What is Transliteracy?
librariesandtransliteracy.wordpress.comWhat is Transliteracy?
What does it have to do with libraries?
Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. – www.transliteracy.com
(originally published at Librarian by Day)
I have been asked this question many times by librarians so I am way overdue for this post.
Most recently I was asked “….are librarians the people best equipped to define and interpret transliteracy (as opposed to say cognitive scientists, anthropologists, or critical theorists).” This is a modified version of my original answer.
No librarians are probably not the best people to define and interpret transliteracy. Fortunately we are (or at least I am) not defining it, and we certainly are not the only ones thinking about it.
Where did the word transliteracy come from?
Transliteracies came first, introduced by the Transliteracies Research Project directed by Alan Liu, Dept of English, University of California at Santa Barbara.
“Established in 2005, the Transliteracies Project includes scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and engineering in the University of California system (and in the future other research programs). It will establish working groups to study online reading from different perspectives; bring those groups into conjunction behind a shared technology development initiative; publish research and demonstration software; and train graduate students working at the intersections of the humanistic, social, and technological disciplines.”
Sue Thomas attended the first transliteracies conference and was inspired to form the PART Group (Production and Research in Transliteracy, now http://www.transliteracy.com)
” PART is a small group of researchers based in the Faculty of Humanities but researching in the Institute of Creative Technologies. The IOCT, which opened in 2006, undertakes research work in emerging areas at the intersection of e–Science, the Digital Arts, and Humanities”. – Thomas, et al.
What is transliteracy? Sue Thomas and her group use this working definition
Transliteracy is the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks.
How is transliteracy different from media literacy or digital literacy or technology literacy?
…because it offers a wider analysis of reading, writing and interacting across a range of platforms, tools, media and cultures, transliteracy does not replace, but rather contains, “media literacy” and also “digital literacy.” Thomas, et al
It also includes technological, economic, social, cultural, and global issues (convergence). While it can be easy to tie transliteracy to technology
it is important to note that transliteracy is not just about computer–based materials, but about all communication types across time and culture. It does not privilege one above the other but treats all as of equal value and moves between and across them. Thomas, et al
Is transliteracy new?
No, but it has just been named recently. We are not seeing any new communication styles, only new ways of capturing and sharing those communications. We are now using video or audio equipment to capture content that could only have been witnessed live. We are using computers and other technology to share information that we would have previously shared over the phone or face to face. Getting information from people you know rather than from a reference book or librarian is traditionally information seeking behavior.
What we are witnessing today is thus the acceleration of a trend that has been building for thousands of years. When technologies like alphabets and Internets amplify the right cognitive or social capabilities, old trends take new twists and people build things that never could be built before. – Rheingold (pdf)
Will all this new technology change how we think and act?
Probably. But even the bemoaning of the change in the format in which content or information is shared is new. Socrates beat us to it when he complained the the written word is
an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality. Pluto, The Phaedrus
Libraries and Transliteracy from Bobbi Newman
References:
A Digital Library Better Than Google’s - Robert Darnton opines at NYTimes.com
nytimes.com…only a digital public library will provide readers with what they require to face the challenges of the 21st century — a vast collection of resources that can be tapped, free of charge, by anyone, anywhere, at any time.
Digital Libraries Wasted
dailytrojan.comNo surprise there… perhaps we don’t advocate these libraries enough for students. I come in contact with MANY students every day who have no idea the advantages they have in their very own libraries.
This article is mainly about USC but I think it applies to everyone.
Often, students only frequent the libraries for a quiet place to study, to use a computer or to print. USC appears to be well aware of the evolution toward online resources and has continually updated its subscriptions to educational databases or purchased additional e-resources to encourage student research. Whether students use these resources, however, is another case.
Intolerable Digital Risk
chronicle.comHathiTrust and five universities sued for copyright infringement.
Link Round-up: Amazon & the Kindle Fire
Just a few links on the Amazon News of the Week, not exhaustive at all!
TCTV: Hands On With The Kindle Fire
“The Kindle Fire is the device we were all waiting for and when it arrived it did not disappoint. The Fire is a 7-inch media device that plays well with all of Amazon’s media services including the book store, the video store, and the music store. It includes a web browser and supports Amazon’s own Amazon App Store, a branch of the Android App Store that focuses on apps optimized for this device.” [With video demo.]
Amazon’s Android Tablet May Be the Best and Kill the Rest
“The failing point of many existing 7-inch tablets as that they thought of the iPad as their competition. But a 7-inch “tweener,” as Steve Jobs dubbed it, is an inherently different device, and Amazon, with the Kindle Fire, has embraced that difference.”
Why There’s No Such Thing as a Cheap Kindle
“The reason Amazon will succeed in selling millions upon millions of Kindles is that Amazon is obscuring the price, just like wireless carriers do with the price of cell phone handsets. Behavioral economists know that people are willing to pay more for things when they have no basis on which to judge its value.”
Comic/modern myth [or, try not to starve in the cold and the dark].
***
Speaking of Amazon, also in the news this week is their deal with Overdrive to allow Kindle users to check out books from their public library, so here are a few blog posts on that topic.
eBooks, Privacy, and the Library
“Once a user takes advantage of this new Kindle/Overdrive service, his or her library card number and eBook checkout history (if they’re using a Kindle) becomes part of Amazon’s database. Whether this is a good thing or something to be concerned about is up to the library and the individual user.”
Public Library eBooks on the Amazon Kindle – We Got Screwed
“The public library systems in America (and elsewhere) spend a great deal of money each year on books. Money that goes to publishers and authors and instead of standing up as a unified body we’ve taken the pitiful ebooks scraps we’ve been given.”
Library Books on the Kindle, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Amazon
“I have to admit that I don’t entirely get the “libraries got a raw deal” vibe that is wandering around the blogosphere. Yes, the Kindle is still locked in proprietary hardware as well as using DRM software on its content. This was true before and after Overdrive made the deal to gain access to their devices.”
The Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings
frontera.library.ucla.edu“Due to copyright restrictions the digital collection is only fully accessible from computers on the UCLA campus.”
Gulf Oil Spill Information Center: digital library "under development"
guides.lib.usf.edu
Photograph by Chris Combs, National Geographic.
From the University of South Florida’s Gulf Oil Spill Information Centre’s website:
This is a guide to some of the information and data concerning the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the clean-up efforts. A digital library containing many more documents and sources is under development.
The site functions as a web portal, containing links to information on other sites organized by topic. The scope and size of the upcoming digital library is not stated. In a news story published 8 July 2010 on the USF website, the director of USF libraries’ academic resources Todd Chavez said the library will be arriving “in relatively short order.” No dates are given, nor is there any information on what this digital library might contain or whether the information that comprises the library is currently available elsewhere.
Louise Lincoln: A Scrapbook of Art and Spirit
gslis.simmons.eduGUYS GUYS CHECK OUT THE THING I* MADE
It’s a digital library of a woman’s scrapbook who went to Simmons College from 1936-1940 and my class made it in 15 weeks and its awesome and you should go look through it cause did I mention it’s awesome?
*and 12 other people but I’m the most important, obv
