Completely non-election post
Reading a today about efforts at UCSB (which bears a striking resemblance to either an environmental scane or a needs assessment), I stumbled across two new references.
The first I've seen before, but they've come a long way: The Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science. A nice set of tools and resources for inserting a little GIS into any of your social science projects. What I like most about this is the combination of research and teaching--often when you see curriculum materials, they are at sites that completely lack a research focus, or vice versa. Wasn't I just saying that you could put GIS into any part of the curriculum? And here are people setting out to prove it.
The second is the Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space, which is just a plain old neat idea. Seeing that I am currently on a 10 week cultural geography tangent (hey--and I'm writing a paper about the American West as a sacred space! I've been looking at this site for 20 minutes and I just made the connection) this one is especially timely.
Anyway, an intersting point made in the paper is that researchers frequently only upgrade their technologies when it is necessary to do so for their own research. It's intersting to think that as we move to electronic-only journals in the library that we will actually be forcing upgrades for people that are clinging to outmoded technologies.
But more interestingly, in my opinion, are those few that are already pretty savvy, but choose not to use certain technologies like Windows or cookies. We don't make any efforts to make a lot of our services available on multiple platforms or to the select few that are real privacy nuts (despite the fact that many of us profess to be privacy nuts). For the unix workstation user who tries to cover her footsteps, will we actually be forcing a downgrade?
The first I've seen before, but they've come a long way: The Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science. A nice set of tools and resources for inserting a little GIS into any of your social science projects. What I like most about this is the combination of research and teaching--often when you see curriculum materials, they are at sites that completely lack a research focus, or vice versa. Wasn't I just saying that you could put GIS into any part of the curriculum? And here are people setting out to prove it.
The second is the Center for the Analysis of Sacred Space, which is just a plain old neat idea. Seeing that I am currently on a 10 week cultural geography tangent (hey--and I'm writing a paper about the American West as a sacred space! I've been looking at this site for 20 minutes and I just made the connection) this one is especially timely.
Anyway, an intersting point made in the paper is that researchers frequently only upgrade their technologies when it is necessary to do so for their own research. It's intersting to think that as we move to electronic-only journals in the library that we will actually be forcing upgrades for people that are clinging to outmoded technologies.
But more interestingly, in my opinion, are those few that are already pretty savvy, but choose not to use certain technologies like Windows or cookies. We don't make any efforts to make a lot of our services available on multiple platforms or to the select few that are real privacy nuts (despite the fact that many of us profess to be privacy nuts). For the unix workstation user who tries to cover her footsteps, will we actually be forcing a downgrade?
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