Internet resources for Native American and Canadian Aboriginal studies

David A. Smith is the Indigenous Studies Librarian, University of SaskatchewanAn annotated bibliography of what the author considers to be some of the best quality, most useful, and in a few cases, most innovative Web sites of value to academics, independent researchers, and students who conduct research in the field of North American indigenous studies

Canadian Audiovisual Archives: The Politics of Preservation and Access

In 2005, in the spirit of Canadas total archives philosophy, the Western University Archives in London, Ontario acquired over ninety regional films on 8mm. Archival staff digitized the films in a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) fashion: they were simply repaired, projected, and captured off the wall with a digital camera. The raw files were then processed and given basic titling before being exported onto DVDs for public and institutional sale. While digitization was quite rudimentary, the public has access to a forgotten regional history. This dissertation analyzes the tensions and politics of audiovisual acquisition, preservation, and dissemination by recounting steps taken by DIY archivists to bring films from a personal archive to an institutional archive. I trace this collection of amateur itinerant films as they move from the filmmakers home in Dundee, New York, to the Western Archives. Reverend Leroy (Roy) Massecar (1918-2003) was a Baptist Minister and itinerant filmmaker who between 1947-1949 visited over ninety towns throughout Central and Southwestern Ontario, documenting daily life, screening films in these towns as Stars of the Town See Yourself and Your Friends on the Screen! and capturing the fleeting energy of small town rural Ontario. The dissertation mobilizes what Canadian archivist Terry Cook calls, archival contextual knowledge, a history from the bottom-up, and uses this case study to highlight larger issues facing Canadian audiovisual collections in the early 21st century: the shifting value in antiquated audiovisual formats and marginal film collections; the tension between professional preservation and public access; the hidden labour of audiovisual archivists; and the politics of DIY audiovisual discourse. I make the labour and bureaucracy of traditional archives visible by examining the discourses of the Archive not only within a theoretical space, but also in actual archive spaces whether physical or digital. I argue that bringing transparency to the roles and actions of donors, artists, archivists, scholars, and the public will allow for the larger ecology of Canadian audiovisual preservation to be activated, allowing actors in each point of the cycle to collectively move towards a holistic and networked audiovisual preservation strategy

ACMLA Bulletin

Number 153, Newsletter - Association of Canadian Map Libraries"Volume 1, Number 1". Until Spring 1974, each issue bore a issue and volume number, after which it was decided to use an issue number alone, counting from the first issue.Numbers 1-15 (1968-May 1974) published as the Newsletter - Association of Canadian Map Libraries. Numbers 16-65 (November 1974-December 1987) published as the Bulletin - Association of Canadian Map Libraries. The Association name changed in 1987 to Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives (ACMLA); thus published as Bulletin - Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives, 1988 to the present

Cultural Heritage on line

The 2nd International Conference "Cultural Heritage online – Empowering users: an active role for user communities" was held in Florence on 15-16 December 2009. It was organised by the Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale, the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities and the Library of Congress, through the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program - NDIIP partners. The conference topics were related to digital libraries, digital preservation and the changing paradigms, focussing on user needs and expectations, analysing how to involve users and the cultural heritage community in creating and sharing digital resources. The sessions investigated also new organisational issues and roles, and cultural and economic limits from an international perspective

Reading Mediated Identities: Auto/biographical Agency in the Material Book, Museum Space, Social Media Platforms, and Archives

Ph.D

The Object of Platform Studies: Relational Materialities and the Social Platform (the case of the Nintendo Wii)

Racing the Beam: The Atari Video Computer System,by Ian Bogost and Nick Montfort, inaugurated thePlatform Studies series at MIT Press in 2009.We’ve coauthored a new book in the series, Codename: Revolution: the Nintendo Wii Video Game Console. Platform studies is a quintessentially Digital Humanities approach, since it’s explicitly focused on the interrelationship of computing and cultural expression. According to the series preface, the goal of platform studies is “to consider the lowest level of computing systems and to understand how these systems relate to culture and creativity.”In practice, this involves paying close attentionto specific hardware and software interactions--to the vertical relationships between a platform’s multilayered materialities (Hayles; Kirschenbaum),from transistors to code to cultural reception. Any given act of platform-studies analysis may focus for example on the relationship between the chipset and the OS, or between the graphics processor and display parameters or game developers’ designs.In computing terms, platform is an abstraction(Bogost and Montfort), a pragmatic frame placed around whatever hardware-and-software configuration is required in order to build or run certain specificapplications (including creative works). The object of platform studies is thus a shifting series of possibility spaces, any number of dynamic thresholds between discrete levels of a system

Public Perception of the Differences Between Printed and Electronic Books: A Content Analysis

This study investigated user perceptions of the differences between print and electronic books. Using Marshall McLuhan and others' contention that media are not neutral conduits of information but rather shape the information they convey according to their own affordances and biases, this study focused upon the fundamental differences that are based on each medium's essential nature. Seven such differences were drawn from the literature and were used to categorize comments posted to online discussion boards and blogs using qualitative content analysis. Comparisons on all seven dimensions were identified, with tangibility discussed most and the direction of information flow discussed least. Two additional dimensions emerged during the coding process which may form an additional category. The list of fundamental differences may help cultural institutions prioritize what to digitize and inform the discussion as to why these media may be different and suited to different uses.Master of Science in Library Scienc