What Do You Mean?” was an undeniable bop of its era in which Justin Bieber explores the ambiguities of romantic communication. (I pinky promise this will soon make sense for scholarly communication librarians interested in artificial intelligence [AI].) When the single hit airwaves in 2015, there was a meta-debate over what Bieber meant to add t…[Read more]

Short review with episode highlights of the New York Times Music Popcast podcast. Written specifically for librarians with an interest in the similarities/disparities between popular digital media content models and scholarly digital media. This includes a short overview of the podcast, its general relation to scholarly communication, a highlight…[Read more]

A review of Tim Hitchcock’s and Robert Shoemaker’s book London Lives: Poverty, Crime and the Making of a Modern City, 1690–1800.

A response to criticism of Adam Curtis’ documentary film Bitter Lake about the war in Afghanistan. I argue that Curtis is a practitioner of ‘thick description’ and is pioneering a new form of history through the use of audio-visual archives.

This session compares major topics from scholarly communication and trends in Hip-Hop, with the objective of providing lessons and examples for effective teaching. By discussing Hip-Hop artists as impact-minded authors of copyrighted works navigating a marketplace newly-disrupted by Internet technology, it may be possible for students to bring…[Read more]

An overview of the local history collection in the University of Leicester Library, one of the largest in the U.K. Includes a focus on poll books as a source.

There are now several open access book publishers using consortia funding models. But library staff on the ground are not always enthusiastic about re-purposing budgets to fund open access books. This post explores the sources of this scepticism.

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]

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]

William Farrell talks to historian Tim Hitchcock about the origins of the welfare state and its influence on contemporary political narratives.

Review of Consumption and Gender in the Early Seventeenth-Century Household The World of Alice Le Strange, (review no. 1358)
https://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1358

The use of drawing as a research method in local history.

The first PhD thesis awarded to a student in the Centre for English Local History: L. A. Parker’s Enclosure in Leicestershire, 1485-1607 (1948).