The Biblio File

Last week I finished The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith and was pretty disappointed in it. It’s the first thing I’ve read by her, and I picked it up because I had heard such good things about White Teeth. Briefly, the book is about Alex-Li Tandem, an autograph collector and trader who is at rather loose ends on a number of fronts: his love life, his religion, his career, and his inability to cope with the loss of his father. To point, at the start of the book he has just awoken from a 3 day acid bender (which had been supposed to be part of an enlightenment ceremony) of which he remembers nothing, and discovers he has wrecked his car, that his girlfriend is angry with him, and that he may or may not have forged the holy grail of autographs, a signature from actress Kitty Alexander. Unfortunately, by the end of the book, very few of these issues are resolved, or even dealt with in any direct way, except for the most uninteresting of these–the Kitty Alexander autograph. There is much discussion of his Judaic faith, but it seems forced and out of place, especially since its importance to Alex is never made clear. His relationships are in no better shape at the end than they were at the beginning (while his girlfriend of 10 years is getting a new pacemaker installed he decides to go to an autograph show in New York–seemingly without consequence) and the ceremony he has at the end of the book to commemorate his father seems pointless and hollow, since Alex himself doesn’t believe in it.

There were enough moments of humor and keen observation here that I will eventually pick up White Teeth, but I would not recommend The Autograph Man.

The March issue of First Monday is a special issue, focusing on critiques of Web 2.0. In the preface, Michael Zimmer writes:

But Web 2.0 also embodies a set of unintended consequences, including the increased flow of personal information across networks, the diffusion of one’s identity across fractured spaces, the emergence of powerful tools for peer surveillance, the exploitation of free labor for commercial gain, and the fear of increased corporatization of online social and collaborative spaces and outputs.

I’ve only just started the first article, but so far it looks like there is a lot of good stuff here.

Campus Technologies has an interview with Brad Ward, Electronic Communications Coordinator at Butler University, who is using a social networking site called Zinch to recruit students to Butler. Ward says that Zinch, which allows prospective students to create a profile with personal information beyond test scores and grades, is a useful tool because:

We can go in [to Zinch], and, if we’re looking for kids in a certain state to reach out to, we can filter by the state. Then if we wanted to filter by what year they’re graduating high school or what their gender is or something like that, we can really drill down.

According to their site, over 475 colleges are currently using Zinch.

Campus Technology has a post on Wimba Pronto, a chat tool designed for the classroom:

Wimba Pronto provides live online communications for students and instructors. Some of its features include:

* Audio and video conferencing capabilities, including a “follow the speaker” audio feature;
* Desktop application sharing;
* Support for queuing for individualized help; and
* Automatic population of contact lists based on courses.

It also “seamlessly integrates” with Blackboard and Moodle, according to their website. It’s still in the pilot phase and no word on when it will be available in Alpha form. But it sounds like it could have a lot to offer residential and distance students.