OBO: The Anti-Wikipedia?
Oxford Bibliographies Online is a noble effort to create a collection of resources in a range of academic fields. At first glance my heart raced with the anticipated thrill of access to extensive bibliographies vetted by scholars (you have to be a real academic geek to get excited about bibliographies). The new project has begun with resources for Classics, Criminology, Islamic Studies, and Social Work, with plans to add 50 more.
OBO (rhymes with “oboe”?) is positioning itself as curated index of scholarly resources organized by discipline. It will be a subscription service sold to academic and public libraries. Undoubtedly it will be a worthwhile resource to scholarly information. As Inside Higher Ed said,
“Think of it as Oprah’s book club for scholars.”
Within the scholarly community, peer-reviewed journals serve an important quality control function on the publication of research. There are solid reasons for knowledge to be produced and distributed this way. Yet the gatekeeping function also has its limitations, with knowledge determined by a narrow group of disciplinary experts, who then circulate it among the narrow group of their peers. It is an expert system, but a closed one.
The movement toward open access to knowledge — from Wikipedia, to open access scholarly journals, to the web itself in the broadest sense — proposes a world where information is freely accessible and publishable by anyone. This assumes that a gatekeeping function only impedes the flow of knowledge, and that the “marketplace of ideas” will sort out the “truth.” Just as we have seen the risks of an unregulated economic marketplace, the unfettered marketplace of ideas comes with its own risks. Misinformation about evolution or climate change are frequently cited as examples of popular acceptance of such inaccurate ideas.
OBO will be viewed by some as assuring access to high-quality scholarship, and by others as continuing to maintain academia’s monopoly on what ideas are considered authoritative. I guess I would be surprised to find Oxford leading the charge for open access to scholarship, but I find myself disappointed at what appears to be business as usual in the academy.
Bibliographies for composition and rhetoric
Quite a rich collection of bibliographies on multiple topics related to composition and rhetoric. Can’t wait for the semester to be over to dig in! From Rebecca Moore Howard, The Writing Program, Syracuse University.
Opening up education
Iiyoshi, T., & Kumar, M.S.V. (2008). Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
http://books.google.com/books?id=gWrHFmAYX5EC
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/173368472
“This vision of a worldwide educational commons challenges traditional assumptions about knowledge, originality, an ownership. Are we open to facing these challenges if worldwide access to postsecondary education is at stake?” (p. 398)
“Due to changes in technology, a participatory culture is emerging with a new openness to sharing, collaboration, and learning by doing. As higher education and society work to address local, national, and global educational needs, we ignore the lessons of this participatory culture at our own peril.” (p. 398)
The formation of scholars
Walker, G.E., Golde, C.M., Jones, L., Bueschel, A.C., & Hutchings, P. (2008). The formation of scholars: Rethinking doctoral education for the twenty-first century. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Stanford, CA.
http://books.google.com/books?id=qSkkQDhgk00C
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/166368350
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/
Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate http://gallery.carnegiefoundation.org/cid/
Carnegie Knowledge Media Lab http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/previous-work/knowledge-media-lab
“Few processes for assessing effectiveness have been developed in graduate education, and it is difficult to muster ambition or urgency for doing better in the absence of information about what needs improvement.” (p. 2)
“The life of a tenured faculty member may appear to be one of privilege and intellectual reward, but many are torn by increasing and competing demands for scholarship, fund raising, teaching and mentoring, community engagement, and family life. Their doctoral students, in turn, often feel burdened by debt, exploited as lab technician or low-paid instructors, and disillusioned by the disgruntlement of overworked faculty mentors. The passionate zeal with which many students begin their studies is unnecessarily eroded, a loss that faculty decry as much as students do. It is hard, in short, not to be disheartened by the waste of human talent and energy in activities whose purpose is poorly understood.” (p. 5)
New players, different game
Tierney, W.G. & Hentschke, G.C. (2007). New players, different game: Understanding the rise of for-profit colleges and universities. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
http://books.google.com/books?id=5YwZdzilwpgC
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=oclc+76786643
ISBN 9780801886577, 216 pages
Overview: “Tierney and Hentschke explore what traditional and non-traditional colleges and universities can learn from each other, comparing how they recruit students, employ faculty, and organize instructional programs. The authors suggest that, rather than continuing their standoff, the two sectors could mutually benefit from examining each other’s culture, practices, and outcomes.”
