Jefferson's Newspaper

I’ve been told many times since completing my M.L.I.S. that most skills related to library and archival work are developed on the job.  In fact, I realized about halfway through my degree program that my professional training would continue well after grad school. Not unlike other professional-academic hybrid programs, library school provided a sufficient foundation, but the bigger challenges and learning experiences came during my practicum and in my daily work, as well as in…

Deco is a free theme for Omeka. Though I started working on an Omeka theme for use by a more general audience and without any particular motivation beyond having a lame sense of fun, as I got going, I realized it might be really useful for the group of social studies teachers with whom I’ve been working this past week. As part of a grant-funded workshop, the teachers needed to start their own WordPress- and…

Judging by my Google Analytics, I get a lot of hits on this site from people looking to learn about Thomas Jefferson and his views on the free press and newspapers.  My bounce rate, perhaps combined with an active imagination, suggests that such visitors are just downright pissed that this site is even returned as a search result and maybe even that I would have the temerity to claim a domain name that could be…

Let’s get one thing out of the way now: I believe that copyright serves a legitimate purpose in our society. If an artist or creator puts their labor into a work, they deserve some degree of control over that product, including over distribution, sales, and so on. This article (and all original works on this site) use a Creative Commons license that reserves certain rights of copy, while forfeiting others in manner that seems sane…

Given that one of my primary occupational roles is providing tech support, I offer the following question in part as preemption in my own self-interest but also in the interest of exploring the scope of instruction in the digital humanities (or the “digital” anything for that matter): Should Your Syllabus Include a Note on Web Browsers? If you teach an online class or a class with a significant online component, the answer might be yes.