Ruth Rikowski News Updates Progression

Ruth Rikowski's 48th News Update

2012-01-01T14:54:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Some great news from us this autumn: in October our middle son, Victor Rikowski, obtained a full-time permanent position as an ‘Idea Store Co-Coordinator’ at the Idea Store, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

More information about that, and some other news items, are below.

1. VICTOR RIKOWSKI OBTAINED A PERMANENT POSITION AT THE ‘IDEA STORE’ IN THE LONDON BOROUGH OF TOWER HAMLETS, AS AN ‘IDEA STORE CO-ORDINATOR’ IN OCTOBER 2011
Very exciting – our middle son, Victor, obtaining a full-time permanent position at
The Idea Store, a public library/community resource in the London Borough of
Tower Hamlets. He started working there as a temp in the early summer (shortly
before he got his degree results), loved it from day one, and really wanted to
work there permanently.

Victor was very determined about it all, and now he has succeeded. He has already set up a Creative Writing workshop there (leading on from his degree). Many different workshops and courses take place on a wide range of subjects at the Idea Stores, (e.g. fitness, cooking, I.T., fashion, business and finance), all at very affordable prices. To enrol or for more information about all these courses call 0207364 5665, or visit the website.

Victor has taken an Ancestry work shop and he regularly takes the ‘Rhyme Time’ session with children – playing his guitar and singing, telling stories, colouring, helping children with their homework etc. Furthermore, he also now participates with the sessions for the over 50’s – again, playing his guitar and singing etc. He does all that and much more at the Idea Store.

For more information about the Idea Store see - http://www.ideastore.co.uk/

So, onwards and upwards, as they say!

2. A ‘MARXISM AND EDUCATION: RENEWING DIALOGUES’ SEMINAR
IN PRAISE AND CELEBRATION OF PAULA ALLMAN’S WORK – TO BE
HELD AT THE INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON,

ON 4th FEBRUARY 2012
In celebration of Paula Allman’s work (Glenn holds the view that Paula has written the best books ever on Marxism and Education), Glenn is organising (with Tony Green and Alpesh Maisuria) a free one-day seminar at the Institute of Education, University of London, to be held on 4th February 2012. This will be held under the ‘MERD (‘Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues’) banner’. Sadly, whilst in the process of organising this event, Paula passed on (we knew that she was living on borrowed time). But it is lovely that this seminar is being organised, in praise, celebration and appreciation of her work. The following people will be speaking:

Sarah Carpenter, Helen Colley, Margaret Ledwith, Peter Mayo, Mike Neary, and Glenn Rikowski.

3. WOODBERRY DOWN COMMUNITY LIBRARY IN LONDON BOROUGH OF

HACKNEY RUN BY VOLUNTEERS
David Marzella, a union rep in Greenwich Public Libraries informed me about a library in the London Borough of Hackney that is solely run by volunteers. The library is called Woodberry Down Community Library.

For an interesting article about it all, see ‘An image of the ‘big society’?: a report from Woodberry Down Community Library’ by ‘Lady Stardust’.
http://thecommune.co.uk/2010/11/29/an-image-of-the-big-society-a-report-from-woodberry-down-community-library/#more-6215

This model fits in well with David Cameron and his ‘Big Society’ picture, and is perhaps paving the way for more to come - library volunteering is certainly on the increase of course.

The article written on 29th November 2010 is interesting and informative. Woodberry Down is a large run-down estate in Hackney with a population of 280,000. Woodberry Down Library used to be a large library in a very impressive building apparently. It was in the middle of the estate and was popular with the local community.

But then, the council had financial problems which resulted in closure of the library in 1996. The community occupied the building in protest, but were unable to stop the closure. Some other libraries were also closed at the time, leaving only 7 branches open in Hackney.

The building was turned into the Robin Redmond Community Centre. Then, in 2006, after some regeneration funding, a survey of the local people was conducted, and it was established that there was a need for some kind of library. A group of council officers came up with the idea of: “a community-led library, run by volunteers, owned by the community and only requiring low revenue expenditure.”

