Where's the glamour in the GLAM sector?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/goodfeets/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Some of the issues facing the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector in Australia getting digital content up online and freely available got aired last week at the GLAM Wiki seminar held at the Australian War Memorial Museum in Canberra. Strikes this pixie that the comfort of the wide avenues and streets of the location of the seminar rather reflected the expected ease with which GLAM-our queens wish to glide along to get collections online. It is understandable really, life is much easier when the roads are all built and you have a good car to drive, air-conditioning and clement weather. Your hair doesn't get mussed and you arrive looking good enough for a photo-shoot.

The hard bitten truth of the matter is - it is not easy and it never will be - to get content up online - but - it will get slightly easier as long as the community keeps these issues on the agenda and works through issues and we give each other support. It is an old-fashioned term "capacity building" - a term which describes, in the case of the cultural sector in particular or the humanities in general, what these sectors require.

The GLAM sector like the digital humanities domain requires an injection of investment to jump-start the ability to operate online. Much of the discussion at the high levels (read: NCRIS) seems to settle upon the funding of infrastructure (technical) in eResearch realms in Australia. It is as if somehow magically all domains will conform and behave like the hard sciences, i.e. self-organised, well-established in the digital realm, high usage of technology, with high levels of computer literacy and a "problem" to be solved. Please note, these are not "qualities" that can readily be attributed to the humanities sector. Does beg the question.... was a needs analysis ever done to ascertain what it would take to get the different domains (science, arts, social sciences and humanities) piping content online to drive the Australian economy forward?

How odd it is that New Zealand has a digital content strategy (see DigitalNZ) and Australia doesn't. Hasn't anyone noticed this or were they too busy investigating infrastructure and constructing competitive funding rounds or worrying about the state of the roads and their hair? Ah yes - Warwick Cathro from National Library of Australia has noticed it and written about it: "New Zealand has developed a Digital Content Strategy which proposes a nationwide digitization programme based on key local, regional and national content. Australia is yet to develop a similar policy and funding framework.". A digital content strategy for Australia would not be glamourous at all. In fact capacity building is thoroughly plain... plain and yet absolutely necessary. It is a bit like getting a decent haircut really - any styling or primping afterwards is sheer frivolity and the stuff of powderpuff dreams.

Yes I'm being somewhat tart about this....'scuse the pun. Before too many GLAM-our pusses get too glum... I say reach for your snazzy designer sunglasses... tie your hair back and get stuck in. Even Jackie O had to wait for her moment in the sun - but behind that smile was, I suspect, a woman of great tenacity and forbearance.

Internet Trinkets

Dan-O-Rama Productions

Pixel Hotel

Portable Film Festival

Modamuse

Madeleine Brown

The Elegant Variation

Packaging Australia

What is it about this movie that is disquieting?

For this viewer it is the contrast between the cultural issues (many isms) highlighted: racism, sexism, capitalism, sexual exploitation, social class, romance, religion, alcoholism, colonialism, tradition (to mention a few) and, the manner in which they are portrayed and delivered.

What is at the centre of this story? A young boy of mixed race is at the centre of the story (and he is the narrator and one of the main characters) and a legacy of oppression of indigenous peoples. What is wrapped around this is a layer of western history (ideas and conventions) thence delivered like a stagey pastiche.

Why this means of engaging with Australian colonial history is so disquieting is that the 'grandness' of this movie seems so distinctly at odds with the past and ongoing reality and experience of Australia's indigenous peoples. The movie jarrs, perhaps it was meant to, to remind its predominantly white audiences that the treatment and social experience of many of Australia's indigenous peoples hasn't changed that much.

It seems incongruous to be portraying cultural oppression of such length and tragedy in such a flamboyant, cheesy and exaggeratedly dramatic post-modern way. In parts of the movie the farce of cliche helps to relieve the cringe factor. Perhaps this is a means also of getting the audience to begin to engage with the reality... but I somehow doubt this is the most effective means of reminding viewers of cultural disenfranchisement that persists in Australia today. It is more likely that the viewer is encouraged to fixate on the romance and the scenic backdrop in this movie, the cultural angst just a useful ingredient in the frenzied beribboned (with a touch of the dusty wholesome outback) mix.

