“If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive.”
--Audre Lorde
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Just a short note here about the talk that I attended yesterday that the CUNY Digital Humanities Initiative put on featuring Ben Vershbow of NYPL Labs: This was one of the most inspiring library-related talks I've been to in a long time. Maybe it was due to the fact that at Pratt I spent a lot of time pulling out print Sanborn maps for architecture students and puzzling over their layout and metadata that I was utterly amazed by the Map Warper project, or that I had just last summer had a discussion with Jim Danky about how important it would be if libraries would collect menus that I love the public collaborative What's on the Menu transcription project. But I suspect that even without these personal experiences, I would have been wowed by what they're up to at NYPL. It's great that they are working to share special collections in such useful ways for New Yorkers and the world. Hooray!
You can keep up with NYPL Labs at their blog, and a recording of the talk has been posted at CUNY DHI (a group who also continually impresses me).
I recently attended two great talks, both held at the Grad Center (and actually in the same room on different dates). The first was Rosemary Coombe's talk, "The Politics of Intellectual Property/Bordering Diversity and Desire" and the second was the LACUNY Instruction Committee's event, "Critical Information Literacy: The Challenge of Practice" with James Elmborg.
The best thing to me in attending discussions about pedagogy is realizing new ways to approach issues in my own library. Beyond just my notes below, I also scribbled a few things for myself to try out in the classroom after the event (which means I think this event was a success!).
Rosemary Coombe, April 6, 2011
Coombe's talk was focused upon Marks Indicating Conditions of Origin (MICOs). My notes are cryptic, but the talk was really powerful--it made me realize that there are many more IP's out in the world beyond what I'd even imagined.