In March 2007 a small room in the community centre was opened – this was now to be the library. It was to be staffed solely by volunteers and funding for the room was to come from regeneration money. ‘Lady Starling’ says:

“…it is a library run by the council, but just with unpaid workers. It has all the support and infrastructure of the council library service such as new stock and the linked IT system; but also the constraints. The volunteers are employees in the hierarchy of the council with the same lack of autonomy, but just without the pay. The books, equipment and IT are centrally ordered…”

‘Lady Starling’ concluded that there was a good community atmosphere in the library but that it still felt “like a library run on the cheap”.

At the end of October 2011 I decided to go and visit the library with 2 of my sons, Alexander and Gregory, and see it all for ourselves. A friendly and helpful volunteer spoke to us and showed us round. She explained that the library had gone into a new building just 8 weeks before, so there was still much work to do in regard to publicising the new location etc. The library was indeed very small. Having said that, there were actual books in it (thank goodness!) and there was a children’s section, which apparently was well used. Groups of children (from nurseries etc.) go and use the library on a regular basis.

Having said all that, when we were there, there were no other users there at all and it did seem to be tucked away, and difficult to find (we certainly had some difficulty in finding it). Neither did it really have the feel of a library, but felt more like a resource centre housed within a big complex.

It will be interesting to see what the future holds for Woodberry Down Community Library and where the future of library volunteering is going in general. Apparently, Hackney Libraries are, yet again, currently being restructured.

4. ‘LIBRARY SYSTEMS CONSORTIA: A STRATEGY FOR DEVELOPMENT AND

SURVIVAL?’ – TALK GIVEN BY WILL BLACKBURN AT A CILIP IN LONDON MEETING ON 10TH October 2011
I had not been to a CILIP in London meeting for quite some time, so decided to
go along to this one, with my youngest son, Gregory. The talk was about
libraries joining consortias “to cut costs, streamline operations…”

However, Will Blackburn frequently used language and vocabulary in a way that
it was difficult to decipher, we thought; it seemed to be more a process of
camouflage. If people are in the process of cutting back our libraries I think they
should be honest about it.

Instead, Will said, for example, that the consortia can ‘strengthen the library
position’ and enable libraries to ‘fight the good fight’.

Even the definition of the consortia, and what it was actually about, remained
somewhat elusive. Will Blackburn also emphasised the need to continually change
and evolve and the ‘lack of sovereignty’ in the consortia.

So, anyway, this is the way in which many things are drifting in the library and information profession. We need to take stock and re-assess.

Still, it is good that CILIP in London continue to hold these meetings (given the cutbacks etc) and alert people to these important happenings and developments.

5. LATEST ISSUE OF ISC NOW OUT, No. 31, Summer 2011
http://libr.org/isc/toc.html or

http://www.libr.org/isc/issues/ISC31/ISC31.pdf

The latest issue of ‘Information for Social Change’, No 31, Summer 2011, edited by Martyn Lowe is now out. Contributors include: Martyn Lowe, John Pateman, Jeff Cloves and Julie Biando Edwards.

ISC are also currently undergoing some changes, particularly in regard to social networking tools – so watch this space!

6. PIECE ON ‘MULTICULTURALISM’ BY DAVID KAGOTHO NDERITU NOW AVAILABLE ON OUR ‘FLOW OF IDEAS’ WEBSITE
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=401&slink=yes
David Kagotho Nderitu was someone that we connected with a few years ago, who then, at my suggestion, wrote some material for Information for Social Change.

David recently told me about an article that he was writing about ‘Multicultural Britain’ and wondered if it might be something that ISC would be interested in. ISC still, as yet, have to make a decision but meanwhile, David was happy for it to be inserted on our website, so here it is. The title of the piece is ‘Multicultural Britain: what does it mean for black people?’

7. ALEXANDER RIKOWSKI’S ESSAY ON DESCARTES ACCOUNT OF THE MIND AND THE BODY IS NOW ON OUR ‘FLOW OF IDEAS’ WEBSITE
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=398&slink=yes
Another essay that Alexander Rikowski wrote whilst he was a Philosophy undergraduate student at King’s College London (in his 2nd year) is now available on our website. This is on the topic of Descartes account of the mind and the body. This became an important topic for us this autumn, because of the interest that our youngest son Gregory is currently taking in Descartes philosophy. See also item 7 below, which refers to my entry about Descartes on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog.