Why was it necessary to have such a romantic 'happy' ending with two white people, caring for a mixed race boy, with his mother dead, and the only other aboriginal character of any moment, dying, martyring himself, and the grandfather figure a somewhat less credible ghostly presence? What message does this send? White folks get the happy ending, and the winsome looking kid will get looked after? Was the happy ending chosen to provide emotional relief? To have left the romantic affair unresolved, to have allowed the drover to die, would mean that the other unresolved and unpleasant pieces of the story of Australian colonisation would have remained equally foregrounded, tragic and problematic, and then, it would make audiences too uncomfortable?

Reality bites... this movie seems to blow ardent, but not very satisfying kisses.

Commando?

Software Takes Command / Lev Manovich

Here is a manuscript theorising digital culture published on the web in the manner of an open source technical development. The manuscript is not technical in nature but references technology development explicitly in a theoretical manner. Here are my thoughts says Manovich; comment and/or fix as you see fit and these moderated contributions will be integrated into the work for the greater good. Not only is a new area of study being promulgated "software studies" but theoretical ideas are being distributed through a different (though possibly a more appropriate mode) means of publishing, that is, open access self-publishing with the call for community feedback and contribution (à la web 2.0). This manner and act of publishing seems a logical leap for a theorist (once was programmer) in digital culture, in accord with the self-expression via the web as part of digital culture and in sync with the rise in the implementation of open access repositories in academic institutions. However, is a leap in practice such as this, one that the academic community, and researchers, are ready to accept, let alone a leap they might make themselves? If not, why not, and if so, what effect might those leaps have on scholarly communication patterns?

First things first, what is driving this desire to get information (in its nascent stage of expression) out online sans the application of the usual editing and publishing processes of academic publishing? The drive is the urge to get ideas out quickly, to claim them as your own, and yet also to allow others to lay claim to their own contributions as they build upon or comment upon the work. What is the difference between this style of publishing and the traditional style of scholarly communication? The traditional style of scholarly communication being: the development of a manuscript, surveyed by editors (with or without bias), thence vetted by peers (blindly or not), pushed for review (where required) and then reassessed and reworked by proofreaders. The difference between open access and traditional publishing is the time and the ability to undertake the dialogue with interested parties (and by interested that might mean those that agree or disagree) directly.

So, what effect does this change in timeframe and roles of engagement with audience have on the academic author and on the participants? The academic author must participate proactively, in the hope that the audience will follow and respond in kind. The academic author must bear the brunt directly of criticism or bask in accolades and the responsibility for the work and respond to the forces he/she unleashes, and, also drive the interest in the work, because there are no machines of the academic publishing industry generating advertising and stimulating review through its distribution channels. The author as savvy exploiter of the vast communication potential of the internet may derive what they can from the power of networking and networked communities of interest they are already tapped into. Is this level of direct involvement and control something that more academics want (and do the attendant research community want it too)? What then happens to those subject areas that are ill-suited to this pace of intellectual exchange? Are we looking at a tipping point in changes to scholarly communication? A glance back in time might compare this happenstance with the advent of printing and wider and faster distribution of academic works (and by works that includes pamphlets and the letters exchanged between individuals or transactions of societies of erudition). Exchanges between thinkers (and opportunities for those just wishing to listen) became readily available (and facilitated) outside of society drawing rooms and exclusive coffee houses.

Open access publishing is a well established convention of scholarly communication for computer scientists and physicists. This openness in publishing and to review is not however the most ready means to demonstrate their scholarly capacity to a panel of assessors looking for academic method and rigour in the current policy trend for measuring of scholarly outputs as a means to base funding allocation. So, these academics find that they must write historical articles, documenting the experiments and research and development work they have undertaken (incorporating the comments they may have drawn out by making their ideas freely available and/or openly accessible) and providing evidence of exchange in less formal fora. Has this stopped these academics from sharing their ideas openly in workshops and online? No, one assumes these academics simply rewrite their material for a different publication and audience. Curiously though, coincidentally publishers have become aware of the value of this fulcrum of intellectual exchange in these informal fora. The scholarly publishers have begun to formally publish these (traditionally unpublished and oft undocumented) ideas in workshop and seminar sessions in proceedings as a means of capitalising upon the value of that newness (and no doubt with a view to continuing to do so in whatever form). Has the academic publishing process been turned on its head (or turned inside out) or is it being jostled around? Why is the newness of ideas (nascent in form) valuable to publishers and the research community, but not valued as highly in the performance assessment processes? The debate about the privatisation of academic research and in the last ten to fifteen years and performance assessment regimes in the last ten years (and the rise of open access) is a complex economic and political discussion for another time.

