arcadia Project Seminars series.
Date: Tuesday 14th June 2011
Time: 18:00-19:15 (refreshments from 17:45)
Venue: Seminar Room, Wolfson College
Arcadia Seminar: "Digitisation and print on demand for Cambridge University Library", Ed Chamberlain
For his Michaelmas 2010 Arcadia fellowship, Ed Chamberlain investigated ways to speed up the digitisation process in academic libraries. He identified three problem areas and explored issues surrounding corresponding potential solutions, including automated book scanners and the Espresso print-on-demand machine. The seminar will recount his findings, and provide an opportunity to discuss how libraries can successfully interface with innovative technologies.
About the Speaker:
Ed Chamberlain works as Systems Development Librarian at Cambridge University Library
His library career so far has spanned three sectors, including Oxford, the London Library and the Natural History Museum. Here, Ed was involved in the early creation and development of online services based around digitised materials, including the Bio-Diversity Heritage Library mass-digitisation project.He has a BA in Politics from the University of East Anglia and an MA in Library and Information management at Loughborough University.
Ed took up his current position in 2007 and has taken a lead in the redevelopment of online services and systems supporting both electronic and print library resources. Eds’ professional interests include all aspects of online library and information services, especially web design trends and underlying software architecture. He is also interested in new standards of metadata, including emerging semantic web based services and open publishing models for both data and content.
Please email your intent to attend to Michelle Heydon, mh569@cam.ac.uk
This talk is part of the Arcadia Project Seminars series.
Date: Tuesday 3rd May 2011
Time: 18:00-19:15
Venue: Old Combination Room (OCR), Wolfson College
Arcadia Seminar: "Hunters, Gathers and Groundhogs: consumers as co-developers to deliver novel mobile applications"
Nick talks about how Tesco went back to basics to really understand it’s customers and how they might have a more enjoyable, useful and time-saving shopping trip through use of digital retail on their mobile, TV, etc – rather than having an ‘app’ just for the sake of it, or not going in an ‘app’ direction at all!
Organisational change occurred as a result of the behavioural change that was undertaken. This resulted in open innovation and the use of third parties and a developer community to ‘build stuff for customers’.
About the Speaker:
As one of several “founding father”s of Tesco.com, Nick Lansley built web and downloadable applications to enable wine and grocery home shopping on slow modem internet connections, the first of which was launched 1996.
Nick then managed grocery web development through to 2000, then took on his research role to help to deliver a service better for customers – work that continues apace to this day!
Nick was recently appointed as an inaugural member of the UK’s Mobile Commerce Joint Industry Committee (MCJIC), an industry initiative established to ensure that businesses are prepared for the opportunities and challenges that accompany the explosive growth in mobile commerce.
Date: Tuesday 12th April 2011
Time: 18:00-19:15
Venue: Seminar Room, Wolfson College
Arcadia Seminar: "Reinventing the Book", Dr Max Whitby
Tablet computers such as Apple's iPad and its many imitators are enabling a new industry publishing books made of binary bits not pulped trees. But what will these books be like? It is not enough simply to convert them into digital form, adding a few bells and whistles such as clips of video. Instead the whole reading experience must be redefined for the interactive medium, critically preserving and enhancing all that is wonderful about the printed word.
About the Speaker:
Dr Max Whitby is CEO of Touch Press, a publisher of interactive books based in London and Illinois. He is also a filmmaker, scientist and the founder of three successful digital media companies. He studied philosophy at Oxford University and then joined the BBC where he produced numerous Horizon and Nova documentaries. He has directed nearly a hundred films, mainly about science. Early on, he became involved in the BBC’s pioneering Interactive Television Unit and headed a collaboration with Apple in San Francisco. In 2004 Whitby made the radical decision to train formally as a chemist, and completed a PhD at Imperial College in London. The skills he acquired have come in useful at RGB Research Ltd, his London-based scientific research and communications business. For the past seven years he has collaborated closely with Theodore Gray designing and building elaborate periodic table displays and installations around the world. Whitby is widely travelled, having filmed for the BBC, PBS and other TV companies in over 30 countries, including six memorable weeks in North Korea. He has received four BAFTA nominations and two BAFTA awards. He is passionately interested in natural history. BirdGuides Ltd, his natural history digital publishing business, runs a hugely popular website and he has personally filmed more than a thousand species of birds and insects.
