Accept no substitutes

Day: January 17, 2007

Cornel West @ UNC

Cornell West

Cornel West was the Martin Luther King Memorial Speaker tonight at UNC. Memorial Hall was completely full and people were turned away — in advance as free tickets were required.

West was all I was lead to believe: smart, witty, theatric, engaging, challenging, occasionally contradictory. Part of West appeal, besides his animated and delightful speaking, is his constant attempt to balance what he calls the Socratic and the Prophetic. That is the logic of the Greeks and the passion and love of Jesus. All in the face of America’s history of racism.

West was happy to school newly announced presidential candidate Obama — and of course his listeners — on the difference between Hope and Optimism.

West had a little fun with folks who say “Obama is so well poised and articulate” as if, says West, that the folks saying that don’t expect black folks to be well poised and articulate. “Those folks are not meeting the right black people,” he says. “I expect all black people to be well poised and articulate.”

He gave a shout out to John Edwards for his work in raising the issues of poverty and class at a national level. But also had a little fun with JE — “Didn’t he used to be a part of this campus for a little bit? Wasn’t he here?”

B. B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center

Spent the better part of a good day with the folks from the B. B. King and Delta Interpretive Center of Indianola, Mississippi.

UNC was well represented by folks from the Library, Folklore, and from the School of Information and Library Science.

Bill Ferris brought us all together to talk about the Museum and its possibilities.

There were many good moments but one just before I had to leave that I’ll remember is a video of B. B. giving a little tour of his house. He spends a lot of time enjoying music and video on his computer and finding good information on the Internet.

Coming soon: Science Bloggers and Duke Tech Tuesdays

science bloggers conference logo

Saturday, this Saturday Jan 20, is the Science Bloggers Conference here in Murphey Hall. There is room for one more as of this writing. Sign up or end up on the Waiting List. The folks have already signed up look great and the collection of the Best of the Science Blogs which Bora edited will be there too.

Then on Tuesday, I’ll be speaking about contributor-run digital libraries at Duke’s John Hope Franklin Center’s TechTuesdays on Tuesday January 23. We’re delaying the start of the talk from the regular TechTuesday time — starting at noon:30. The announcement is below and on the ISIS TechTuesday site. I’ll be creating a wiki entry for the talk to which you may add stuff if you like and/or you can leave comments on what I should be saying to this post.

ISIS TechTuesdays featuring Paul Jones
January 23, 2007, 12:30-1:45 PM
John Hope Franklin Center 240

Paul Jones, founder of sunsite.unc.edu and director of ibiblio.org, will present “Participatory Digital Libraries – Past and Futures; the ibiblio trends,” in which he will talk about experiences and futures of Contribtor-run Digital Libraries and Digital Repositories with some particular focus on the ibiblio tends. This will be somewhat of an update of his paper “Open (source)ing the doors for contributor-run digital libraries.[PDF]” Communications of the ACM. Volume 44 , Issue 5 (May 2001). Also at http://ibiblio.org/pjones/presskit/ACM-p45-jones.pdf or if you prefer the Japanese language version http://www.ibiblio.org/pjones/presskit/p45-jones.jp.pdf.

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