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Sheila at Relaxing on the Trail is beginning what promises to be an extremely useful series for those of us who think about new media and public history. She’s conducting reviews of history museum sites–one from each state and territory, beginning with the Chicago History Museum. Check in periodically for a new review.

In case anyone missed it, last week Brown University announced the findings of its commission to investigate the debt of the university to slave labor. Initiated by University President, Ruth Simmons, who is herself the great-granddaughter of slaves, the committee found that the institution’s early financial support depended on the proceeds of slave labor. As a result the committee recommended that the University actively acknowledge this past with incoming students, that they create a memorial, that they open a new center to study slavery and injustice, and that they actively recruit students from Africa and the Caribbean.

All of these steps seem reasonable to me, yet I’m left wondering why the University might not make a more substantial commitment to the African American community in Providence. If they are going to acknowledge their debt, they could make themselves a useful and restorative presence in that community. And, would it kill them to provide tuition waivers for African American students?

Of course, I suggest this knowing full well that my beloved alma mater, Georgetown, should be facing the same decisions based on the history of the Jesuit plantations in southern Maryland. In fact, the list of institutions of higher education who should be grappling with these issues is long. In my opinion, tuition and community involvement are much more significant interventions than yet another “center” to study slavery. Good scholarly work is being done out there in the existing institutional homes for this inquiry. It’s time for these universities to make a move that will actually make a difference in people’s lives.

Nicholas Negroponte’s dream to bring cheap laptops to the children of the world will begin with Libya.  Imagine what the world would be like if every child had a wireless connection…..

Zotero is here.  Download your copy today.  It’ll change the way you do research.

No, not National Parks (though they seem to be for sale to loggers and oil companies these days), but Rosa Parks. It seems that corporate America has decided to capitalize on the the Civil Rights activist most frequently (and somewhat erroneously) credited with launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott. So now we can add Rosa to the likes of Malcolm, Che and Mao.

What did insomniacs do before the internet?  I’m half convinced that if I didn’t have an internet connection, I’d be most of the way to the great american novel.  Or, maybe only part of the way, because I seem to be waffling between nights of 9 or 10 hours of sleep and nights with nada.  But, more likely than not, I’d be sitting in front of the TV watching reruns of the X-files.

The launch is pending for the exciting new browser citation tool from the most-excellent team of programmers at CHNM. Zotero is going to be the coolest thing to happen for academic Firefox users since tabbed browsing.

I can’t wait to get my download, because it will help immeasurably as I’m beginning to work on my new project (I’ve got research cites scattered all over the place…). Then, I’m gonna suggest that all my students download the toolbar, because it should really help them compile their materials for the edited collections that will be their culminating projects for the semester.

It’s the season when leaves and loves slowly make their way to cold storage. And that means that it’s time for the MLB division playoffs. And small confessions. I’m a person of distant and torn loyalties this fall — none of them having to do with my secret (and most likely now permanent) soft spot for the Red Sox.

Rather, my beloved Yankees are playing the Tigers — calling up my childhood allegience to Jim Leyland, former manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Of course, in the other AL contest, Minnesota is in play — yet another year when I might have to choose between the Bombers and the Twins, which was a frequent and troubling dilemma when I was in graduate school.

But, in the midst of all of these conflicting loyalties, one thing is never in question: The Mets don’t have any right to exist as a Major League team, nonetheless to win the World Series.

Today, the Museum of Modern Art announced that it will establish a new division of Media. This isn’t really a new division, rather it is a renaming of the Division of Film and Media. Quoted in the press release, Museum Director Glenn D. Lowry said, “The creation of a new department at MoMA devoted exclusively to media-based art acknowledges the growing importance of new technologies in contemporary artistic expression.”

The shift seems like an interesting turn of events to me, perhaps based on the tremendous turn of directors to digital video (David Lynch, in a NY Times interview, recently said that he’d never work with film again after producing in digital).  But what of film?