Date: Tuesday 15th March 2011
Time: 18:00-19:15
Venue: Old Combination Room, Wolfson College
Please email your intent to attend to Michelle Heydon, mh569@cam.ac.uk
Arcadia Seminar: "What do people really know about the net?", Prof. John Naughton
For the last 18 months I've been working on a book project aimed at addressing the surprising level of public ignorance about the Internet and its implications. What, I wondered, is the minimal set of concepts that laymen-and women-would need to grasp in order to have a rounded appreciation of the Internet phenomenon? Drawing on the work of George Miller, I've come up with his "magical number" of ideas, which I will outline in my presentation. I'll be intrigued to know what an informed audience makes of them.
About the Speaker
John Naughton is Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University, a Fellow of Wolfson, the Observer’s Internet columnist, Academic Adviser to the Arcadia Project and an inveterate blogger.
Date: Tuesday 1st March 2011
Time: 18:00-19:15
New Venue: Seminar Room, Wolfson College (venue was OCR)
Please email your intent to attend to Michelle Heydon, mh569@cam.ac.uk
Arcadia Seminar: "Changing BBC News: the cultural, managerial and editorial challenges of adapting to a digital environment", Simon Andrewes
Over the last decade the pace of change for big media organisations like the BBC has been unprecedented, as they work to keep pace with the changing digital landscape. To the outside observer this may manifest itself in the form of new products and services, such as iPlayer, but what’s much less apparent is the degree of internal upheaval that’s involved. Simon Andrewes is currently leading a project to deliver and implement a set of online tools known as the Journalism Portal – to help BBC Journalism collaborate and share more effectively. It’s based to some extent on bringing the concepts of social networking into the Journalism workplace, and it is the latest step in the BBC ’s long and sometimes bumpy journey towards a multimedia and multiplatform destination. That journey has involved management restructuring, physically moving teams together and driving technological change in the way journalists work. In this seminar he will discuss some insights gained into the cultural, managerial and editorial challenges of adapting a large traditional news organization to a digital environment.
About the Speaker:
Simon Andrewes was formerly Head of Newsroom development at BBC News specialising in the design and delivery of large-scale organisational change. Earlier this year he left to become an independent consultant and is currently engaged by the BBC as Programme Director for the Journalism Portal. In his 28 years at the organisation he has worked as producer and editor on a range of TV and radio programmes, and for the last ten he has
been a senior manager in News at the heart of the organisation’s digital transformation.
Date: Tuesday 7th December
Time: 18:00-19:15
Venue: Old Combination Room, Wolfson College
Please email your intent to attend to Michelle Heydon, mh569@cam.ac.uk
Arcadia Seminar: "The End of Lawyers?", Prof Richard Susskind
Richard Susskind will discuss the future role of lawyers and the administration of justice in an IT-based information society. He will suggest that the global recession has brought about an irreversible change to the legal market, one that will define the next decade of legal service. He will explain why and how some (but not all) legal service will become commoditised. Next, he will introduce two concepts – decomposing and multi-sourcing – that he believes will underpin the work of tomorrow’s lawyers. Then, pulling various strands of thinking together, he will explain the role that information technology and the Internet (including social networking) will play in transforming legal service, in improving our courts, and in improving access to justice. He will argue that these transformations present a fundamental challenge for those who teach law and engage in legal research. He will conclude by outlining new jobs for the next generation of lawyers.