8. 7 NEW ITEMS UP ON MY ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG
http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/
There are 7 new items up on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog. 2 items about
workshops that Victor Rikowski has been involved with and organised at the
Idea Store – Ancestry and Creative Writing Workshops; a piece about Industries
for Females (with ‘tongue in cheek’); ‘The Wise Man and the Foolish Man’; some
brief thoughts about the philosopher Descartes, a news item about Diana
Edmonds, becoming Head of Libraries Division within Greenwich Leisure Ltd. and
an item about Social Dancing at the Guild Hall.

9. ‘CHEERFUL SIN’ VIDEO – SONG WRITTEN, PRODUCED AND SANG BY

VICTOR RIKOWSKI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8
With the money that Victor has been earning, he decided to buy himself some new musical instruments and musical equipment. One of the results of this has been that he has made a video of a song that he has written, entitled ‘Cheerful Sin’, which is now on YouTube. We think that this is a very beautiful song, and hope that you agree!

10. GREAT REVIEW OF MY BOOK, ‘DIGITISATION PERSPECTIVES’ IS NOW AVAILABLE IN ‘THE HIGHER EDUCATION ACADEMY’ - REVIEW BY ERIC JUKES
http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/publications/book_reviews/full_review.php?id=729
A great review of my book ‘Digitisation Perspectives’, Sense Publishers, 2011, is now available on the ‘Higher Education Academy’ website. The reviewer, Eric Jukes (who was also at the book launch), outlines the areas covered in the book, gives the book a 5/5 rating and ends by saying:

“This is an excellent work and one which is well recommended, firstly for those involved, or embarking on, a digitisation project, for librarians, knowledge and information professionals, academics and, even those who might want to probe into the ethics of digitisation…”

That’s all for now. The next newsletter will be distributed at end March 2012.

Best wishes

Ruth

1st January 2012

N.B. Many thanks to David Marzella and Eric Jukes for providing information for items 3 and 10 respectively.

Ruth Rikowski's 47th News Update

2011-09-30T02:49:00.000-07:00

Hope everyone had a good summer.

We spent time in both Suffolk and Bangor, which was all very lovely! Then, the rest of the summer was spent doing lots and lots of sorting!

Anyway, my newsletter this quarter consists entirely of new entries to our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website, apart from one item about my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog.

So, happy reading!!

1. ‘CAPITORG: EDUCATION AND THE CONSTITUTION OF THE HUMAN IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY’ – PAPER GIVEN BY GLENN RIKOWSKI AT THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF CREATIVE ARTS AND MEDIA IN DUBLIN IN MAY 2011, AND NOW AVAILABLE ON OUR WEBSITE
‘Capitorg’ by Glenn Rikowski is now on our website, and here is what Glenn says about it:

“This paper is my first writing, relating to my first public appearance (apart from seminars / lectures with my own students), for three years – apart from the eulogy for my father’s funeral (written on 21st February 2009).

Furthermore, Dublin was only my second trip outside the UK in 32 years; so in many respects it was something special for me. It felt a bit like the first leg of a ‘comeback’ tour!

I would like to thank the people in the Praxis & Pedagogy group at The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCam) in Dublin for inviting me (especially Glenn Loughran). They were wonderful hosts.

The paper was completed in London at breakneck speed (during the ‘marking madness’ season) on 23rd May 2011, and was delivered to an audience at The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, in Dublin, on 25th May. It was revised on 27th May, went through further editing and proof reading on 6-7th September, and was finally posted to The Flow of Ideas on 8th September 2011.

The full reference and link to the paper is:
Rikowski, G. (2011) Capitorg: Education and the Constitution of the Human in Contemporary Society, A paper prepared for the Praxis & Pedagogy Research Seminar, The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM), Dublin, Ireland, 25th May 2011, available online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Capitorg

Note: the paper reads better if you click onto the ‘Print Friendly’ option at the end of the page.

The tremendous flyer for the event can be viewed at:http://www.gradcam.ie/glenn_rikowski.pdf

Praxis & Pedagogy
The group is convened by Glenn Loughran, artist, activist, and PhD Scholar at the NCAD and GradCAM. Other members include John Buckley (NCAD/GradCAM), Edia Connole (NCAD/GradCAM), Susan Gill (DIT/GradCAM) and Thomas McGraw-Lewis (DIT/GradCAM).
The group convenes Wednesdays bi-weekly.