In the mean time, the following are some of the assumptions underlying the open access publishing of an academic book under a Creative Commons licence; that the:

• research community will embrace this means of scholarly communication, given the nature of the approach and particularly, the subject matter
• quality of the manuscript is such that it is 'ready enough' for consumption, and the function of the work (means with which to enlighten) overrides form (means with which to convey)
• means of distribution via the internet (and viral marketing) optimises and/or increases exposure of new ideas in the relevant social networks
• channels for collective review on the internet are an effective means for highlighting academic works to those outside those immediate social networks
• ease of integration of e-books (whether published traditionally or via open access) with learning in a digital environment will be possible for readers in developed and developing countries to benefit from (though perhaps in different ways)
• publication as it evolves is just as likely (if not more likely) to make the course list in this discipline as one fixed in form and shaped through the traditional means of publishing
• citation count mechanisms cover traditional and open access published works, e.g., Web of Science, so the impact on scholarly thinking can be just as easily quantified (if that is desirable measure and aids with academic performance assessment)

In sum: bypassing the established channels for peer editorial review, publication and independent review is fitting not only for this proposed new discipline "software studies". Bypassing traditional publishing this way is a prompt to consider some of the problems with current academic publishing processes where many ideas are stifled (and potentially lost) by the drawn out process of traditional scholarly publishing (and its inherent biases). Academic insight, like freshly diced vegetables quickly, finely and precisely cut for swift consumption offers a different gustatory experience to that of savouring biting an uncut crisp apple, bite by bite, and licking the juice up as it makes it way down your chin.

Perhaps... the burgeoning of new disciplines in the digital humanities such as "software studies" might help to dispel the idea that humanities scholars ponder longer and relish the traditional publishing process more than their academic cousins in the sciences.

Perhaps... the evolution of this manuscript might help to contradict notions that speed of production is superior or reaffirm the notion that the means of communication should necessarily be being appropriate to the audience, and some improve over time with further review and contribution.

Perhaps... the old chestnuts about the nature of the discipline (and those attracted to them) and the meritorious dissection and evaluation of arts versus science; text versus performance; brevity versus depth; quantification versus qualification; mass versus minutiae; can be put to rest.

Perhaps... it is as simplistic as two social forces at work here: the demands of technology and the agents of change; and/or the demands of new knowledge and the place for tradition?

Watch this space. Somewhat ironic, potentially coincidental; the title of this text is about software - assuming - control. Is it really the software assuming control or is it simply human nature to find new ways to do the same thing?

Perhaps... a remix..

The popularity of wrinkles and being online..or not..

What is it with all this angst about looks and the fading thereof?

What would be useful to know is how much of this anxiety about the loss of physical prowess and attractiveness has been consistent over time; and, whether in the twentieth century with the changes to social and economic structures in the developed world, this has increasingly become a publicly acceptable neurosis. Or, is it simply media hype, a means of tapping into people's fears that works rather effectively and sells rather well that this hits the public radar so regularly.

What is it about the appearance of youth as compared with age that seems to hold the advantage in people's minds (and the way they view their bodies)?

The stereotypes are obvious: youth = vigour = desirability whereas agedness = decrepitude = undesirability. Equally trotted out in response are: youth = naive = foolish whereas agedness = wisdom = smart. All of which strike as somewhat trite and meaningless when swung together, given that wisdom is not limited to age, though experience does offer an advantage. The only constant is that physical 'fitness' is different as a person ages. Why is there no discussion about how people don't 'revitalise' their minds? Perhaps minds are not something people worry about in the greater scheme of things.

On the flip side to this debate, regularly "the youth of today" are blamed for all manner of evils in comparison with their more virtuous parents or predecessors. In counterbalance to this the aged are often accused of hogging the power structures. What is it about this tension between youth and age that smacks of authority and freedom and power and control? It sometimes sounds like a squabble between a 'parent' and a 'child', that rarely seems to enter into the 'adult'.

