radref's blog

Here at radref, we've been having a discussion about how to get alternative materials into library collections.

Hello, Grisham -- So Long, Hemingway?

Shinjoung and I just got back from our 2 week tour driving the Internet Archive's bookmobile around Northern CA. We learned tons and talked to lots of folks about copyright/public domain, libraries and their local communities, how new technologies affect libraries, and how libraries can integrate the 250,000 (and growing) digital public domain books and other digital content from the Internet Archive.

Since this has been in the news a lot lately, I thought I'd upload it for your viewing/downloading pleasure:

Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat. NYPD.

Last week, Shinjoung and I were invited to participate at the Crisis of the California Commons Conference. Our panel discussion was with Megan Shaw Prelinger, Annalee Newitz and Bodo Balazs entitled, "Information Commons: Rebirth or Siren Song?" I think there was a lot of discussion about different commmons (environmental, cultural, information etc) that resonate for librarians in general and documents librarians (keepers of the public domain!). You can access the audio here.

A live webcast of a discussion on the impact of government suppression
and manipulation of scientific information on public health, safety, and
accountability at national, state, and local levels, entitled “Closed

Hi all, below are the updated "minutes" such as they are. I think there are a few items for discussion. I'll post on the list as well.

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Radical Reference meeting
Pan African Market, Seattle

I was talking with a friend today about Rich Lowry, the "editor" of the National Review, and it reminded me of the editorial that Shinjoung and I wrote in response to one of Lowry's columns about librarians and the USA PATRIOT Act. So I thought I'd post our letter to the editor of the San Diego Tribune. And for fairness' sake, I've posted Lowry's original drivel below the fold (as it should be!). Read on:

Some of you may remember me posting about my delicious dream project of using delicious to build a radical reference reference shelf of Web resources. Well, as you can see by the delicious tags in the right column, the dream is becoming reality! Thanks Jenna for adding the del.icio.us block to the radref site!!

I was listening to KPFA, my local pacifica station this morning, and they were having a fund drive for the Pacifica Radio Archives. The archives contain the voices of 20th century people's history: Studs Terkel, Mahalia Jackson, James Baldwin, and *many* more voices of the people, peace and justice! The fund drive is needed to support their preservation project (and other projects) which seeks to digitize many of the old tapes in the archive.