In 1860, the newly-appointed librarian of the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward, drew up a series of ambitious plans aimed at reforming the organisation and administration of the collection. The work carried out on the library during this period included the introduction of a subject-based classification system and the…[Read more]

The aim of this study is to investigate whether library and information service provision changes in commercial law firms that have adopted agile working policies. Whilst there are many management texts on agile working there is very little that looks at libraries, and what there is mainly deals with the academic sector. As agile working is…[Read more]

Open Peer Review and Open Citations need advocates. Open Access recently received significant boosts in organized support (Redalyc announcing AmerliCA; cOAlition-S announcing Plan S). Within a similar timeframe, two other events occurred that need coordinated consideration: the ASAPbio group issued a letter in favor of Open Peer Review (OPR), and…[Read more]

In its encounter with James Baldwin across form— “Letter to my nephew,” “Sonny’s Blues,” and archival footage of Baldwin being interviewed by the psychologist Kenneth Clark— this article offers an exploration of how Baldwin’s figuration of children and his own acts of care illuminate the political possibilities of both filiation and aff…[Read more]

This essay explores how Pierre Nora’s sites of memory work a specific cultural function through what Melvin Dixon refers to as “a memory that ultimately rewrites history.” I look at two of the most well-known poems of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes’s “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” and Countee Cullen’s “Heritage,” one of which reveals a…[Read more]

Hip-Hop music, business, distribution, and culture exhibit highly-comparable trends in the scholarly communication and publication industry. This article discusses Hip-Hop artists and research authors as content creators, each operating within marketplaces still adjusting to digital, online connectivity. These discussions are intended for…[Read more]

The real world, as we experience it today, is intimately connected with technological mediation. Drawing on theories of post-humanism, onlife, the infosphere, and audience participation, this paper addresses how the cultural, social and political beliefs of participants in immersive theatre can be trans-ed. The relationality inherent in the term…[Read more]

This essay brings together two texts, a letter to the editor written in experimental prose by the Black avant-garde Beat poet, Bob Kaufman, and “The Unlocking,” a spoken-word poem written and performed by Ursula Rucker that appears at the end of The Roots’ critically acclaimed rap album, Do You Want More??!?. By using the aural to disrupt expec…[Read more]

This essay brings together two texts, a letter to the editor written in experimental prose by the Black avant-garde Beat poet, Bob Kaufman, and “The Unlocking,” a spoken-word poem written and performed by Ursula Rucker that appears at the end of The Roots’ critically acclaimed rap album, Do You Want More??!?. By using the aural to disrupt expec…[Read more]

Die Präsentation gibt einen Überblick über die Aktivitäten im Zusammenhang mit Open Access an der Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien und ihrem institutionellen Repositorium ]a[repository. Im ersten Teil wird auf die Fragen “Was kann hier veröffentlicht werden?” und “Wie können Hochschulschriften und andere Publikationen im Akadem…[Read more]

The problem of the “yes,” of affirming an historical identity that is potentially harmful to oneself, troubles some of the imaginative leaps necessary to how readers desire to identify with texts. With that in mind, this article reads Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred as a story about memory, history, and embodiment as written both on and thr…[Read more]

Presented at the Creative Commons Global Summit, in Lisbon, 2019, this presentation highlights the importance of options for retaining copyright for authors especially in the context of new university and funder OA policies that require faculty to retain some rights to make works openly accessible. The session will explore considerations that went…[Read more]

Assignment completed for module INM303 Information Organisation.
A proposed outline taxonomy structure, displayed hierarchically, for an allotment website. It shows nine top terms with the hierarchy completed to the lowest level for one of the terms and this section is also shown as a thesaurus fragment. The remaining top terms are shown up to…[Read more]

This essay examines James Baldwin’s conception of what he calls “black English” and its link to historical and cultural identity. I link Baldwin’s defense of black English to his reflections on the sor- row songs and sound, which draws on long-standing accounts of musicality as the foundation of the African-American tradition. In order to demonst…[Read more]

Open access publishing (OA) not only removes price and permission restrictions to academic research, but also represents an opportunity to reassess what publishing means to the humanities. OA is increasingly on the agenda for humanities researchers in the UK, having been mandated in various forms by universities and governmental funders strongly…[Read more]

This research will attempt to evaluate how the thinking of Floridi, especially his emphasis on information, could in some way affect the way we approach art practice. It rests upon an existing body of study about art practice, pursued through a selective literature review of the works of Floridi. As artists rediscover the notion of participation,…[Read more]

The report takes a brief look into Lai Yung-Hsiang’s New Classification Scheme for Chinese Libraries. I will start by giving a short account of its histories and context followed by its current status and use, as well as a description of its basic principles. In particular, I would like to compare it with Liu Guojun’s classification for Chinese…[Read more]

This essay looks at the ways in which library services relate to the visual culture of the 21st Century. I will begin by discussing what is meant by visual culture followed by brief reports of the current trends. An account of current library practice will be given, along with a short photo essay depicting the changes in the world of libraries. I…[Read more]

This paper looks at the idea of digital libraries as social systems. It gives a short account of what it means to define digital libraries as social systems, including the view of digital libraries as ecosystems or ecologies.
A focus on R. David Lankes’ idea of libraries as facilitators of conversation leads us to the sociology of Niklas Luhmann…[Read more]

The movement for open access publishing is often said to have its roots in the scientific disciplines, having been popularised by scientific publishers and formalised through a range of top-down policy interventions. But there is an often-neglected pre-history of open access that can be found in the early DIY publishers of the late ‘80s and e…[Read more]