Is some of this discussion about the worship of "youth" and the desperate need to retain (or rebuild) youthfulness in looks, that seems at an odd disconnect with no discussion about the attitudes and trends associated with this desired age group? Does someone who uses botox or some other type of bodily intervention that aims to reduce the assessment of their appearance by 10 years think about shifting their mental age too? Why is there this split between the way a person's body looks and yet no discussion about how people adjust their minds to being perceived of as 10 years younger. In except that their ability to feel good about themselves in the same way that they did when they were younger, is retained, through physical intervention.

Anyway, what prompted this thinking was a review by a Rory Cellan-Jones entry on the BBC dot.life blog about social networking sites and his opinion that they were settling down in terms of their community member 'types'.



Bebo for kids, MySpace for Music buffs, and Facebook for university students and young professionals. I wondered whether at any point social networking sites will emerge for the older generation (not withstanding that some older individuals may well be on MySpace in the community of music lovers - but I somehow doubt they are plentiful), Twitter for technophiles (there is another broader category that isn't limited to the youthful - but again I suspect its greater membership is under 40 presently). Perhaps this perceived disproportion of youth presented in the media, and most certainly in internet discussions, is relates the idea that internet technology is the tool of the youthful masses (or the technically savvy) and not for the 50+ for social networking or using. As these internet users get older perhaps the reflections of age might seem more evenly spread, or representative, in presence, attitude and in commentary online, and in effect.

This thought was generated by reading Steven Hodson's blog on Mashable that punctures the notion that social networking has some impact. It sounded, just as he described himself, like the kind of comment that comes from a 'cranky old fart' who has lost his faith in the power of opinion. But he does seem to poke in the direction of the division between those older folks 'in power' and those that are on the 'net and the real ability to effect social change within the current political and social systems. Maybe with greater ability to be mobile in one's computing, and have that integrated into these systems, irrespective of age, the ability to communicate this to the rest of the world quickly becomes more flexible and change perhaps more viable. Though I suspect significant amounts of information passed down social networking sites potentially isn't about effecting social change and more about fashion and expression; and that's nothing new to the realms of the media in print or online. Some things perhaps haven't changed?

The one nice aspect to the anonymity the internet can afford is that one can hide one's age quite easily, and that may or may not benefit young and old and older. Whether one can hide the attitudes, ideas or opinions that have shaped your mind in the generation you were born in is another matter. Begs the question whether some people can be perceived of as ageless in their thoughts expressed online. In this miasma of neurosis about the youthfulness of one's appearance (and ever presence online), isn't there some interesting irony in that coincidence?

Funding scientific research - survival of the fittest?

After reading several articles in the New Scientist (December 2007 & January 2008) on cuts in physics and astronomy funding in the UK and the US it made me ponder on some of the issues that arise in the debate over what should get researched and why. These are not piddling physics or astronomy projects they are multi-million pound/dollar international collaborations to build and use complex technologies to smash particles or gaze into the skies and gather vast amounts data to process and contemplate.

Aside the obvious issues that arise when plugs are pulled on ventures already committed to, the mass reorganisation and unemployment, etc, how on earth is it that this funding has been cut at this point in the proceedings? Did someone somewhere take a look at the funding to science per se in either country and finally look at what was sustainable or cost-effective or in the nation’s ‘interests’ and go ‘ah – no, we’re going to cut off the money to speculative ventures and focus on functional scientific research now - sorry guys, the funding ground has shifted’?

So, how AND why is research funded I guess are questions that came to mind. What science is being funded and why?

• Do policy makers take a functional approach? One of the arguments put forward for physics research is that particle smashing may help science figure out an alternative means of providing energy other than using fossil fuels or nuclear fission.
• Do policy makers take a speculative approach? If time is spent analysing the activity in the universe it may be possible to answer some of the questions about how the earth was formed and..?
• Do policy makers take a competitive approach? If time is spent looking at how space is formed it may prove an advantage in terms of new spaces or material resources to exploit?

If there is a return calculated into this, how is it measured? Does a tangible return need to be apparent within a certain timeframe, e.g. 5, 10, 20 or 50 years and some economic or social gain derived thereof or is it an intangible return, i.e. more scientific knowledge is of value per se? Who is balancing the ‘books’ and how?

Given there are issues with the privatisation of pharmaceutical, genetic or biotechnological research, i.e. the derivation of private and/or public good, how does the mishmash of private/public funding work to advance scientific knowledge overall?

