Truth, Justice and the American Copyright…

March 28th, 2008 Stewart

The Siegel Superman decision - Uncivil Society

I’m going to be very curious to see how this ultimately turns out, but this is clearly a significant victory for the Siegels. (Another court battle over SuperBOY has already wreaked havoc in the DC Universe.) It could also make  an interesting touchstone for discussion of copyright issues in an information literacy class.

I’m just eager for the day when Superman, Batman and other heroes developed in the early 1930s finally revert to public domain, to become truly classic heroes like Robin Hood and King Arthur. Decisions like the ones were seeing above give me some reason to hope we might see this transition happen within my lifetime.

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Listening to: Annie Lennox - Dark Road
via FoxyTunes

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Growing Pains, Part II

February 11th, 2008 Stewart

The latest issue of Communications in Information Literacy was published this morning. I couldn’t be happier with the final product — We’ve got some really good articles and I think everyone involved should be really proud of their work.

We have other CIL projects waiting in the wings. One item we hope to wrap up this week or next is the print-on-demand volume (via Lulu.com). Proceeds from sales of the printed volume will help defray our publication costs, so if you are a librarian and you want to support our work, please talk with your collection managers about purchasing a volume for your stacks. Over 180 libraries have already cataloged the journal; if even half of them were to buy a copy for their print collections, that would (most likely) pay for our next six months of web hosting. We may also ask for donations in exchange for coffee mugs and other PBS-style gifts.

Also we’re about to announce the inclusion of our journal in a major library literature database. More to come about that soon.

Hopefully, other IL librarians will find what we’re doing of value. We need a primary journal for information literacy, and I think CIL is well poised to be that journal. If you have any suggestions or ideas that you would like to share, either with myself or co-editor Chris Hollister, just drop us a line at editors@comminfolit.org. Thanks!

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The Information Literacy Equation

March 9th, 2007 Stewart

I’ll be giving a Millennials talk at SUNY Fredonia in just a few hours and I’m pretty excited about it. My colleague and CIL co-founder Chris Hollister will be joining me, and it promises to be a special event.

What makes it special is that this is a conference on multimodal literacies, and that I’ll be addressing the concern of information literacy for the Millennial generation. My audience will be primarily English professors and librarians, and to have those two groups in the room while talking about information literacy can be a little daunting. But it’s also an exciting opportunity to launch a discussion among the parties best able to address information literacy concerns for their school.

I’m posting my slides here to be shared with the group (no handouts today) and this post can serve as a springboard for continuing our discussion. I’ll post more later today when I’m back from the event.

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