End of 2010 round up on the literacy-digital-university front - 2

In a reply to a message I sent to the other Lidu 'core group' people in which I said that I thought the focus of our 4th and last meeting next April should be the Digital University (on the basis that we've been talking a lot about literacies and technologies but not much about what the DU actually means) Helen Beetham sent us a link to this site called 'Hacking the Academy' which claims to be a book 'crowdsourced' from the blogs of a number of writers concerned with digital matters in academic settings.

I've reproduced the image of the front page below (on the assumption that I'm allowed to - I'll take it away immediately if anybody objects) because I think it's interesting how exactly like a book they have made it appear. Perhaps to give us academics a sense of security, in the face of some of the upsetting opinions that are contained within!

The only bit I've read properly so far, is the section on digital scholarship, because I happen to be involved in doing some research on this topic. I've got every intention of reading the rest, though, as it all looks very thought provoking, and, as Helen observed, is as likely to undermine as to inform our ideas of what the Digital University might actually look like, when it arrives.

I can't resist observing, too, that just as this looks pretty much like a boring old print collection, so the claim that it has been 'crowdsourced ' might also be a slightly glamorous way of describing the familiar process of putting together contributions from a number of relatively well-known commentators in a field, most of whom have well-deserved reputations as experts. Hardly the wisdom of the crowd, eh?

Doing it in a week is pretty impressive though.