Journal: Librarians and The Accessibility Paradox

Academia, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Methods & Process
Full Source Online
Full Source Online

Fortunately, most librarians have gotten used to the fact that the Internet is a tremendous boon to researchers and that free information is a fantastic idea. Sure, we haven't yet reallocated our organizational resources to recognize this fact—our staff time is much more likely to be devoted to acquiring and messing about with purchased information than in making good information from our archives, our labs, or the web more easily available.  [Emphasis added.]

Barbara Fister is a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, MN, a contributor to ACRLog, and an author of crime fiction. Her next mystery, Through the Cracks, will be published by Minotaur Books in 2010.
Barbara Fister

We need to separate our value—the way we curate information, champion its availability in the face of intolerance of unpopular ideas and economic disparity, and create conditions for learning how to find and use good information—from the amount of money it takes to acquire stuff on the not-so-open market. We need to be quite clear that good information is good information, no matter how it's funded. And we need to find creative ways to partner with those who add value to information and find sustainable models for the editorial work that can make good academic work better.

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Journal: United Nations a “Dumb” Elite Organization

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 06 Family, 11 Society, Collective Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Key Players, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

UN food summit ends with ‘crumbs' in hunger fight

By FRANCES D'EMILIO (AP) – 1 hour ago

ROME — The head of a U.N. food agency expressed regret Wednesday that an anti-hunger summit failed to result in precise promises of funding, and critics said the meeting had only thrown crumbs to the world's 1 billion people without enough to eat.

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Worth a Look: Open Participation Methods

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Worth A Look
Open Participation Methods
Open Participation Methods

Recommended by Tom Atlee

Specialised participatory methods

Various specialised techniques have been developed to encourage public involvement in decision-making processes.

Journal: Sarah Palin Loses the Lipstick

05 Civil War, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online & Video
Full Story Online & Video

A guide to who gets whacked

Andy Barr, Jonathan Martin Tue Nov 17

Sarah Palin may claim to scorn elites, but her new book will ring familiar to its Beltway readership.

Getting even with those who crossed her, praising her allies and generally putting a self-serving sheen on last year’s presidential campaign, “Going Rogue” is typical of the political memoir genre of recent vintage. It’s the sort of book that will send the political class scurrying to bookstores, eager to see how they fared in what’s known as “the Washington read.”

With no index, though, Palin’s book has made that ritual more difficult.

Amazon Page
Amazon Page

So POLITICO, having obtained a copy of the book before its Tuesday release, has created a reader’s guide to “Going Rogue,” grouping the many characters into three categories: Friends, Foes, In Between.

Below the Fold we provide a commentary and links to a number of books about the prospects for honest independent government in 2012 and beyond.

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Journal: Bushes-Vulcans-Banks-Terrorism

03 Economy, 06 Russia, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Reform
59-page indictment
59-page indictment

Phi Beta Iota: a 59 page memorandum is rocketing around the Internet, entitled Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001.  Read the report, which includes very specific details and charts with head and shoulder photos.  This material is substantiated not just by the sources cited in the endnotes, but by many other sources such as those reviewed at 9-11 Truth Books & DVDs (23) and (indirectly) at Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback (145).

Journal: Twitter Aggregation Way Cool

Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence

logo columbia

Fort Hood: A First Test for Twitter Lists

In the aftermath of violence, lists suggest the benefits of collaboration

By Megan Garber

In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, news outlets from The New York Times to The Huffington Post to The Today Show created lists that aggregated the Twitter feeds of, among others, national breaking-news sources (CNN, the AP), official sources (the U.S. Army, the Red Cross, the office of Texas governor Rick Perry), local news organizations, and local individuals.

Twitter lists were tempering conjecture with the wisdom-of-crowds brand of mediation that is built into their multi-channel approach.

“The Internet” is, in its way, a one-stop news shop; and through, in particular, the deceptively simple innovation that is the hyperlink, news outlets are increasingly defined by connection rather than separation. (Thus, the “Web.”) And that, in turn—fundamentally, if not completely—topples the competitive underpinnings of newsgathering as a profession. Do what you do best, and link to the rest.

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Journal: Independents Rising

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

Full Story Online
Full Story Online

INDEPENDENCE PARTY BREAKS RECORDS;

142,817 VOTES FOR BLOOMBERG ON COLUMN C

DELIVERS MARGIN TO CITY'S FIRST INDEPENDENT MAYOR

Unofficial returns released by the Board of Elections put the IP total on Column “C” at 142,817 votes, nearly 26% of Bloomberg’s total and 13% of all votes cast.  This means that 1 in 4 Bloomberg voters chose to vote on the Independence Party line.

The vote for the mayor on the Independence Party line was an increase of 91% over its total four years ago, when it drew nearly 75,000 votes on its crucial Column

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