“What Is a Game” Conference. I've given myself an hour to writeup my impressions from the LevelUp conference, which will be a challenge because it was a busy 3 days. I'll give some highlights, anyway. (Here's a WSJ article previewing the event.) It was an… [grandtextauto.org]

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sounds like it was interesting and fun, hopefully i'll make it next year.

UK Universities (plc).

The depressing state of debate over the British university system is well explored by Stefan Collini in the LRB . He ponders this sentence from the White Paper on Higher Education:

We see a higher education sector which meets the needs of the economy in terms of trained people, research and technology transfer. At the same time it needs to enable all suitably qualified individuals to develop their potential both intellectually and personally, and to provide the necessary storehouse of expertise in science and technology, and the arts and humanities which defines our civilisation and culture.

And observes

Even those statements which are clearly intended to be upbeat affirmations of their importance have a way of making you feel slightly ill. It is not simply the fact that no single institution could successfully achieve all the aims crammed into this unlovely paragraph, taken from the introductory chapter to the Government’s White Paper, The Future of Higher Education, published earlier this year. It is also the thought of that room in Whitehall where these collages are assembled. As the findings from the latest survey of focus groups come in, an official cuts out all those things which earned a positive rating and glues them together in a straight line. When a respectable number of terms have been accumulated in this way, s/he puts a dot at the end and calls it a sentence.

As a certain person would say, read the whole thing.

[Crooked Timber]

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i wouldn't say read the whole thing, but i would say reconsider what value neoliberalism puts on education and research…. this is the sort of report that tends to indicate those values….

what i want to know is who is hitting my blog by searching for 'jeremy hunsinger blog'
on yahoo and google. i dunno why anyone would actually look for my blog, and most places that mention it probably link to it, so i find searching for it somewhat puzzling.

For Your (RIAA-Approved) Listening Pleasure. Rory, having recently rediscovered the instruction manual from a 1970s-era cassette player, has used the surreal illustrations contained therein to create The Recording Industry Guide to Home Taping. Is it any coincidence that this ghost-written voice of the RIAA reminds me so much of the similarly channeled voice of Homeland… [Planned Obsolescence]

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classic, interesting and fun, don't let the industry ownzor you

Updated Create Change. In October, ACRL, ARL, SPARC, and SPARC Europe updated the Create Change web site and brochure, both already among the most effective tools for educating faculty and librarians about the serials crisis and the best options for overcoming it. The brochure text is free online for institutions that want to customize it for their own circumstances. Print copies are available for a low price. The web site and brochure are available in English, Japanese, and Catalan. [Open Access News]