About the Speaker
Professor Richard Susskind OBE is an author, speaker, and independent adviser to professional firms and national governments. His main area of expertise is the future of legal service, with particular reference to information technology. He has written numerous books, including The Future of Law (Oxford, 1996), Transforming the Law (Oxford, 2000), and The End of Lawyers? (Oxford, 2008), and he is a regular columnist at The Times. He has been invited to lecture in over 40 countries, and has addressed legal audiences (in person and electronically), numbering more than 200,000. Richard is Honorary and Emeritus Law Professor at Gresham College, London, Visiting Professor in Internet Studies at the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University, and IT adviser to the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. A Scots lawyer by background, he holds a doctorate in law from Balliol College, Oxford, and is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Date: Tuesday 2nd November
Time: 18:00-19:15
Venue: Old Combination Room, Wolfson College
Please email your intent to attend to Michelle Heydon, mh569@cam.ac.uk
Arcadia Seminar: "Re-engineering the scholarly journal", Mark Patterson, Director of Publishing, Public Library of Science.
The use of online media is allowing the processes of scholarly communication to be reinvented and re-engineered. Open access to research information is a key first step because it removes all barriers to the access and reuse of the information, thereby maximizing its impact. At PLoS, the initial focus has therefore been to establish a successful and sustainable open-access publishing operation. Having achieved this goal, PLoS is now exploring new ways to enhance scholarly communication through online publications that publish new findings more rapidly, and new products that facilitate the evaluation and organization of content after publication.
About the speaker
Mark Patterson was a researcher in human and yeast genetics for 12 years before moving into scientific publishing in 1994 as the Editor of Trends in Genetics. After a few years at Nature, where he was involved in the launch of the Nature Reviews Journals, he moved to PLoS in 2003. As an editor, Mark helped to launch several of the PLoS Journals and was appointed as Director of Publishing in 2005. He also helped to found and serves on the Board of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association.
Date: 16th November, 2010
Time: 18:00 - 19:15
Venue: Old Combination Room, Wolfson College
Please email your intent to attend to Michelle Heydon mh569@cam.ac.uk
Arcadia Seminar: “Death 2.0: What Becomes of Digital Assets after Death?”, Prof. Lilian Edwards
Death seems to be discussed in web 2.0 circles only when it is tragic (eg internet suicide clusters) or in some other newsworthy (eg the Lori Drew online harassment case ). Yet if Facebook alone claim some 400 million subscribers, then it stands to reason that some of them will be reaching their final end as I write in quite ordinary ways. Yet the law is vague in the extreme (and varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction) on who would "own" a user's Facebook profile in that sad event; and more significantly, what rights either the deceased or the heirs might have against Facebook to demand that the profile be deleted, maintained as a going concern , exported or preserved ("memorialised"). Nor is this problem confined to Facebook. Digital assets will be increasingly important as items in succession - and as cultural heritage - as the web 2.0 generation ages ; and might include not only profiles on social networking sites, but also reputations and identities on money-making sites like eBay, photos on sites like Flickr and even user preferences on sites like Last.fm. Yet so far little or no attention has been paid to the legal nature and transmission of digital assets, except within the limited (if glamorous) domain of virtual property in virtual worlds and MMORPGs. Neither are all digital assets likely to fall into categories of recognisable intellectual property (IP) protection. This paper seeks to investigate this domain, having regard to the interests of user, relatives, platform and especially, the public interest in preservation of online cultural heritage.
About the Speaker:
Professor Edwards's principal research interests are in the law relating to the Internet, the Web and new technologies, with a European and comparative focus. She has co-edited three bestselling collections on Law and the Internet (Hart Publishing, 1997, 2000 and 2009) with Charlotte Waelde, and a third collection of essays The New Legal Framework for E-Commerce in Europe was published in 2005. Her work in on-line consumer privacy won the Barbara Wellbery Memorial Prize in 2004 for the best solution to the problem of privacy and transglobal data flows. She worked at Strathclyde University from 1986-1988 and Edinburgh University from 1989 to 2006 before moving to become Chair of Internet Law at Southampton from 2006-2008. She is Associate Director, and was co-founder, of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Centre for IP and Technology Law, funded from 2002-2012. She has taught IT, e-commerce and Internet law at undergraduate and postgraduate level since 1996 and been involved with law and artificial intelligence (AI) since 1985. She has been a visiting scholar and invited lecturer to universities in the USA, Canada, Australia, Mexico, and Latin America and has undertaken consultancy for the the European Parliament, the European commission and McAfee.
