Saturday, March 20th, 2010
Music fans:
From boingboing.net: Every issue (from 1985 to late 2009) of SPIN magazine is available on Google Books.
Next to Rolling Stone, SPIN is one of the most recognized music magazines. SPIN is known for placing up-and-coming artists on their covers (i.e., REM, Run-DMC, and Prince), covering a wide base of music (from hardcore punk to reggae, college bands to hip-hop) and for devoting time and space to controversial subjects (e.g., AIDS) during times when it was risky to do so.
Read the archives, in their entirety, for free!
Tags: archives, free, google books, magazines, music, SPIN magazine
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Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Dewey Music is the interface of the Internet Archive’s fabulous music library. Grateful Dead fans may know the archive.org’s great collection of the band’s live shows throughout the ages, but there are many more vintage (and contemporary) goodies nestled inside the Archive’s library. Search Dewey Music to find old school live jams or newer music such as, shall we say, one of my favorite bands, Guster and artists like, Deb Talan, and Elliot Smith.
Dewey Music basically searches through this entire list from the Archive’s website. You can listen to, download, remix, and share anything you see on this site legally and for free, which is a bonus. Dewey Music allows you to create playlists, share the music with others via Facebook, and music you choose continues to play as you search. In addition to their general search, you can browse by genre, top rated, most played and newest uploads.
So far, I’ve found Dewey Music’s search features a lil’ buggy. Searches were dropped, I had to hit “go” twice in order for results to show, and the search engine didn’t produce recordings that I could find by directly using the Internet Archive’s audio search page. Despite this, Dewey Music offers a lot of promise, however, to unlocking the fabulous goodness of the Archive’s music library.
Tags: archive.org, audio, free, internet archive, music, public domain
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Sunday, March 15th, 2009
Another example of a library using new media in a way to connect and inform its community is the Allen County Public Library. I found their YouTube channel by way of David Lee King’s blog post Allen County’s Newest Conversations Video.
King was recently part of their conversation series, which also includes other big-time library peeps such as Michael Stephens, Helene Bowers, Stephen Abram, and ACPL’s director Jeff Kruhl (part 1, part 2). I love this conversation series because it allows lil’ folks like myself the opportunity to hear these great speakers talk about their experiences. I am a big believer in learning from others’ experiences, and these videos offer a brief opportunity to do that.
Beyond their conversation series, the ACPL reaches out to their constituents via other videos. These videos provide opportunities for connection and transparency with their community.
A few examples of other short videos offered by the ACPL:
- The state of the library – good to know in these tough economic times, especially with all the news and rumors about library closings, budget slashing, etc. In this video, the director addresses recent changes the library is facing due to a local property tax increase that has gone into effect.
- Why I love being a librarian – what a great way for the ACPL community to connect to their librarians by seeing why their librarians love their job!
- Geek Out – is a new series from ACPL of monthly training videos offered to ACPL staff. Its focus is technology in libraries.
Tags: ACPL, Allen County Public Library, conversations, free, learning, libraries, youtube
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Sunday, March 8th, 2009
For independent music fans, Uncensored Interview provides free, downloadable creative-commons licensed short videos of uncensored conversations with various bands. Their goal is to provide an opportunity for music fans to get to know their favorite bands and artists “via candid conversations that cover everything from the topical to the personal to the frivolous and absurd.” Over 1000 videos have been released.
For an example of a video from UI, here’s a short clip of Nellie McKay talking about pirating music and the Recording Industry.
Credits:
Doctorow, C. (5 March, 2009) Uncensored Interview Releases 1000+ Creative Commons Theora Videos
Benenson, F. (5 March, 2009). Uncensored Interview Releases 1000+ Creative Commons Theora Videos
Tags: creative commons, free, music, musicians, uncensored interview, video
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Saturday, February 21st, 2009
I read from the Library Journal today that Boston University has approved moving to an institution-wide open access system. This decision comes one year after Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts & Sciences provided open access to their curriculum. The difference between the two is that Boston University’s open access initiative includes ALL 17 schools. (Harvard University’s policy is a little more selective at the moment – it does not include its professional schools, with the exception of its Law School).
Perusing through these sites made me curious for more information…
… What other schools are sharing content?
Many schools have sought financial assistance via the William & Flora Hewitt Foundation’s Open Educational Resources (OER) program. The foundation is working to make high quality and educational content freely available on the web. From the link above, one can see their grantees’ proposals, which include various educational institutions seeking to increase open access opportunities for many exciting programs, for example:
From the Do-it-Yourself-Scholar blog, Dara has compiled a great listing of open-access courses, lectures and postcasts. The Do-It-Yourself-Scholar has scoured the internet for open access courses and lectures offered by universities. What a wonderful resource!
From OpenCulture: a link to Free Online Courses from Great Universities. This post is over a year old, but the podcasts recommended within it are plentiful and still applicable. (On a side note, they have a link to great cultural educational resources on twitter such as the Internet Archive, Librivox, TEDtalks, and so on).
AcademicEarth.org – an organization dedicated to sharing education throughout the world. They offer links to “thousands of video lectures from the world’s top scholars. ”
How freakin’ awesome is it to have free access to worldly knowledge from scholars at the greatest universities?! I can’t contain myself.
Wait, there’s more!
Want to know more about Open Educational Resources? I strongly suggest checking this out:
Baker, J. (2007, May 5). Introduction to Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from the Connexions Web site: http://cnx.org/content/col10413/1.2/
And I strongly suggest trying this out:
OCW Finder from the Open Courseware Consortium – it searches for courses by tag (e.g., subject!)
Photo credit: Ask Me About Open Access from flikr member molliali has a creative commons license Attribution Non-Commercial 2.0 Generic.
Tags: Boston University, education, free, Harvard University, OER, open access, open educational resources
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