I was searching for the journal The Information Society yesterday on our library’s online catalog system. I had looked up the journal the day before so I knew that we had a subscription to it. Regardless, yesterday I kept getting “Your search found no matching record”, which was incredibly frustrating given that I had just browsed the journal the day before. Finally, I decided to try the search without the “the” in the title. I’m not sure why that occured to me, but I gave it a try. Surprise-surprise, searching simply for information society specified as the Journal Title worked.
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A March for Freedom of Choice is being organized by several big organizations for this coming April in DC. There’s a Meet-up day next week for those interested in getting involved.
Salon has an informative piece today about some of the bills in the pipeline that would curtail abortion rights. If you’re not yet really concerned about the state of reproductive rights in the U.S. then go read it. And see you in DC on April 25th.
Kieran has previously reported on all the fun one can have browsing the stacks in Firestone Library at Princeton. The library used to require that patrons sign their name when borrowing a book and Kieran managed to find the signatures of some famous people on the cards that had been left in some books. The system wasn’t so great about privacy, but it sure allows for an interesting glimpse into a book’s life.
There are lots of serious issues to ponder these days, but we shouldn’t forget about Halloween, which comes with its own set of challenges. One such challenge is finding a fun yet easy costume.
One year I cut up some cereal boxes, colored parts of them red with a marker, made some paper knives and plastered these all over the clothes I was wearing. I forget whom to credit with that but I thought it worked well. Nothing like a cereal killer on the loose.
Starting today, searches on Amazon.com will look for your terms in the entire text of over 120,000 books. Not only do you get a list of books that cite an author or mention a concept, but you can also view a pdf copy of the page where the citation occurs.
As an academic, this serves as an extremely helpful complementary tool to the Social Science Citation Index (or other citation index equivalents), which allow similar searches for journal articles.
It is also a fun procrastinatory tool as I try to figure out which of the Hargittai references are to my work and not to the work of my parents.:) (Thanks go to my Mom for calling this new feature to my attention.)
I haven’t always understood why some products have different names depending on the country. Nonetheless, there are cases where it’s clear why a name couldn’t or shouldn’t just be transplanted from one context to another. It’s one reason for having at least some locals come on board when expanding a product to new markets.
I am reminded of an Internet company a friend of mine started in Hungary a few years ago called World-Wide Link. That sounds innocent enough but the word “link” exists in Hungarian and means irresponsible or careless, which is probably not the image a company wants to convey or associate itself with in any way.
Then there are the cases that are much harder to anticipate. Apparently sales of a detergent called Ariel plummeted in Eqypt when rumors spread of its possible connection to Israel’s Ariel Sharon.
For those who may not be in the know, starting Nov 24th it will be possible to switch your cell phone provider in the U.S. without having to get a new phone number. There have been several extensions granted to cell providers on meeting this requirement so we probably shouldn’t hold our breath, but it may happen this time. Wireless number portability – the official name for all this – should be useful for those who have been deterred from switching due to the costs of having to change one’s phone number.
A soccer world cup championship is down to the finals, but you’d be hard-pressed to know it. I’m not surprised that here in Chicagoland it has not been at the forefront of sports headlines. With all the focus on the Cubs there would not be much coverage even if the US had made it to the finals. Alas, it didn’t. It’s down to Sweden and Germany.
It’s been interesting to watch the rise in the popularity of women’s soccer in the US. There are two things standing in its way: one is that it’s a women’s sport, which tends to be less popular overall (although we are seeing some change in that, but not too much) and it’s soccer, which is not exactly the most popular sport in the United States if you judge by media coverage. But it’s not that simple. Soccer is actually quite popular when it comes to participation and going out to see a game [pdf]. It is also a very popular high school sport in the US and many of those participants are girls. So no, it’s not because soccer is somehow inherently un-American that it has not gained popular appeal. I’m sure the fact that it is hard to break the game up into sections to accomodate commercials has to do with it. But I don’t want to get into too much popsociology here. There is a book on this, Offside, which the reviews on Amazon suggest is a good read on the topic. (The reviews will also give you an idea of the argument of the book. I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that since I haven’t read it myself.)
I was at the 1999 World Cup opening game and it was very exciting. This year, most of the games have been broadcast on ESPN2 or even less mainstream channels in the US limiting the size of audiences. I only happened upon the Canada-Sweden game today by accident. Are the games getting better coverage in other countries? The final will be broadcast on ABC so that should reach more people. How many will be watching is another question. I’m planning on throwing a Women’s World Cup Final brunch party to add to the fun. 
Those who like to learn about and ponder world affairs through the graphical representation of data will enjoy these posters presented by the International Networks Archive at Princeton.
This post is about academic literature searches in particular. (I could write a whole dissertation about Web search in general.. wait.. I did.:)
In an attempt to consolidate advice for students about academic literature searches, a grad school peer of mine posted a helpful page of resources for tracking down literature of interest on various sociological topics. This made me wonder: what are people’s favorite resources for academic literature searches? It also relates to the discussion about bundling e-journals started by Chris the other day.
A couple of weeks ago Henry posted an entry about blogs and teaching, or perhaps more broadly about the (potential) role of blogs in academia.
In the meantime, I’ve been having discussions with people at Northwestern’s Academic Technologies about the use of blogs here on campus. During these discussions, an interesting point came up that has some implications for the use of blogs in teaching. Apparently, it is illegal for a university to disclose information about who is enrolled in a course. When I asked for the legal basis of this, I was pointed to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Reading that document, I can’t say this becomes obvious. But if it is the case then it has implications for requiring students to participate in world-accessible blogs. If we require students to maintain a blog or post to a central blog then we are making their course enrollment public.
In light of this policy, it seems blogs that require students to post in the context of a course cannot be public. And if teaching blogs cannot be public then I think they lose much of what makes them more interesting than a discussion thread for the purposes of teaching. As someone noted, it is exciting and educational for students to learn that some of the authors they discuss are real-live people out there who may stumble upon their comments. Students may then take the material more seriously and pay more attention to how they comment about issues. However, if a blog cannot be public then this won’t happen. So at that point, what distinguishes a blog from the combination of a message thread and a course Web page?
Despite some worries that Hurricane Isabel may wash away TPRC, it was held this past weekend in Arlington, VA and lived up to its reputation as a wonderful meeting for those interested in various communications policy issues. It is the only conference I have attended consistently without fail since I first showed up there five years ago. It is always held in the DC area to ensure a good turnout from government representatives (or I’m assuming that’s a reason for its location).
It’s a good conference for the following reasons:
1. high quality of papers (this year’s acceptance rate was around 25%)
2. a relatively small and friendly group that has been getting together for years but is also very open to meeting new participants
3. a great mix of people from government (mostly the FCC but others as well), the private sector (fewer reps now than a couple of years ago) and academia (mostly economists and legal scholars but various other social scientists and some others as well)
Not surprisingly, the issue of media deregulation came up throughout the conference. There was a lunch-time debate between Andrew Schwartzman of the Media Access Project and Randolph May of the Progress & Freedom Foundation about this. A point Andy Schwartzman kept bringing up was that now with the availability of so much information on the Internet, there should be less concern about what is available via other media.