Date: Tuesday 1st June, 2010
Time: 18:00 - 19:15
Venue: Old Combination Room, Wolfson College
Please email your intent to attend to Michelle Heydon mh569@cam.ac.uk
Arcadia Seminar: "Collect, Protect, Connect: From Digital Himalaya to the World Oral Literature Project", Dr Mark Turin
Ten years ago, Digital Himalaya was founded as a strategy for salvaging, archiving and disseminating the products of historical ethnographic collections on the Himalayas -- both for posterity and for heritage communities. The project has now become a collaborative digital publishing environment that brings a new collection online every month. The website has grown from being a static homepage with occasional updates to a responsive content delivery platform for over 40GB of archived data. Our online resources, which were first used almost exclusively by members of Western universities, now provide a range of services to a global public, with a particularly strong user base in South Asia. Digitisation has been 'off-shored' to Nepal, dramatically reducing operational costs and increasing productivity. And, most surprising of all, our funding no longer comes from national funding bodies in Europe or America, but through Web referrals, users and individual donations from around the world.
Growing out of the success of Digital Himalaya, the World Oral Literature Project was established in January 2009 as a new initiative to document and disseminate research on endangered oral cultures and verbal arts before they disappear without record. The project supports local communities and fieldworkers engaged in the collection and preservation of all forms of oral literature by funding original research, organising training workshops and publishing research findings.
In today's lecture, I address some of the lessons learned from the first project and how these have informed the conception of the second. I also discuss the challenges of digital humanities research initiatives that rely on collaborations with archivists, librarian, scholars and perhaps most importantly, source communities, as partners in collaborative fieldwork.
About the Speaker:
Dr Mark Turin is a linguistic anthropologist. He was trained in social anthropology at Cambridge and in descriptive linguistics at Leiden University. Mark has also held research appointments at Cornell and Leipzig universities. From 2007 to 2008, he was Chief of Translation and Interpretation at the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN), and returned to Cambridge in 2009 to direct Digital Himalaya and the World Oral Literature Project.
Date: 18th May, 2010
Time: 18:00 - 19:15
Venue: Old Comination Room, Wolfson College
Please email your intent to attend to Michelle Heydon mh569@cam.ac.uk
The Social Life of Digital Libraries: the Second Arcadia Lecture
The digitization of libraries had a clear initial goal: to permit anyone to read the contents of collections anywhere and anytime. But universal access is only the beginning of what may happen to libraries and researchers in the digital age. Because machines as well as humans have access to the same online collections, a complex web of interactions is emerging. Digital libraries are now engaging in online relationships with other libraries, with scholars, and with software, often without the knowledge of those who maintain the libraries, and in unexpected ways. These digital relationships open new avenues for discovery, analysis, and collaboration.
About the Speaker:
Daniel J. Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Art History and the Director of the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. He is coauthor of ‘Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web’ (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), author of ‘Equations from God: Pure Mathematics and Victorian Faith’ (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), and has published articles and book chapters on the history of mathematics and religion, the teaching of history, and the future of history in a digital age in journals such as the Journal of American History, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Rethinking History. He is an inaugural recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies’ Digital Innovation Fellowship. At the Center for History and New Media he has directed projects ranging from digital collections (September 11 Digital Archive) to scholarly software (the Zotero extension for the Firefox browser that enables users to manage bibliographic data while doing online research).
Professor Cohen received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton, his Master’s from Harvard, and his doctorate in history from Yale. He blogs at http://dancohen.org, tweets as @dancohen, and podcasts at http://digitalcampus.tv.
All welcome, but please RSVP to mh569@cam.ac.uk
Date: Friday 30th April, 2010
Venue: Riley Auditorium, Clare College Memorial Court, Queen's Road
Time: 18:00-19:15
Arcadia Seminar: "I know what you Borrowed Last Summer: Exploiting Usage Data in an Academic Library" , Dave Pattern
Data mining of usage data is a relatively new area for libraries. During this seminar, Dave will discuss some of the work carried out with the library web catalogue at Huddersfield and the impact it has had on the long term borrowing trends of students. Huddersfield has also used the data to analyse non- and low-usage of library services, and to examine the link between library usage and the final grades achieved by students. Finally, Dave will discuss why Huddersfield decided to begin releasing aggregated usage data into the Public Domain.
