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Week 4 - Information wants to be free?!#

We could talk about intellectual property and digital culture for years and years.

For Tuesday:#

Read at least one of the following:

Tuesday, October 1#

  • icebreaker:
  • copyright 101
  • slides
  • copyright + fair use challenge
    • Each table will receive a set of copyright challenges.
    • Work together to answer each question. You don't have to answer them in order, they're just numbered for identification.
    • Add your answers to the whiteboard. There will be a section for "yes - permissible" and "no copyright law does not allow this use."
    • You must show your work! What is your evidence?
    • The following sites may be useful:

Prep for Thursday:#

  • Open Access Explained
  • You will be doing some research on your potential topic, so take a moment to read my feedback in Canvas (should go up on Wednesday) and think a bit further about your topic idea.
  • ALSO please identify a W&L professor to conduct a bit of research on. We'll be using this individual as a case study while we learn about the scholarship process. Google them, read their CV, read their profile on the W&L website or on their own website. This can be any professor you want!

Thursday, October 3#

  • icebreaker:
  • Visit from Renae Watson, Head of Research Services

Week 4 Assignments - Due Tuesday at 12pm#

Project: Annotated Bibliography#

See assignment description. Your sources should be related to the topic you're most interested in pursuing at this time. You may end up changing your mind before the proposal is due, but you should use this as a chance to explore the scholarly and non-scholarly conversation on your topic. The Activity Log for this week contains a structured walk-through of this assignment. Start there!

Blog post #4#

What did you learn from our guest this week? Summarize their visit and key takeaways.

Specs:

  • Create a WordPress post, turn in the link on Canvas.
  • 150-300 words.
  • Free from grammatical errors, typos.
  • Credit and link out to sources when appropriate. I won't require that you use a certain citation style, but you should be in the habit of crediting sources and using in-text links. If you feel better about using a formal citation style, go for it!

Activity log #4#

Your activity log this week will document your work on your annotated bibliography. The following is designed to help you get started on finding sources. You should write your answers as you go - they can be messy!

  1. Brainstorm keywords. Think about your topic. What are all the potential words that describe or relate to this topic? Start from your own brain first, then go to a search engine. You could even draw a mind map of the way terms relate or how different disciplines/industries refer to the same concept. The deeper you get into a field, the more you find that experts use specialized language to get more specific about what they're talking about. For example: as I start searching for information about algorithms, I start to see references to "neural networks" and "deep learning" algorithms. I'll add those to my list and look for definitions.

  2. Establish a baseline. Look for your topic in several search engines or database and get a sense of the initial results. I would suggest Google, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, the Library Catalog, and a news source (New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) What do you see in the top ten results? What are the issues being discussed? What types of sources are coming up (blog posts, news articles, etc)? Who are the authors? Consider searching in a private browser as well, just to see if the results are different. Make a table or a list for each search engine and summarize the results. For example: TikTok algorithm

Google Wikipedia Google Scholar New York Times Library Catalog
Seems like a lot of advice articles for marketing professionals Mostly about the company, Ctrl + F for "algorithm" doesn't turn up much Several results from a publication ACM (something to look into) and conference presentations > that tells me this is a new topic and people haven't yet turned their conference presentations into published journal articles Lots of commentary on TikTok and its issues for individuals, the tech world, and international events More specific scholarly articles from particular fields. One for business or plastic surgery (?)

  1. Do a deep dive By now you should have a sense of some of the main issues related to your topic. Pick one and dig in! You're still not committing to it for good, but you want the experience of finding more scholarship and identifying the people who are writing in this field. You might want to set a timer for 15 minutes and see where you end up. Follow links, citations, and references to other people. For example: I found this article in the library catalog on TikTok and public health. One of the authors was Marco Zenone so I Googled him and found his personal website. He's a Canadian PhD student with a nice beard and a snazzy website. His Twitter account provides many links to similar stories about technology and public health, maybe one is more interesting or relevant to my topic? There's a lot on the potential harm of Amazon review, we haven't really talked about that, but it could be a good potential data source.

  2. Rinse and repeat When your timer is up you can decide whether you want to keep going or start down a new rabbit hole following this similar process of following links and scholars. For this assignment, share your notes on investigating at least two sub-topics. You should end up with enough sources for the Annotated Bibliography assignment, due the same day. Think of that assignment as the more formal presentation of the work you conducted in this activity.

Specs:

  • This assignment can be done as a Word/Google doc or by hand on paper. It can be messy! I want you to document what you're doing, not worrying that you're getting the "right" answer.
  • No word count, but be thorough! Show your work, as they say in math class.
  • Free from grammatical errors, typos.
  • Credit and link out to sources when appropriate. I won't require that you use a certain citation style, but you should be in the habit of crediting sources and using in-text links. If you feel better about using a formal citation style, go for it!