#INM380
Lesson One 30/01/2015
In class on Friday, Ernesto raised many question around libraries, publishing, media consumption and the future of library and information science. He emphasised the importance of connecting with audiences (through reading and purchasing media yourself). I was interested by how there was a focus on fusing together libraries and publishing, rather than seeing them as disparate entities with their own interests, e.g. publishing industry vs. library sector...
Questions were raised around: what is publishing? Is there a definite definition? The answer seemed to be no. Some people defined publishing as simply the dissemination of content, whereas some people argued that publishing actually created and shaped what was made and how it was made. Examples were stated of times when publishing companies have controlled what get made and consumed by the public.
During the lesson I made notes (excuse poor hand-writing and bad, rushed spelling). These are shown below.
I picked out certain things that Ernesto said, as well as trying to record my own thoughts. We were also encouraged to live tweet using the #INM380 hash-tag. I have included a screen shot of live tweets that I tweet below. Unfortunately, I incorrectly put #INM830 rather than #INM380 for a few of them which has shown me the importance of re-reading before publishing ANYTHING.
We were also asked to draw a Venn diagram (in our own time) to include 'libraries' and 'publishing' and the hinterland between them. I found this task extremely difficult. To define either of these terms is hard enough. In trying to separate them, I found that I was connecting words like 'business' and 'profit' to publishing and words like 'access to information' to libraries. Although commercial and for-profit libraries exist (such as the London Library) most libraries are not created to make money and have different functions. The same cannot be said for the publishing industry. It is clear that Ernesto wants us to expand on our idea of what publishing is and to re-claim vehicles for self-publishing, such as twitter.
We were also introduced to our coursework and what would be expected of us to pass this module. I haven't yet finished reading the Walter Benjamin essay and will likely post more content about it here when I next get a chance. From the discussion in class I was reminded of Marshall McLuhan and his book The Global Village. What is clear is that the ideas of the past are generally manifested in the technology of the future. I have come across this idea before through Ken Holling's radio essay The Victorian Search Engine in which he talks about how the technologies of the 20th century were dreamed up in steam and cog-work in the 19th century. He uses Babbage and Ada Lovelace as strong examples. I will explore Benjamin's dialectics in more detail....
