DIGITIZE THIS BOOK! is a new book by Gary Hall, recently published by the University of Minnesota Press (312 pages; ISBN 978-0-8166-4870-2; ISBN 978-0-8166-4871-9; Electronic Mediations Series, volume 24).
Here is a short description provided by the publisher, along with a list of contents, and I have added emphasis to some of the elements that I think deserve special attention:
How open access can transform academia.
In the sciences, the merits and ramifications of open access-the electronic publishing model that gives readers free, irrevocable, worldwide, and perpetual access to research-have been vigorously debated. Open access is now increasingly proposed as a valid means of both disseminating knowledge and career advancement. In Digitize This Book! Gary Hall presents a timely and ambitious polemic on the potential
that open access publishing has to transform both ‘papercentric’ humanities scholarship and the institution of the university itself.
Hall explores the new possibilities that digital media have for creatively and productively blurring the boundaries that separate not just disciplinary fields but also authors from readers. Hall focuses specifically on how open access publishing and archiving can revitalize the field of cultural studies by making it easier to rethink academia and its institutions. At the same time, by unsettling the processes and categories of scholarship, open access raises broader questions about the role of the university as a whole, forcefully challenging both its established identity as an elite ivory tower and its more recent reinvention under the tenets of neoliberalism as knowledge factory and profit center.
Rigorously interrogating the intellectual, political, and ethical implications of open access, Digitize This Book! is a radical call for democratizing access to knowledge and transforming the structures of academic and institutional authority and legitimacy.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Another University Is Possible
Metadata: Notes on Creating Critical Computer Media
I. INTERNETHICS
1. Why All Academic Research and Scholarship Should Be Made Available in
Online Open Access Archives-Now!
2. Judgment and Responsibility in the Wikipedia Era
Metadata: Print This!
3. IT, Again; or, How to Build an Ethical Institution
II. HYPERPOLITICS
4. Antipolitics and the Internet
Metadata: The Specificity of New Media
5. HyperCyberDemocracy
Conclusion: Next-Generation Cultural Studies?
Metadata: The Singularity of New Media
Gary Hall is a Professor of Media and Performing Arts at the School of Art and Design, Coventry University. He is the co-editor of Culture Machine at http://www.culturemachine.net and the Director of the Cultural Studies Open Access Archive at http://www.culturemachine.net/csearch. Hall is also the co-founder of the Open Humanities Press at http://www.openhumanitiespress.org. His website is located at http://www.garyhall.info
ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY 