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!

Current research projects: professional activities of students and Net Neutrality policies

I love everything about research, especially social science research. In class on Tuesday (my final Information Policy class), a guest speaker made the point that library advocacy in Canada suffers from a lack of studies (and that using US data in Canada is rarely convincing). I couldn’t agree more – I often read articles in newspapers about studies conducted in the US and wonder, “Hmm… I wonder if this is true in Canada?” My first professional effort to address this problem was born last summer when I approached Meghan Ecclestone, a fellow student, and proposed that we study the professional development activities of students in the Faculty of Information. Some of the preliminary findings of our study were reported by Dean Seamus Ross at the Ontario Library Association conference back in January. Meghan and I will be presenting our results at this year’s Canadian Library Association Conference in Montréal.

Why did we conduct the study? First, there is almost no information on Canadian students in the information field in the literature (in fact, I found only one study anywhere, about archival studies). Second, I was curious to know more about what my fellow students were up to. Why do I think others in the profession would be interested? Well, I hope that the findings will help employers understand more about students and what they are capable of. It should also assist educators (and professional associations!) in designing programs to meet the needs of students. I don’t want to go into it too much more, but this is the sort of work that I would like to do more of. Almost everyone in education (and libraries etc) would benefit from understanding students better, especially if such understanding raises above the level of anecdote.

In addition to the above, I am conducting research for my Master’s thesis on net neutrality policy in Canada and the United States. Many in Canada may be unfamiliar with this issue as it has a lower profile here than in the US, but that is no reason not to be interested. The debate over Net Neutrality is fundamentally about the future of the Internet and its role in society. Will freedom of expression continue to be protected (or even advanced further)? Will ISPs and governments respect privavy rights? What will happen to non-profit uses of the Interenet such as health research, tele-medicine, education and so forth, if net neutrality fails to be upheld? My project is specifically focusing on the views and activity of civil society organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, the American Library Association and so forth. I hope to some day turn this project into academic articles or perhaps a book.

In addition to conducting my own research, I am interested in supporting others as well. I am a member of the Special Libraries Association Research & Development committee which provides grants to researchers. This is my first term working on this Committee and I look forward to reporting more about it later. Needless to say, if you are looking for funds to conduct research on information professionals, please do consider applying for a research grant.

Two Valuable Student Projects

In addition to my formal studies, I have also benefited from working on two student projects this academic year; a podcast and a journal. It has also been informative to play the role of founder and chair in the first case, while playing an important if not central role in the second case.

Back in the fall of 2008, I organized a group to podcast lectures at the University of Toronto. The result is the iSchool Podcast which has published seven lectures so far, with more to come. In my view, this project has been a success on at least two levels. First, I have received postive feedback from people who tell me that they appreciate the project. These kind  words are backed up by our own statistics; more than 1200 unique visitors have visited the blog and 25,000 pageviews have been registered since December 2008. I have enjoyed podcasts for several years now as a listener, so it was gratifying to give back to the podcast community. For myself, I  have also found the project valuable in that it has given me a way to learn new skills (e.g. what makes a podcast work, using Audacity, marketing, management and so forth). Managing in an all volunteer environment presents some challenges that I am still learning from. As I will be graduating this year, I am also making efforts to train and mentor other students to take over the project.

On the other front, I have worked as an editor and author for the Faculty of Information Quarterly. This is an online-only student led publication that has been interesting to work on. The journal was co-founded and currently managed by  Meghan Ecclestone, a friend and fellow student at the Faculty. So far, most of the content has been produced by students in our program but that will hopefully change in the future. Working on the journal has provided me with an opportunity to improve my editing skills further and learn more about the field, two things I enjoy doing. I am not sure what plans are in place regarding the journal’s future, but I do hope it will stay around.

Interestingly, both of these projects were not for pay or academic credit. They were both created out of an ambition to contribute to the profession and learn new skills.