Anthologize enables anyone working with WordPress to grab blog posts, feeds, or newly-authored works; craft and edit the content; and then publish that content as a compelling volume available in several formats, including PDF, ePub, and TEI, an open XML format for storage and exchange.

Scholars, cultural heritage professionals, and educators are increasingly turning to blogs to disseminate their ideas, but content often lies dormant after it is posted. Anthologize harvests and organizes that digitally-created content and enables new types of collaborative and process-oriented authored publications. Anthologize is flexible, making it attractive to many users. Educators can generate collections of student work; curators can publish new types of exhibition catalogs with behind-the-scenes perspectives; genealogists can publish family histories; and bloggers can generate selections of their best work for print or distribution via Kindle, Nook, or iPad.

Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the One Week | One Tool project was inspired by the model of rural “barn-raising” traditions to bring twelve dynamic individuals to CHNM with the mission to create, build, and release a digital tool useful to humanities scholars in seven days. The project offered the team a short course in the principles of open source software development, collaborative project management, and community outreach. The project’s team included professors, museum professionals, recent university graduates, graduate students, librarians, and digital humanities staff.

To learn more and download the tool, visit <http://anthologize.org>. The time has come to move your work from a blog to the bookshelf.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Issue #1: In order to receive the text messages, which we were told would include explanations of Shakespeare’s “archaic” language and jokes, we were told to text a keyword to a specific number. Should’ve been simple, right? Right, unless you were an iPhone user and/or AT&T subscriber; in that case you were greeted with the words “No Service”! A bit hard to send or receive texts that way.

Issue #2: Use of Twitter=#EPIC FAIL. While the intentions were promising the execution was poor. Unfortunately, the producers or directors (or whoever’s bright idea this was) clearly did not understand how Twitter works or how Tweeters use it. The instructions read: To follow the conversation on Twitter, follow ayliregent. As a TweetDeck user I tried at first to follow using a search string–which worked for the first few tweets since “ayliregent” were included; however, after about a half hour of no tweets I went searching for the problem and found that “ayliregent” was not in fact a stream but was a user. So, rather than creating a stream in which audience members could participate, we were left only to receive canned messages being pushed to us by the user ayliregent. (A quick review of “ayliregent’s” stream for the past shows proved a verbatim copy of the tweets we received.)

Bothersome, but not all together unexpected given the venue, were the content of many of the posts. Shakespeare’s more saucy bits were white-washed and many of the tweets included biblical references (see sample tweets below). Apparently it was also important for audience members to know that Shakespeare was Christian–as evidenced by the direction via tweets to various webpages. I am a Christian—although not of the Pat Robertson variety—and this propaganda-like pushing of a Christian agenda was very off-putting even to me.

Overall, I think the idea had merit and could have been very interesting, but the execution was poor—due mostly to a limited understanding of how to use the technology.

From: Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. I tried to post it using their embed code, but it’s ancient. (I mean, c’mon guys iFrames?! Really?!)

WHERE DO THESE ADMINISTRATORS COME UP WITH THESE IDIOTIC RULINGS? (Yes, this makes me very mad!) How is taking a still from a movie any different than taking a quote from a text? The student was not asking to reproduce the entire film in her thesis, rather she wanted to take 4 or 5 screen shots of particular moments in the film for the sake of analysis, which according to the US Copyright Office is legal under the Fair Use Doctrine:

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered “fair,” such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. (emphasis added)

What makes me even more upset is although this student was glad to hear she was right and the administrator was wrong, she didn’t feel like she could rock the boat by challenging said administrator’s ruling; after all, he still had to approve her thesis before she could graduate. I offered to sit down with her and craft out a well reasoned argument that she could take to her chair or the administrator; I even offered to have a word with both of them on her behalf, but she felt uncomfortable with either of these options. So, this student is going to go forward writing her thesis using only text knowing that she should be able to use visual elements. All because one administrator is misinformed, uninformed or just scared by the big bad corporations.

Sad, very very sad.

US Copyright Office–Fair Use. (2006). Retrieved May 13, 2009 from http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html.

Collin Brooke: My Last Day as Grad Director?

Steve Krause: Searching Thoughts

I’m really glad that you found a new chum on the way across the country; however, will you please SHUT UP! Believe it or not, there are 130 others of us on this plane who don’t care what version of the Blackberry you have, what you think the pros and cons are of switching to an iPhone, or what your solutions are for the economy. And to the guy in 17 D, for heaven’s sake, learn how to sit still. You are already keeping me from sleeping and all that moving you’re doing is making the back of your seat bounce off my laptop screen, so now I can’t watch a movie or work either!

This is not a private jet, you are not more special than any other passenger on this plane, and if I have to hear about 17 F being the top salesman for his company an eleventh time I swear I’m going to reach up over the head rest and smack you both!

Sincerely,
Disgruntled in 18 D

Assistant Professor, Rhetoric and Composition, tenure-track. The English Department at Old Dominion University seeks a PhD (earned by August 15, 2009) in Rhetoric and Composition, English, or closely related field who can demonstrate expertise and ongoing research interests in rhetorical theory, modern/contemporary rhetoric, or digital rhetoric.P ublications and the ability to teach history of rhetoric, rhetoric of science, digital rhetoric, or research methods are desirable. The successful candidate will be prepared to contribute to the English doctoral program in (1) Professional Writing and New Media and (2) Rhetoric and Textual Studies and provide evidence of good college teaching. Old Dominion University is a Research 1 state university located in the coastal city of Norfolk, Virginia. Send letter of application, CV, and 3 letters of reference to Dr. Jeffrey H. Richards, Chair, Department of English, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529. Review of applicants will begin March 30, 2009. Old Dominion University is an affirmative action, equal opportunity institution and requires compliance with the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

I’m happy to answer any questions.