About the Speaker:
Dave Pattern is the Library Systems Manager at The University of Huddersfield, with responsibility for the continuing development of the web services and facilities provided by the library. A web developer with 15 years of experience, he previously worked for a major UK library book supplier before joining Huddersfield as the lead developer on the JISC funded INHALE and INFORMS projects. In 2004 he was appointed to his current role and has been responsible for incorporating a variety of 2.0 enhancements into the OPAC, as well as setting up weblogs and wikis for the library. He is a committed "2.0" advocate and was thrilled to be named as one of the "2009 Movers and Shakers" by the Library Journal.
All welcome but please RSVP to mh569@cam.ac.uk
Date: Tuesday 23rd March, 2010
Venue: Wolfson College, Old Combination Room (OCR)
Time: 6pm - 7:15pm
"A Pedagogy of Abundance - new teaching models for a digital age" Martin Weller
"A Pedagogy of Abundance - new teaching models for a digital age" Martin Weller, Open University (Tuesday 2nd March, 18:00)
Until now economic models have been based on an assumption of scarcity. In a digital world, however, we have abundance and many of these models do not apply. There are two types of response: the abundance response, which assumes it, and the scarcity response, which tries to recreate scarcity models in a digital format. Martin will explore whether similar arguments can be made for pedagogy in the digital age.
About the speaker: Martin Weller is Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University. He chaired the OU's first major online course, which attracted 15,000 students. He has been the director of the VLE project and also the Social Learn project which explored the use of social networks for learning. His research interests are in digital scholarship, the impact of new technologies and learning environments. He blogs at edtechie.net.
Date, time and venue: Tuesday 2 March 2010, 18:00-19:15 - Old Combination Room (OCR), Wolfson College, Cambridge.
Please e-mail mh569@cam.ac.uk if you are planning to attend.
Arcadia Seminar: 2nd March 2010 "A Pedagogy of Abundance - new teaching models for a digital age" , Prof. Martin Weller, OU
In economics previous models were based on an assumption of scarcity. In a digital world we have abundance and many of these models do not apply. There are two types of response to this, the abundance response which assumes it and the scarcity response which tries to recreate scarcity models in a digital format. Freemium is an example of the former and DRM an example of the latter. I then explore whether there are similar arguments to be made for pedagogy based on the following assumptions:
- Content is free
- Content is abundant
- Content is varied
- Sharing is easy
- Social based
- Connections are lite
- Organisation is cheap
- Based on a generative system
- Crowdsourcing
- Network is valuable
Arcadia Seminar: 1st December 2009 "Scholarly Publishing 2.0 Squared" , Dr Doug Clow
Abstract:
How is Web 2.0 – and now Web Squared – changing scholarly publishing?
There are dramatic changes underway in the world of publishing, which have profound implications for scholarly activity. These changes are in essence quantitative (more, faster, cheaper) rather than fundamental ones of type, but the quantitative shift on this scale is in itself qualitative and transformatory. The proliferation of information and information sources make the assessment of quality and importance ever more important, and to more people. New forms of scholarly publishing have emerged, and are developing rapidly, including academics’ use of social networks and blogs, the Open Access movement, and Open Educational Resources (OER).
In this seminar, Doug Clow will explore these issues, and sketch out an organising vision of this rapidly-changing landscape, discussing the implications for authors, reviewers, editors, publishers, librarians, funders, readers, and all those with an interest in what scholars do.
About the speaker
Dr Doug Clow is a Lecturer in Interactive Media Development at the Institute of Educational Technology at The Open University (OU). His work includes the Knowledge Network (a controlled-access publishing system for sharing expertise within the OU), and OLnet (a project funded by the Hewlett Foundation to increase the quantity and quality of research on Open Educational Resources). He is an Editor of the Journal of Interactive Media in Education, which has pioneered public, open review of journal articles since 1996. He keeps a blog at http://dougclow.wordpress.com and uses Twitter as @dougclow.
