The iSchool Podcast Reborn

After working with files and the Internet Archive interface for hours, I’m proud to tell you that the iSchool Podcast is reborn. As you may know, when I was a graduate student, I founded the iSchool Podcast project. The podcast reflects my interests and those of my fellow students; book history, Internet developments and other interests. If you’re into the history of books, library things, computing and the Internet, then you’ll like this. Sadly, the original iSchool Podcast website disappeared in the summer of 2009 when an IT change at the University killed the website. I don’t have a back up of all the material that was on the blog (man, I’m angry about that – it was lots of work!) but I do have the recordings still. I’ve uploaded all the recordings to the Internet Archive and will provide an overview of the recordings here. I’ve enjoyed podcasts on several different subjects (e.g. economics, Napoleon, current affairs, and more) for years now and I hope you enjoy this.

Oh, by the way, if you liked the podcasts, please share your views in a comment. Also, I haven’t edited the recordings so if you try to look up the website mentioned at the end of the recording, you probably will not find anything. However, you can comment here and let me know what you think. Enjoy! The episode list is mainly based on my memory of how the series unfolded, so it might be a bit different from how it was originally presented.

Episode 1: “Was there a Reading Revolution in the New American Republic?” by Professor Robert Gross (originally recorded October 3, 2008)

Episode 2: “From Capell to Tanselle: Bibliography and Humanities Scholarship” by Richard Landon (originally recorded October 29, 2009)

Episode 3: “The Virtues of Vice; Or, Resuscitating Early Black Atlantic Gallows Literature” by Professor Jeannine DeLombard (originally recorded November 18, 2009)

Episode 4: Knowledge at the End of the Information Age by David Weinberger (November 2009)

Episode 5: Dalhousie University’s New Bachelor of Informatics Program by Professor Ernest Grunke

Episode 6: Books, Communication and Exchange: The Frankfurt Book Fair and Early Modern Print Culture by Professor Paul Nelles (originally recorded February 27, 2009)

Episode 7: The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing’s Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine by Charles Petzold

Episode 8: Memory Practices And The Imagined Future Self by Dr. Geoffrey Bowker (originally recorded March 2009 at the Housing Memory Conference)

Episode 9: Why Copyright: The Fight for Canada’s Digital Future by Professor Michael Geist (originally recorded April 14, 2009)

Episode 10: “Letter Perfect: A Brief History of Letter Forms and Their Uses in the Period of Transition from Manuscript to Print” by Professor Martha Driver (originally recorded March 19, 2009)

Episode 11: Open Education Around the World by Professor Jim Slotta and Stian Haklev

….

That’s it!

Final iSchool Podcast episode of 2008-2009

At long last, the iSchool Podcast has released the final episode of its inaugural year, 2008-2009. The final podcast will be of interest to scholars of book history and writing in particular as the noted Professor Martha Driver discusses, “Letter Perfect: A Brief History of Letter Forms and Their Uses in the Period of Transition from Manuscript to Print.” Working on the this volunteer project has been a great education and experience. I continue to find podcasts very useful and would like to make more of them in some future context.

New iSchool Podcast episode: Professor Michael Geist on “Why Copyright? The Fight for Canada’s Digital Future.”

I took a break from working on my thesis (exploring the role of civil society organizations in the Net Neutrality debate in Canada and the United States) to finish producing a new episode for the iSchool Podcast. This 90 minute lecture by Dr. Michael Geist (professor of law at the University of Ottawa) explores trends in copyright and how copyright affects a great deal of modern life. As usual, the lecture is free to download and distribute. Have a look here: The iSchool Podcast Episode 10: Professor Michael Geist on “Why Copyright? The Fight for Canada’s Digital Future.” The lecture given in mid April as part of CASLIS Toronto’s speaker series.

New iSchool Podcast episode published: Keynote Address from the Housing Memory Conference

Yesterday afternoon, a new episode of the iSchool Podcast was published; it is a recording of the keynote address given a few weeks ago at the Housing Memory Conference. The topic of the lecture is, “Memory Practices and the Imagined Future Self“” and it was given by Professor Geoffrey C. Bowker. There were some difficulties in producing the recording, but it should still be usable. My apologies for the the Question & Answer section at the end – recording that portion of lectures is always difficult. That is an ironic problem to have in this case, as one of the core themes of the lecture “what do we choose to remember and how?.”

As usual, the episode was produced using a handheld battery-powered recorder and Audacity, everybody’s favourite free open-source audio editor.