Odyssey Online

…last week (while I wasn’t blogging) I was asked to track down the scope of peer reviewed research that is pubilshed on the open web, that is, the Internet one can access through any browser. The results are compiled here.  This doesn’t pretend to be exhaustive, but it is a list I’ll vouch for.  The possiblities of open access publishing of scholarly material were outlined some years ago in a Subversive Proposal by Steven Harnard, and while the items on my little list are the subversion Harnard had in mind, they are, a step?

…according to published reports (now there’s a way to start a blog post) Google has altered it’s basic search.  The LA Times reports Google has incorporated Orion search technology which, PC World explains, means Google is trying to expand into being a semantic search. Semantic search is something of an El Dorado of web searching…given that in theory a semantic search would search for concepts through the constructs of language. It would be, effectively, talking one’s way through a search. One small step, one wonders…

…although PC World also notes that as a company Google is taking a very conservative approach on other things…

…a beautiful bright March day here in Canton so lets ruin it by checking in with the Washington Post on new web 2.0 identity theft web sites where you can buy the information you need for a couple of bucks…don’t even have to do your own hacking…it’s insulting…

Dr. Celia Nyamweru and Michael Sheridan will be presenting on their book African Sacred Groves: Ecological Dynamics and Social Change on Friday, April 3rd, at 4:00 p.m. in the Josephine Young Room. The event is open to the public, and there will be an informal reception following the presentation. Hope to see you there!

…while it could just be the lousy weather, or that I have yet another birthday looming, I feel a need to vent against mobile communcation technologies.  This is partially inspired by coming across this Conor Friedersdorf essay that argues Twitter is a Fad, is the Myspace of 2009.  From my wonderful people-watching office in ODY, there are times of day that the commencement quad is nothing but people walking (some in circles) and talking into something. Or looking down at something that has little buttons they are thumbing. Why the urgent need to communicate–or, better yet, why the aversion to walking in silence. When I talk outloud while walking I make sure to be communicating with only myself (I do talk to myself a trifle much), and I simply cannot for the life of me think about how a cross campus saunter could be bad…so my advice to any and all today is to go for a walk and talk wth no one…

…an interesting post in the Economist on Facebooks and the number of friends a human being can maintain at one time.  Points to research about how many people we can network with, and works to an intersting distinction between “networking” and “broadcasting.”  Also, this is from some time ago, but Michael Gerson published in the Washington Post a provocative (and exceedingly well written) essay on Facebook and friendship. Gerson explores the relationship between self-revelation and real friendship in an intelligent and moving way, and this essay is most definately worth a read.

…Walt Crawford is an articulate commentator on issues related to libraries, book publishing, and everywhere those two institutions intersect.  He Writes Cites and Insights–a one man operation in which he examines issues of the day. I came across a piece he wrote back in 2007 where he agues convincingly for librarians and the study of librarianship that blogs are now the “most compelling and worthwhile literature in the library field today.”  No equivocating, take that RSQ.  The reach of blogs as the literature of futures has a grasp on fields other than newspapers, so says Crawford, and I find I agree.

…having heard Kindles being warmly praised at a cocktail part this weekend, I find a couple of things on Kindle technology Monday morning…Seth Godin (who I just linked to with good advice about networking) has some good advice for Amazon.com about how to vision Kindle, I like his suggestion that Amazon ask it’s customers “how can you use this platform to create a new business model?” (rather than augment a model). However, Farhad Manjoo writes that Amazon has implemented a number of onerous restrictions on book buyers, or, those content for their Kindle. In a word, to Kindle means to use Amazon to the exclusion of anyone else, to Kindle is to kill the concept of the “used book.” The Used Book, see, Birch Bark Books, Colton New York.