Last week, I posted to Kairosnews about Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, a new open access writing textbook. This has been a long time coming. Pavel Zemliansky and I have discussed it for a few years now. Technology and other opportunities have finally made such a project possible.

And maybe now the time is right. Textbooks are a hidden cost that impact how much students can pay for tuition. It's doubtful that the current economic crisis will end anytime soon. If higher education could reduce textbook outlays by students, some of that money could be as a savings for the student to reduce the overall cost of education, and some of it in tuition increase. It's a matter of economics. Is the commercial textbook industry the most economical method of providing textbooks for students? Doesn't seem like it to me.

David Bollier posted an essay this week which focuses on how best to protect the public commons online. No one can argue against the principle that academic knowledge grows and evolves best when it is readily available to other academics. Yet, in the absence of the Internet as a publishing medium, academic publishing has turned academic knowledge into a commodity. Unfortunately, the academy took the direction that Bollier warns against when talking about the public commons online,

The key challenge is not how to devise better business models per se. Our challenge is to recognize socially created value as a powerful force in its own right—and then find the best ways to protect and sustain that value over the long term. . . . let us start by recognizing and honoring the sovereignty of the commons as a separate category of value-creation, and work from there. Otherwise, we will squander a rich opportunity.

Placeholder for publishing a version of my dissertation manuscript.

In my field--Computers and Writing, a subdiscipline of Rhetoric and Composition--there is much concern and scholarship about the digital divide and how limited access to computer technology will continue to wide the gap between the have and have not's. I don't disagree with that at all, but I am concerned about the fact that there is almost no concern about the digitial "knowledge divide" created by lack of access to information, a result of protectionist IP policies, practices, and legislation. Thus it was great to hear that speakers at Santa Clara University pointed out that access to computer technology may be of less importance than access to knowledge:

Speakers at the event, attended by about 200, talked about the importance of creating a ``digital commons'' -- a public, online space for knowledge that would help alleviate social and economic problems in poor countries, as well as inequities between the developed and developing worlds.

I would add that this digital knowledge divide is not just a problem for developing countries. Access to culture is locked up behind DRM and pay-for/pay-per use services: i.e., community colleges and private 4-year schools who cannot afford access to the expensive academic journal databases.

So I hope Computers and Writing will soon realize that lack of attention to OA and IP issues is not achieving their goals for promoting literacy. It's only through attention to both computer technology and knowledge access that we can increase opportunities for everyone. It's time to "pay attention."

For some reason, the Drupal news aggregator simply does not like the fancy Feedburner RSS URL offered on Open Access News offered as a substitute for the Blogger Atom feed (Drupal will not read Atom feeds). So I created a new one using Feedburner that is the more traditional RSS 2.0.

For those also struggling with Feedburner and Drupal, when creating a Feedburner URL from an an ATOM feed, on the Feed Service Details page, check only the Convert Format Burner box and use Show Details to set it to "RSS 2.0." It's that simple :)

Last week, I gave a presentation, Open Source/Open Access as Social Constructionist Epistemology, at the Conference on College Composition and Communication. There's also an OpenOffice presentation version that is CC licensed.