the US government just sold our loans, or what’s left of them, to a private company–once again demonstrating that like all debt, student debt is profitable for someone.
Category Archives: Academe
Who owns notes from professors’ lectures?
Today’s Gazette has a story in which I’m quoted about a new online service called Notesac (a rather unfortunate name). While it is mostly a banal case of a) students sharing notes and b) someone skimming profits off something at universities that wasn’t previously fully monetized, the real story here isn’t reported. The unfortunately-named “notesac” …
Continue reading “Who owns notes from professors’ lectures?”
Why You Shouldn’t Publish with Lap Lambert, German Publishing House
This one’s mostly for the search engines as I’m sure most of my readers don’t need to hear this. I keep getting this spam email sent to me: Begin forwarded message: From: Yasmine Watson Date: February 2, 2012 2:15:30 AM EST To: Subject: Our Publication Offer: Your end-of-studies work Dear Essam Hallak, Some time ago …
Continue reading “Why You Shouldn’t Publish with Lap Lambert, German Publishing House”
Things You Don’t Want to Hear at the University Library
Me [returning 1968 issue of Time Magazine]: this is really delicate. Are you sure you want me to put in the returns chute? Library employee: Yeah, put it in and don’t worry about it. We’ve got that in digital and microfilm format. I had originally gone to the issue because the digital version lacked some …
Continue reading “Things You Don’t Want to Hear at the University Library”
Work for Hire and Oxford University Press
Steven Shaviro recently posted about pulling out of an Oxford University Press collection because they wanted to define his contribution as “work for hire.” This is objectionable for lots of reasons, but in particular because academics should retain the right to be associated with the ideas we produce, and so long as we’re above board …
Continue reading “Work for Hire and Oxford University Press”
Not blacked out, but I won’t post on anything else until tomorrow
I realize I should say something in support of the internet blackout going on today. You can learn more at Wikipedia. Yes, we should be terrified of these initiatives, which place a few companies in the position of judge and jury, and further enshrines the profit motive as the first principle of public policy on …
Continue reading “Not blacked out, but I won’t post on anything else until tomorrow”
Phew.
I just returned the copyedits for MP3: The Meaning of a Format to Duke. That was a ton of work for my RAs and I. I have no idea how I would have done it without them, given the intensity of the last month. Thanks to their help I was able to do some …