Comments on: Anthrosource — actually useful?

By: Johny Appleseed

Johny Appleseed — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 16:29:50 +0000

Lol i was just doing research for a class and I stumbled upon your article on Anthrosource. I clicked it, and got the big “you need to become an AAA member to access this article” message. Somehow my school doesn’t pay enough to read it, so thank you very much for posting it on this blog!

By: :: .. :: zerzaust :: .. ::: June 2005

:: .. :: zerzaust :: .. ::: June 2005 — Thu, 15 Dec 2005 19:26:50 +0000

[...] blogging and the “big men” in anthropology Now, as a student you’ve got a certain way to look at “elders”, “big men” or the like in your field. This is certainly true for me too but gets twisted in a funny way when one reads blogs.For example Robert Borofsky was for a long time someone who had edited a horribly difficult book we had to read for an introduction into the history of anthropology… apart from that I didn’t know much about him. Later I found out about a site he’s got, called “Public anthropology”…and I liked the pictures there.Marshall Sahlins on the other hand is the guy who wrote Two or three things I know about culture and Stonage economics, and one of our professors has got a lot of respect for him, which he certainly conveys in our lectures.Now what changed for me is, that Sahlins is the chair on Alex’ advisory committee and therefore I almost “know” him personally, or he seems somehow closer. Borofsky on the other hand was commented on in a funny way by John some time ago. He himself didn’t seem to think that was soo funny and was quite offended by the post…they’ve had some trouble, it seems.So I think blogging makes anthropology more fun, you get to know the human side of the “big men” and hopefully there’ll be some women soon too!Found later: more on this “respect” that changes:Why join the AAA at all these days? You can usually get the journals online or from the library, the kerfufle about the 2004 meetings had something to upset everyone, and, believe it or not, some of us just aren’t interested in talking about the Yanomami any more. But AAA is where hiring happens, so people join because they have to, not because they want to.sourceFound at savage minds, an anthroblog that is definitely worthwhile reading (and gets people /Lorenz/me stressed out because there’s too much to read *smile*), even if you’re not an anthro-geek! [...]

By: antropologi.info - Social and cultural anthropology in the news blog - Open Access Anthropology - Debate on Savage Mind

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 17:13:37 +0000

[...] Alex Golub: Anthrosource — actually useful? Many suggestions on how to design a really useful anthropology portal (that also would prevent such ironies as mentioned in Kelty’s article) [...]

By: Terra Nova: May 2005

Terra Nova: May 2005 — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 21:02:43 +0000

[...] ollaboration extend well outside the virtual worlds fishpond. For instance, consider this post on Savage Minds (actually citing Farmer & Morningstar) about how be [...]

By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » AnthroSource Steering Committee

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 02:35:11 +0000

[...] n selected to become a member of the AnthroSource Steering Committee. We’ve talked about AnthroSource on Savage Minds before—in fact thanks to Kerim [...]

By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Tutorial: How to use CiteULike with AnthroSource

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 05:05:37 +0000

[...] Amazon. Now, how to use it? There are actually two ways to answer that question. Rex has already described how he fits CiteULike into his academic research. So I will ans [...]

By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » The Savage Minds Reading List

Sat, 25 Jun 2005 01:08:19 +0000

[...] e Minds Reading List
Posted by Kerim under Site News , Bibliomania

Although I can’t add links to journal articles that are only listed in AnthroSource, I [...]

By: jen

jen — Fri, 27 May 2005 13:38:59 +0000

I am a librarian at a large research library and I am going to forward this to some of my colleagues. Many of them still require proof that there are very computer-literate faculty out there who need these tools Thanks for your “how we do it” statement!

By: Rex

Rex — Thu, 26 May 2005 17:05:22 +0000

The article cites linguislist as an excellent example of a scholarly commuity site (I agree btw). Linguistlist has an RSS feed.

I just wanted to say that outloud.

By: Bonnie Nardi

Bonnie Nardi — Thu, 26 May 2005 15:21:32 +0000

Since John mentions the First Monday article, I would like to clarify. The First Monday article (of which I was first author) discusses some of the themes in this contest submission. Much of what’s in the First Monday article points to the future of AnthroSource and what it could be, not its current incarnation. The research was intended to provide inspiration for the evolution of AnthroSource. (I am on the AnthroSource Steering Committee.)

By: John

John — Thu, 26 May 2005 12:29:12 +0000

For more background on AnthroSource, there’s an article in “First Monday” describing how it came to be and some of the research behind it:

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_10/nardi/

By: Rex

Rex — Thu, 26 May 2005 00:27:39 +0000

Thanks for the kind words, all. I’ve made some minor tweaks in spelling, punctuation, and linkages.

In fact I applied for a position on AnthroSource’s steering commmittee before publishing the essay, which is one of the reason’s why I’m publishing this essay here — although I am still waiting to hear, I may not be permitted to apply for both the committee and the contest (even though contest winners are announced first).

If you’re interested in this topic I encourage y’all to apply as well. I’m unclear as to who and what AnthroSource is, frankly (I didn’t know they were tax-payer funded until Chris mentioned it) I think they are going in the right direction but need more direction from people who are tech- and user- savvy.

Finally, there are lots of ideas I _don’t_ mention in the essay (FOSS licensing, an arxiv.org equivalent etc.) because, well… I wanted to win the essay competition! Producing a document arguing for GPL’ing all scholarship, micropayments for articles etc… I’d be exploring all of these, but thought I’d start at a reasonable level rather than suggest the sort of things (‘why doesn’t the AAA give free email accounts for all members? And free blogs too? That would be rad!’) that seem easily implementable only to people who don’t know how hard sysadmins’ lives are.

By: Judd Antin

Judd Antin — Thu, 26 May 2005 00:08:19 +0000

It's worth mentioning (especially because of your great ideas) that AnthroSource is for its steering committee.

By: John

John — Wed, 25 May 2005 19:56:20 +0000

This is a great essay. I got a lot out of it (and added a bunch of stuff to my bloglines feeds). My sense has been that the folks behind AnthroSource want it to be more like what you describe – a portal and online social network (though probably not open access) – but aren’t there yet. The idea of an anthropology repository via AnthroSource would be exciting – people could post pre-prints, conference papers, syllabi or whatever along with CVs. This has been done in other disciplines and has been highly successful. I hope a lot of people read your essay and start exploring the possibilities!

By: ckelty

ckelty — Wed, 25 May 2005 13:38:32 +0000

Rex, this is great–and whether or not you win the competition, it’s the basis for a really great HOWTO document– How to do research after the Internet–perhaps we should start a little documentation project as part of Savage Minds… It would be fantastically useful for us pedagogues…