This talk is part of the Arcadia Project Seminars series. Please notify mh569@cam.ac.uk if you plan to attend.
Time: 6pm
Location: Wolfson College, Old Combination Room (OCR)
Arcadia Seminar: 24th Nov. "The Problem of Reading Lists" , Huw Jones, UL
Reading lists are the area in which academic workflows, student needs and library services interact most directly. They act as a bridge between two of the University’s most important assets – academic expertise and library resources. They are fundamental to undergraduate learning and to library collection development. To date, there have been many attempts to solve the ‘problem’ of reading lists, with limited success.
I will examine if there is a problem with reading lists, and what the nature of that problem might be. Are the real issues to do with cooperation and collaboration between bodies involved in pedagogical support? If so, what is the solution, and where might it lead us in the future?”
About the speaker
Huw Jones is System Support Librarian at the University Library, offering services, support and training to libraries across Cambridge. He has a particular interest in developing interfaces which take advantage of advances in technology to facilitate new ways of working.
Having studied history at Manchester University, he worked in a range of libraries in Manchester and Cambridge before joining Electronic Systems and Services at the University Library in 2004. He has since developed a range of integrated online services for librarians, and worked on various projects from data duplication to user education.
From April to June 2009, Huw held an Arcadia Fellowship to investigate issues surrounding the introduction of a reading list system in Cambridge. His findings (published in a report available at Reading Lists in Cambridge: A Standard System?) will form the basis of this seminar.
This talk is part of the Arcadia Project Seminars series. Please notify mh569@cam.ac.uk if you plan to attend.
Time: 6pm
Location: Wolfson College, Old Combination Room (OCR)
Arcadia Seminar: 3rd Nov. "Thinking Like a Dandelion: Cory Doctorow on copyright, Creative Commons and creativity"
This is the opening talk in the Arcadia 2009-10 Seminar series.
Tuesday, 3rd November, 6pm at the Umney Theatre, Robinson College, Cambridge. Please email mh569@cam.ac.uk if you are planning to attend.
Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction novelist, blogger and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to Wired, Popular Science, Make, the New York Times, and many other newspapers, magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy, standards and treaties. He is a Visting Senior Lecturer at Open University (UK); in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.
His novels are published by Tor Books and HarperCollins UK and simultaneously released on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses that encourage their re-use and sharing, a move that increases his sales by enlisting his readers to help promote his work. He has won the Locus and Sunburst Awards, and been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and British Science Fiction Awards. His latest novel, New York Times Bestseller LITTLE BROTHER , was published in May 2008, and his latest short story collection is OVERCLOCKED : STORIES OF THE FUTURE PRESENT . In 2008, Tachyon Books published a collection of his essays, called CONTENT : SELECTED ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGY , CREATIVITY, COPYRIGHT AND THE FUTURE OF THE FUTURE (with an introduction by John Perry Barlow) and IDW published a collection of comic books inspired by his short fiction called CORY DOCTOROW ’S FUTURISTIC TALES OF THE HERE AND NOW . His next novel is MAKERS , due from Tor Books/HarperCollins UK in October, 2009.
He co-founded the open source peer-to-peer software company OpenCola, sold to OpenText, Inc in 2003, and presently serves on the boards and advisory boards of the Participatory Culture Foundation, the MetaBrainz Foundation, Technorati, Inc, the Organization for Transformative Works, Areae, the Annenberg Center for the Study of Online Communities, and Onion Networks, Inc.
In 2007, Entertainment Weekly called him, “The William Gibson of his generation.” He was also named one of Forbes Magazine’s 2007/8 Web Celebrities, and one of the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders for 2007.
The title of his seminar is taken from a recent interview in which he described his distinctive approach to publishing his work and disseminating ideas.
21 April - Arcadia Seminar: Scholarly Networking by Dr Laura James
Speaker:Dr Laura James (CARET)
Location:Wolfson College.
