Dr. John Willinsky : "How Opening Research Changes the University (in a Good Way)"
October 8th, 2pm-3pm Lied Library - Goldfield Room
RSVP here: bit.ly/Willinsky
Held in October of each year, UNLV Research Week celebrates the research, scholarly, and creative activities of our faculty and students through events that educate, engage, and inspire attendees. Research Week events have included lab tours, technology expos, research fairs, poster sessions, lectures, open houses, workshops on UNLV’s research services, and more.
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Dr. Willinsky is the Khosla Family Professor of Education and Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at Stanford University, as well as a professor of Publishing Studies at Simon Fraser University. Additionally, he directs the Public Knowledge Project, which conducts research and develops open source scholarly publishing software in support of greater access to knowledge.
Still curious? Check out Dr. Willinsky's Stanford University Faculty page or Wikipedia article.
Empire of Words by
What is the meaning of a word? Most readers turn to the dictionary for authoritative meanings and correct usage. But what is the source of authority in dictionaries? Some dictionaries employ panels of experts to fix meaning and prescribe usage, others rely on derivation through etymology. But perhaps no other dictionary has done more to standardize the English language than the formidable twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary in its 1989 second edition. Yet this most Victorian of modern dictionaries derives its meaning by citing the earliest known usage of words and by demonstrating shades of meaning through an awesome database of over five million examples of usage in context. In this fascinating study, John Willinsky challenges the authority of this imperial dictionary, revealing many of its inherent prejudices and questioning the assumptions of its ongoing revision. "Clearly, the OED is no simple record of the language `as she is spoke,'" Willinsky writes. "It is a selective representation reflecting certain elusive ideas about the nature of the English language and people. Empire of Words reveals, by statistic and table, incident and anecdote, how serendipitous, judgmental, and telling a task editing a dictionary such as the OED can be." Willinsky analyzes the favored citation records from the three editorial periods of the OED's compilation: the Victorian, imperial first edition; the modern supplement; and the contemporary second edition composed on an electronic database. He reveals shifts in linguistic authority: the original edition relied on English literature and, surprisingly, on translations, reference works, and journalism; the modern editions have shifted emphasis to American sources and periodicals while continuing to neglect women, workers, and other English-speaking countries. Willinsky's dissection of dictionary entries exposes contradictions and ambiguities in the move from citation to definition. He points out that Shakespeare, the most frequently cited authority in the OED, often confounds the dictionary's simple sense of meaning with his wit and artfulness. He shows us how the most famous four-letter words in the language found their way through a belabored editorial process, sweating and grunting, into the supplement to the OED. Willinsky sheds considerable light on how the OED continues to shape the English language through the sometimes idiosyncratic, often biased selection of citations by hired readers and impassioned friends of the language. Anyone who is fascinated with words and language will find Willinsky's tour through the OED a delightful and stimulating experience. No one who reads this book will ever feel quite the same about Murray's web of words.
Learning to Divide the World by
#Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
Technologies of Knowing by
The author argues that the human sciences have failed in their promise to offer a knowledge of the world that possesses real public value. Where some critics have condemned computers & electronic communication for putting us in this age of overflow, & others have praised computers for their own sake, the author takes a middle ground. Technologies of Knowing offers a starting point from which to rethink our understanding of information exasperation & adds a new level of insight into how to make the uses of information more democratic.
The Access Principle by
An argument for extending the circulation of knowledge with new publishing technologies considers scholarly, economic, philosophical, and practical issues. Questions about access to scholarship go back farther than recent debates over subscription prices, rights, and electronic archives suggest. The great libraries of the past--from the fabled collection at Alexandria to the early public libraries of nineteenth-century America--stood as arguments for increasing access. In The Access Principle, John Willinsky describes the latest chapter in this ongoing story--online open access publishing by scholarly journals--and makes a case for open access as a public good. A commitment to scholarly work, writes Willinsky, carries with it a responsibility to circulate that work as widely as possible: this is the access principle. In the digital age, that responsibility includes exploring new publishing technologies and economic models to improve access to scholarly work. Wide circulation adds value to published work; it is a significant aspect of its claim to be knowledge. The right to know and the right to be known are inextricably mixed. Open access, argues Willinsky, can benefit both a researcher-author working at the best-equipped lab at a leading research university and a teacher struggling to find resources in an impoverished high school. Willinsky describes different types of access--the New England Journal of Medicine, for example, grants open access to issues six months after initial publication, and First Monday forgoes a print edition and makes its contents immediately accessible at no cost. He discusses the contradictions of copyright law, the reading of research, and the economic viability of open access. He also considers broader themes of public access to knowledge, human rights issues, lessons from publishing history, and "epistemological vanities." The debate over open access, writes Willinsky, raises crucial questions about the place of scholarly work in a larger world--and about the future of knowledge.
The Intellectual Properties of Learning by
Providing a sweeping millennium-plus history of the learned book in the West, John Willinsky puts current debates over intellectual property into context, asking what it is about learning that helped to create the concept even as it gave the products of knowledge a different legal and economic standing than other sorts of property. Willinsky begins with Saint Jerome in the fifth century, then traces the evolution of reading, writing, and editing practices in monasteries, schools, universities, and among independent scholars through the medieval period and into the Renaissance. He delves into the influx of Islamic learning and the rediscovery of classical texts, the dissolution of the monasteries, and the founding of the Bodleian Library before finally arriving at John Locke, whose influential lobbying helped bring about the first copyright law, the Statute of Anne of 1710. Willinsky's bravura tour through this history shows that learning gave rise to our idea of intellectual property while remaining distinct from, if not wholly uncompromised by, the commercial economy that this concept inspired, making it clear that today's push for marketable intellectual property threatens the very nature of the quest for learning on which it rests.
Join the library for a two-part series of brown bag lunch discussions to familiarize yourself with Open Access and Dr. John Willinsky's work before the big event!