No doubt there are economic models and theories that weigh the interests of private/public economic gain. When is it beneficial for an area of research and development to be publicly shared? Is it only when it is to solve a problem that once cracked everyone then gains (or scrabbles to market) when a solution is found? At the point it becomes beneficial for the intellectual property embedded in research and development to be locked down and thence exclusively privately funded and exploited. Not only does this strike as an economic debate it is conceivably a political and philosophical one. Sometimes benefits are not that easy to estimate let alone measure or value, i.e. only possible retrospectively so or in value laden statements, not numbers. It comes down to perceived risk and shared and competing interests potentially.

An example comes to mind with the cooperation between scientists in many countries to develop vaccines to immunise against virus epidemics (problem solved). These new vaccines are then packaged up (commoditised) and sold. The human genome project is another obvious recent example.

The human genome project underwent some wrestling of private and public interests, but ended up being a shared public venture. There are considerable spin offs commercially as a result of the public investment by public and private funded research institutes.

Every year researchers/experts/academics gnash their teeth over who has scored funding from the public purse. It is potentially a different experience to lose out to a competitor when pitching for private funds, the argument being very clearly and cleanly about return on investment in net profit terms. Whoever can demonstrate the better financial return is more likely to win the investment. It becomes more complex when the return on investment is less clearly defined and is a ‘public good’; unless of course, what follows on from that is further scientific development that might then provide economic return. When it comes to public funding though, there is ostensibly some balance of tangible and intangible returns to benefit the community.

So, back to physics: is this one of those areas of research that has just lost political favour; is it that the link between what is being researched and what benefits might come from it no longer hold their weight in comparison to other areas of science; or is it just that the return on investment hasn’t come quickly enough; is it that the funding is just too vast and seems frivolous when there is a rise in genetics or climate change research? Perhaps it is a combination of these factors and aspects of competition just as much as collaboration.

Does make one wonder though, that if there has been such strong international buy-in by the physics and astronomical research communities (and its funding bodies) why are two of the larger developed economies are stepping back from it? Is it because the “new frontiers” of genetics and climate change offer more immediate return (market opportunities and political support) or is has the attitude to the intangible benefits of expanding scientific horizons shifted and are physicists and astronomers being called to account?

What makes a search engine biased?

I have been thinking about the sensitivities surrounding China's growing internet culture with regard to censorship and freedom of speech. The Universities of Leiden and Heidelburg archive websites with a view to supporting Chinese studies - see Digital Archive for CHinese Studies (DACHS). A very strict control is kept on who gets to use that collection, no doubt for good reasons. Why? Political control and freedom of speech concerns in China. Might be worth taking a look at Nicolai Volland's PhD thesis The Control of the Media in the People's Republic of China.

This territory of censorship is not new or exclusive to China though - other countries around the world are looking to tighten their laws to 'control' the content viewable by its citizens, including France and Australia. Admittedly the reasons for control in China may well be different to that of other countries; but these governmental interventions beg questions. How much government control over publicly available content should be asserted? How much should people be allowed to determine that at their end, i.e. let the user drive?


What I find more intriguing, possibly because it is less obvious, is the underlying programming in the development of Baidu the search engine and its ability to enable effective information retrieval with Chinese characters and search strings. The fact Baidu indexes websites that search engines like Google don't have access to is an obvious advantage. An article I read in New Scientist (Beyond the great firewall, November 2007) refers to the fact that many Chinese people use Baidu also because it processes Chinese characters more effectively and indexes websites possibly not indexed by Google.

Aside the content bias (or constraints), I began to think a bit about the fact that a great deal of computer coding is done in English, a la, the lingua franca of computer programming is English. It made me wonder about the coding in Google, and how effectively Google handles diverse language content (in its alogrithms) and how much those linguistic calculations are based on an understanding (mostly) of English, or many languages? Is the lingua franca of coding English too with Baidu? Are their linguistic calculations for search different because of the nature of Chinese characters? I don't know, but it pays to look below the surface (i.e. content) too, to see how the internet is or isn't working for information retrieval irrespective of the political controls being asserted over the top of this.

How well have the world's Chinese speakers been served by Google? If they prefer Baidu, what is that about? Is it just better indexing and search results is there something else? How do Baidu and Google compare and what basis are they best compared on? Which is biased in what way and by what?