Great timing for us, as we record the podcast on the very day the US Appeals Court rules that yes, scanning in-copyright books for the purpose of creating an online index of them is indeed a transformative and therefore fair use. Huzzah! The way is clear for all kinds of things now. We also talk about a new digital humanities / libraries tool called BigDIVA that launched today, discussing mainly its plan to become a subscription-based paid service. That leads into a brief digression on the recent patent win by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation against Apple, which could potentially raise almost half a billion dollars for the University of Wisconsin system (just enough to make up for proposed budget cuts). We refrain from comment. Finally, Stephen Robertson reports on RRCHNM’s plan to build a new tool called Tropy, which would help researchers organize the pictures they take in archives.

Related Links

• “Google Books Scanning Legal,” Infodocket, http://www.infodocket.com/2015/10/16/ruling-just-in-google-book-scanning-project-legal-says-u-s-appeals-court/
• “Google Books Litigation Family Tree,” Library Copyright Alliance, http://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/storage/documents/google-books-litigation-tree-16oct2015.pdf
• “Online Tool [BigDIVA] Aims to Help Researchers Sift Through 15 Centuries of Data,” NCSU press release, https://news.ncsu.edu/2015/10/big-diva-2015/
• “Apple’s Newest Courtroom Foe is a Patent-Savvy University,” Reuters, http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/16/us-apple-patent-wisconsin-idUSKCN0SA09G20151016
• “RRCHNM to Build Software [Tropy] to Help Researchers Organize Digital Photographs,” RRCHNM blog, http://chnm.gmu.edu/news/rrchnm-to-build-software-to-help-researchers-organize-digital-photographs/
• Stephen Robertson on Tropy, http://drstephenrobertson.com/news/tropy-a-tool-to-organize-describe-share-digital-images-taken-in-research/
• Sean Takats on Tropy, http://quintessenceofham.org/2015/10/02/hello-tropy-soon/

Running time: 44:54

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In this episode, regulars Mills Kelly, Dan Cohen, and Stephen Robertson were joined by special guest Sharon Leon, the Director of Public Projects at RRCHNM, along with the digital history fellows, Amanda Reagan and Stephanie Seal.  We picked up where we left off last week with a discussion about Twitter and academic freedom after the dismissal of tenured professor Steven Salaita from the University of Illinois. Then we moved to a discussion on the future of Learning Management Systems and their role in academic institutions, as well as praise for the new online journal JSTOR Daily. Our last topic of discussion surrounded the ever ongoing question of whether or not those in the digital humanities should to learn how to code.  This conversation was spurred by the new platform Exercism that teaches users to code by encouraging more experienced programmers to provide feedback on a user’s code.   We wrapped up the discussion with news from Sharon Leon about upcoming Omeka enhancements, upgrades, and features.

Links:

Academic Freedom and Twitter

• Denial of Job to Harsh Critic of Israel Divides Advocates of Academic Freedom — Chronicle of Higher Education

Educause Learning Management Systems Report

• LMSs by the Numbers – Spring 2014 Updates
• The Current Ecosystem of Learning Management Systems in Higher Education: Student, Faculty, and IT Perspectives
• Where Does the LMS Go From Here?

JSTOR Daily 

• JSTOR Daily
• New Online Journal Offers Daily Dips Into JSTOR’s Deep Archive

Exercism.io

• Out in the Open: The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

Omeka Enhancements, Upgrades, and New Features

• IMLS Funds Opening Omeka for Close and Distant Reading
• IMLS Funds Omeka Everywhere

Running time: 55:25
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In the absence of Amanda French, Dan, Tom, Mills and Stephen were assisted by only two Amandas.  Tom and Stephen kicked off this podcast with A 2007-2015 discussion of new rules for the electronic management of government records and the implications of these new rules for transparency and historical access.  We then heard Dan’s thoughts on the Open Syllabus Project, which resulted in a discussion about how educators share or borrow from each others syllabi.  One of the questions raised was whether or not syllabus writers can claim copyright over their content, which segued nicely into A 2007-2015 discussion of Blackboard’s new open source policies.  Our group noted open sourced does not necessarily mean open access.  Finally, the group celebrated the first birthday of the Digital Public Library of America and congratulated Dan on its success.

Big Changes in Store for the Future Management of Government Records

• http://blog.historians.org/2014/04/big-changes-store-future-management-government-records/#sthash.iaTcUFTk.dpuf

Blackboard’s acquisition of open source software

• http://www.blackboard.com/About-Bb/News-Center/Press-Releases/Strategy-Update/Open-Letter.aspx
• http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/03/27/blackboard-buys-moodlerooms-creates-open-source-division#ixzz1qccBFsqC
• http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/digital-tweed/long-and-open-view-blackboard#sthash.ioEFvof6.dpbs

Open Syllabus Project

• http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-syllabus-archive-opens-the-curricular-black-box/51285
• http://opensyllabusproject.org/

Udacity charges for certificates

• http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/udacity-will-no-longer-offer-free-certificates/51757

DPLA’s 1st Birthday 

• http://dp.la/info/2014/04/17/dpla-1st-birthday-announcement/

Running time: 41:38
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For our hundredth anniversary episode, the digital history fellows divided up the 2007 episodes of Digital Campus and picked their favorite bits — listen to the result if you dare, and be transported back to the days when the iPhone was brand new, when Second Life was the Next Big Thing, and when you had to have an email address with a .edu TLD in order to use Facebook. Good times.

Many thanks to digital history fellows Ben Hurwitz, Jannelle Legg, Anne McDivitt, Amanda Morgan, Amanda Regan, and Spencer Roberts for choosing the clips, and many many thanks to audiovisual guru Chris Preperato for stitching them together.

Running time: 58:13
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What we do is news, of course (of course!), and so is what our friends do, and so is what “Friends of the Court” do. In the warm and friendly spirit of Thanksgiving, then, the four regular Digital Campus commentators (Mills, Dan, Tom, and Amanda) focus mainly on what you might call local news. First we address the decidedly non-local implications of JSTOR’s announcement that it will provide free access to a small community of Wikipedia editors, but then we get down into the news from closer to home. We’re pleased at the release of “Commons in a Box,” a turnkey open source blogging and social networking package built on BuddyPress by our buddies at CUNY Academic Commons, and we’re similarly pleased about the implementation of similar BuddyPress technology on the website for THATCamp, The Humanities and Technology Camp. We then hear reports from pundit Mills and troublemaker Dan about the Future of Higher Education Conference that recently took place at GMU, where passions ran as high as on your average daytime talk show. Dan ends by telling us all bit about a recent contribution he made to the question of whether the Authors’ Guild can be said to speak for academic authors, and then we adjourn, headed over the river and through the woods.

Links mentioned in the podcast:

• JSTOR Provides Free Access to Wikipedia Editors
• Deconstructing Wikipedia: Collaborative Content Creation in an Open Process Platform
• CUNY Commons in a Box
• THATCamp.org
• GMU’s Future of Higher Education Conference
• Mills Kelly at EdWired on the Future of Higher Education Conference
• Brief of Amici Curiae Academic Authors

Running time: 46:29
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