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Wherein Matt Mower (aka rubymatt on FreeNode) rambles about technology, the love of a good MacTop, ruby coding, rails, topics, knowledge management and learning, and politics.

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Curiouser and Curiouser! on academia http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic academia Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Sharing the research we all paid for Wed, 03 Jul 2002 22:27:24 +0100 The Chronicle of Higher Education: <A href="http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i43/43a02901.htm">'Superarchives' Could Hold All Scholarly Output</A>. Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work. The idea is to gather as much of the intellectual output of an institution as possible in an easy-to-search online collection. [<A href="http://www.tomalak.org/">Tomalak's Realm</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Interesting article.  Here's a taster: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> Several colleges are now looking to share more of that work by building "institutional repositories" online and inviting their professors to upload copies of their research papers, data sets, and other work. Some imagine a day when every research university gives its research away through the Web, allowing scholars and nonacademics to mine it for ideas and information. Institutional repositories could create an alternative to journals, fans of the archives say. Journal publishers, meanwhile, say that such repositories are unlikely to supplant their publications. Journals, they argue, are still the best means of distributing and preserving research. And even some of those supporting the new archives recognize the difficulty of getting professors to change their habits. "We've had pretty serious interest in the system from about 30 major institutions," Ms. What: Massachusetts Institute of Technology's project to develop a superarchive, as well as software tools for creating and maintaining the repository. The tools will be offered to other colleges that want to use them. When: DSpace has been under development for two years. The university is testing it this summer, and plans to make the software available free to anyone in the fall, when the university will invite all professors at MIT to contribute to its archive. What: Free software developed at the University of Southampton, in Britain, to help individual scholars, departments, or universities create archives of research papers online. An updated version was released this year. What: A series of "metadata" codes that librarians or others can attach to research papers to help search engines pull out desired information.</BLOCKQUOTE> Universities are funded out of taxation.  The fruits of their research should be made available to all, for the benefit of all.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000090.html Battles with the thought police Tue, 12 Apr 2005 09:39:42 +0100 Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a professor of economics at the Univeristy of Las-Vegas who ran into some troubles with his local thought police in the form of the universities affirmative action commissar and later the deans and the provost of his University who convened kangaroo courts to try him. If you <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe15.html">read about it</a> you will wish it was fiction. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002491.html Always say 'no' initially Mon, 04 Jul 2005 10:09:39 +0100 <blockquote>The scene in Ghostbusters, where the three parapsychologists are fired by the university, is among my all-time favorites. Dan Ackroyd's character warns the other two:<blockquote>I liked the University. They gave us money, they gave us the facilities, and we didn't have to produce anything! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there.</blockquote>The rule of survival in every bureaucracy is "Safety first." Corollaries are: "Don't make a mistake." "Keep your head down." "Do it by the book." "Don't make waves." But the central, unbreakable rule of a master bureaucrat is this one:<blockquote>Always say no initially. It's a matter of leaving room to retreat. You can retreat from no to yes, and the person asking you to do something is happy. If you have to retreat from yes to no, you've made an enemy.</blockquote>I remember that one clearly. It was the answer given to a reporter by the Washington bureaucrat with the longest tenure in 1976, upon her retirement. He had asked her how she had survived for so long.The free market's law is to say yes initially. The salesman wants the commission. To the question, "Can I get it in blue?" the salesman answers: "Will you sign the contract if I can get it for you in blue?" After the contract is signed, the salesman puts the pressure on the company to deliver it in blue. [<a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north392.html">Academia and Paralysis</a> by Gary North]</blockquote> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002711.html