LIB100 L Spring 2009

On the heels of our copyright discussion and Tim Westergren speaking about his site, Pandora, I want to think about where, specifically, college students get their music from. Two years ago around this time, Wake Forest was advertising how they were partnering with a company named Ruckus to provide free music. Yet a year later they announced they were discontinuing their partnership with them and a few months ago, the company shut down completely. http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2009/02/ruckus-when-free-music-cant-compete-with-free-music.ars Why was this method of offering music unpopular with students?

Since we’re talking about Intellectual Property this week, take a listen to Lawrence Lessig, lawyer who specializes in copyright, intellectual property, etc.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html

what do you think should be the balance between copyrights and free use?

For the full 3 points - show critical thinking skills, ask thought provoking questions and contribute outside information on the topic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcS_MrnxIcE

This is BJ Novak doing a standup comedy show in which he makes fun of wikipedia and mocks it by substituting it in place of the well known book series Encyclopedia Brown. Although this is a comedy show, what sorts of truths can you gather from its blatant criticisms of wikipedia’s legitimacy? What is the underlying value of his “citation needed” quotes or his off topic/quasi related interests like the Carrot Top example? Overall, is his cricism of wikipedia a valid one that foreshadows how it may hinder the way we seek out information due to its often times unreliable sources?

http://www.cabrillo.edu/~tsmalley/InfoLitAssessment.html

This post relates to our third blog post talking about information literacy. The study linked above tests and compares the information literacy of high school and college students. Information literacy is broken into different categories and the findings on the topics for each particular group are summarized.

Questions for consideration:

• Do you think that the level of students’ information literacy has changed since this study was conducted? If yes, how so and why?
• Where would you place yourself in the range of ability for each category? Do you follow the majority?
• Do the findings of the study surprise you?
• How do you think the conclusions of this study should be applied to teaching information literacy in both high schools and colleges?

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2006/tc20060316_119464.htm

this is relevant to the last blog responde we had this Tuesday. Even though the article was confusing, this article explained what the effect would be if we dont disagree with net neutrality rules. Mainly businessmen are strongly in disagreement with this rule that it greatly affects their invesment. As a students, we might not have been affected by net neutrality rules, but somehow in the future we will because we have access to the internet every single day. One day your vital information for your career is blockde, what would you do? What way will it affect us in the future or even in our current life? Does this article give a new perspective about online information? Because so far, the information we receive all comes easy and mostly free. There isnt any restriction to access to most of the information, except the ones that we need to purchase. What is your point of net neutrality rules? do you go against or for?

http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/apr02/block.htm

In this article, a librarian describes the way that she and many other librarians use different “maps” to sort out the information landscape. I really like this image because I think it relates to everything we have learned in this class. She mentions mapping one’s own library and mapping by different types (i.e. call number, references source, etc.). We all use similar mapping techniques in our own individual research needs. Although we may not all instinctively run to the library and browse the shelves first, we generally end up there. When starting a search for a resource, where do you begin? Do you first browse the library catalog by author or subject? Or do you search the internet for related databases? According to the author, either method is fine because these different methods of research simply represent different mapping techniques, not techniques that are better or worse. To me, this is great news because it means that no matter where I begin my search I can find what I am searching for (provided I use the skills we have learned in class so far like how to evaluate individual sources.) Do you agree that there are different ways to reach the same information needs? How have you seen this in your own experience in this class and in doing research for other classes?

This is an interesting article about the Digital Information Landscape, and reminds me of the first blog posting we had on the information revolution. This lecture talks about the importance of the library and library science (since we are in a library science class, I thought it was very interesting and relevant). Furthermore, it talks about organizing information, indexes, catalogs, and databases, which we will have been learning about and will continue to learn about in the class. There are some good points brought up, especially about the “next generation” Library catalogs. It talks about learning about the searcher and the searcher’s needs in order to improve the search for the individual searcher. I think this is a great idea, and would love to see it develop. What do you think about this? Do you think it is a good idea to “tailor the search” to the searcher? Any other interesting points or new things that you learned from the article?

http://infomotions.com/musings/digital-landscape/

So, read this blog posting from WIRED Magazine about the future of broadband and Net Neutrality:

http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/08/comcast-twitter.html#previouspost

For a full 3 points you will need to show your critical thinking skills, ask thought provoking questions and contribute outside information on the topic (hint: look up information on “net neutrality” )

Tim Westergren recently came to Wake Forest to speak on his life and how he came to found the popular music site called Pandora. He started the company from nothing and then built it into the success story that it is now. He made a point to mention the different laws that were enacted to protect the artists from losing money on their songs. For him and his company, the reason that users can only skip through so many songs within an hour or so is because the company has to pay a royalty fee for every song, whether you listen to it or not. Pandora already pays a pretty big sum of money in order to use the songs, but they would have to pay even more if they allowed users to request songs. Sites like YouTube are spending up to $5 million a year just so they can have their users type in a song title and listen to that specific song on demand.

This lecture was very interesting and, as I reflect back now, some interesting questions. It got me thinking about copyright laws and how exactly it works and how it protects the music author. They seem to be losing a lot of money with the illegal downloading sites even though there are supposed to be these laws protecting them. Maybe there could be harsher ramifications for people who illegally download.

Tim is also part of the Music Genome Project and more information can be found on this link. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project

Here’s an interesting article on evaluation of internet resources. Remember, to receive all 3 points you must show critical thinking skills, ask thought provoking questions and contribute something to the discussion that is outside this post.

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/technology/2008/09/how-to-measure-websites-iq.html

As usual, I look forward to your comments!!