Date and time:Tuesday 21 April 2009, 18:00-19:15
All welcome but RSVP to arcadia@lib.cam.ac.uk
The university experience, whether teaching, learning or researching, has always been built around interactions between people, and the network of people one meets. CARET is investigating many aspects of scholarly networking, including supporting and enhancing these real world connections online, and the ways in which academic networking differs from social networking (whilst drawing on the viral and compelling nature of consumer social tools). Dr James will present various parts of this work including design personas drawn from user research into the ways that academics at all levels communicate today, which are informing user-centric design of scholarly networking concepts. In addition, she will touch upon business models for sustainability of academic networking systems and the different organisations who might host them.
About the speaker
Dr Laura James manages people, projects and operations at the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies at the University of Cambridge, and leads the CARET projects about scholarly networking. Her background is in high tech research and development, and she has worked at AT&T Labs in the US and UK , designing and prototyping cutting edge internet-connected wireless devices and systems. Dr James was the first employee at AlertMe.com (a consumer electronics company, producing connected home technology) and lead the engineering design team there through from idea to shipping product. She holds Masters and PhD degrees in Engineering from the University of Cambridge. Dr James was a NESTA Crucible fellow in 2007, and is an alumnus of the Royal Academy of Engineering Leadership Award and Executive Engineer programmes.
First Arcadia Lecture: March 12th - Professor James Boyle (Duke University) on "Cultural Agoraphobia and The Future of The Library"
Speaker:Professor James Boyle, Duke University
Location:Lee Hall, Wolfson College.
Date and time:Thursday 12 March 2009, 18:00-19:15
Abstract
In his new book 'The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind' James Boyle argues that we have a bias that makes us unduly skeptical of open networks, systems and methods of production. The success of non proprietary systems -- ranging from open source software to Wikipedia and the open Internet itself -- fills us with surprise. He calls this bias "cultural agoraphobia." In a world where all texts were tangible, the institution of the library stood for the proposition that a certain degree of openness was good; that a place that allowed free access to knowledge by every citizen was one of the defining institutions of a liberal society and culture. How will that principle change or evolve in the digital world? Will it survive at all? What is the future of the library in a world grappling with cultural agoraphobia?
About the speaker:
James Boyle is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. Professor Boyle is also the Chairman of the Board of Creative Commons, and the co-founder of Science Commons. He serves on the board of the Public Library of Science and on the advisory board of Public Knowledge. In 2003 Professor Boyle won the World Technology Network Award for Law for his work on the public domain and the "second enclosure movement" that threatens it. He is the author of 'Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society', and the editor of 'Critical Legal Studies, Collected Papers on the Public Domain and Cultural Environmentalism @ 10' (with Larry Lessig.) His more recent books include 'Bound By Law', a co-authored "graphic novel" about the effects of intellectual property on documentary film, 'The Shakespeare Chronicles', a novel, and 'The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind' which was published in 2008 by Yale University Press. He writes a regular online column for the Financial Times's New Economy Policy Forum.
Seminar:Dr Frances Pinter on "A Publisher's perspective on the Future of Academic Publishing in the Digital Era"
Following the publication of Lawrence Lessig's 'Remix' in October 2008, Bloomsbury Academic will be publishing research in the areas of Humanities and Social Sciences. Publications will be available on the Web free of charge under Creative Commons licences. Simultaneously, physical books will be produced and sold around the world.
Dr Pinter's seminar presentation will draw together many of the different publishing issues (and the contexts in which they arise) that are challenging publishers during this transition period. and try to make sense of how the various factors impact on one another. She will present some new business models designed to be both open and sustainable.
About the speaker:
Frances Pinter is Publisher of Bloomsbury Academic, a radically new scholarly imprint which was launched in September 2008.
At the age of 23, Dr Pinter was the first woman to establish her own publishing company in the UK. She also founded the environmental studies imprint Belhaven Press and acquired the humanities imprint Leicester University Press. She has extensive international experience as an entrepreneur and leader in the commercial and non-profit sectors. Among other things she has: established companies, and advised others how to set up new operations and transform existing ones; acted as consultant to Creative Commons; worked with George Soros to devise multi-million dollar programmes supporting publishing and education in Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism; and conducted research on alternative licencing practices in developing countries.