Bits and Pieces

Articles:

• From The New York Times Review of Books: “Toward ‘the Digital Public Library of America’: An Exchange” by Tony Simpson and Robert Darnton [original “Can We Create a National Digital Library”] 

• First of all, I love that Jessica saw this article and thought of me.  

• Second, yes, we can and MUST create a national digital library.  One thing that stood out to me, and maybe this is because I’m so incredibly immersed in women’s writing, the female homosocial, and the lesbian continuum because of this project, is that Robert Darnton only quotes MEN in his original article – Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams.  And to that, I call shenanigans.  Last time I looked, plenty of women in our past wrote about the link between shared knowledge, literacy, education, and the democracy (and we continue to do so to this day!).  And in fact, women are completely absent from his article, unless we are counted under the gender-neutral umbrella of “citizenship.”  

• Despite my anger at the distinct lack of women, past and present, from Darnton’s article, yes, I agree – a national digital library, connected to a larger international library (an index of ALL digital libraries) needs to happen, as soon as possible.  Cooperation is needed on all levels – state, federal, private corporations, universities, colleges, the government – I think you get the picture.  And obviously, copyright is one of the biggest hurdles we face, so why not start with texts with expired copyrights, or texts that reside in special collections?  You can see that Darnton has the same idea in his reply to Simpson.  Anyways, read the articles and tell me what you think.   

• From Gizmodo: “Attention: The Web Is Not Public Domain” by Brian Barrett

• From Mashable / Social Media: “7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers” by Sarah Kessler

• From Jezebel: “What Facebook Does to Teenage Girls” by Irin Carmon
• Remember the articles about the Facebook movie, The Social Network, as a male homosocial network?  I thought this article was an interesting contrast.

• From The Frisky: “’I Am A Girl’ Documentary Looks Like A Sobfest” by Jessica Wakeman

• From Slate: “Who Gets To Be a Feminist?” by DoubleX Staff

Cool sites:

• The University of Michigan: Eighteenth Century England: A Site Created by and for Literature Students at the University of Michigan

• I found this site by accident the night my contextual documents assignment was due, Friday the 5th.  I Googled something like “essays on female friendship by women” and this popped up in the results.  It’s amazing!  I already posted the link to our WebCourses discussion board so my classmates and Dr. Logan could see it.  I’m hoping that Dr. Logan and our English Department will grant us permission to create a shell page on the UCF server that will link to all of our projects, as well as Dr. Logan’s students’ previous digital projects (whew, that was a mouthful). 

• The University of Michigan site is cumulative – so far, 143 students have contributed 54 projects, working in groups from 1999 through the present.  It’s quite impressive, especially when you see the levels of cooperation – professors, undergraduate students, graduate students, and doctoral students, as well as interdisciplinary cooperation (different departments).  

• What I love most about this site is that it is student driven and created – these are our peers, our equals.  I think sometimes that scholarship can seem intimidating because of the author, or difficult to understand (or unpack as Dr. Jones says) because of all the jargon most of which as students we’re still learning about.  These pages, on the other hand, are written in the same language and style that we are familiar with because it is our own.  So please, take a couple of minutes to explore their site and let me know what you think.

• Beeskep: 18th-century American Women

• This site also popped up in my Google results for “essays on female friendship by women” and I thought my classmates would enjoy looking through it.  The author, Beeskep, has three other sites that straddle the time periods of our class, which I’ve listed below.

• Beeskep: Early American Gardens

• Beeskep: 17th-century American Women

• Beeskep: 19th-century American Women