For more information on joining the Praxis & Pedagogy seminar series, and/or related activities see http://www.gradcam.ie or email the group at praxis@gradcam.ie
Praxis & Pedagogy is at: http://praxispamphlet.wordpress.com/”
Written by Glenn Rikowski

2. ‘REPORT ON MONTESSORI’ BY JONATHAN FRANCE

This report on the Montessori Method was written by Jonathan France, one of Glenn’s students, in his final year in Education Studies at the University of Northampton. Jon France graduated with a First in Education Studies and Politics in summer 2011. He also came to my book launch for ‘Digitisation Perspectives’ earlier in the year, which was very nice. This report is now in the ‘Contributions’ section of our website.

The report was written as a short assignment for the Adventures in Educational Theory & Practice module (EDU3028) that Jon studied during the 2010-2011 academic year.

France, J. (2010) Report on Montessori, 30th November, Education Studies, School of Education, University of Northampton, online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’:http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=contributions&sub=Report%20on%20Montessori%20-%20Jonathan%20France

3. 'SCHOOL CULTURE AND 'FEAR OF A BLANK PLANET' ' BY DISHI PHILLIPS

This essay was written by another of Glenn’s students - Dishi Phillips. Dishi also got a 1st in summer 2011 in Education Studies and Psychology, and she wrote this when she was a final year student in Education Studies at the University of Northampton. This essay is now in the ‘Contributions’ section of our website.

It was written as an assignment for the Education, Culture & Society module (EDU3004) that Dishi studied during the 2010-2011 academic year.

Phillips, D. (2011) School Culture and Fear of a Blank Planet, an essay written for EDU3004 ‘Education, Culture and Society’, Education Studies, School of Education, University of Northampton, 10th January, online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=contributions&sub=School%20Culture%20and%20Fear%20of%20a%20Blank%20Planet%20-%20Dishi%20Phillips

4. 'EDUCATION AND BONUS CULTURE' - BY BRIANNA HABERMAN-LAWSON

Here is an essay written by another of Glenn’s students - Brianna Haberman-Lawson, who also got a 1st in summer 2011. She wrote this when she was a final year student in Education Studies at the University of Northampton. This essay is now in the Contributions section of our website.

It was written as an assignment for the Education, Culture & Society module (EDU3004) that Brianna studied during the 2010-2011 academic year.

Haberman-Lawson, B. (2011) Education and Bonus Culture, an essay written for EDU3004 ‘Education, Culture and Society’ module, Education Studies, School of Education, University of Northampton, 10th January, online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’:
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=contributions&sub=Education%20and%20Bonus%20Culture

5. ‘COMPETITION AND MARKETS IN EDUCATION’ – BY BRAD DYMOND

This is an essay written by Brad Dymond (another of Glenn’s students) when he was a final year student in Education Studies at the University of Northampton. He also got a 1st in summer 2011, in Education Studies and Economics. This essay is now in the Contributions section of our website.

It was written as an assignment for the Education, Culture & Society module (EDU3004) that Brad studied during the 2010-2011 academic year.

Dymond, B. (2011) Competition and Markets in Education, an essay written for EDU3004 ‘Education, Culture and Society’ module, Education Studies, School of Education, University of Northampton, 10th January, online at ‘The Flow of Ideas’:http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=contributions&sub=Competition%20and%20Markets%20in%20Education%20-%20Brad%20Dymond

6. ‘RAGE: WRITERS CHANGE THE WORLD’ BY VICTOR RIKOWSKI
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=396&slink=yes

An essay that our middle son, Victor Rikowski wrote during his final year at Bangor University is now available on our website. It is entitled ‘Rage: writers change the world’(leading on from the original question which was ‘Do certain theatrical productions challenge social injustice? Of so, then how?’). The essay (written for an English Literature module) looks at various political plays and the effect that these can have or not have on society. As Victor says in his opening sentence of this essay:

“The six theatrical productions that this essay shall explore are those which use a wide variety of dramatic techniques to challenge various social injustices.”

And Victor concludes his essay powerfully in the following way

“ ..there is little doubt that all of the plays cited in this essay have posed some kind of challenge against social injustice. The social and political end to which these challenges are aiming for or could even be capable of within the sphere or radical social and political change is something that, perhaps, remains to be realized. However, it is a solid fact that no work of art has ever created or inspired any kind of lasting and substantial political change and it is likely that it never will. Of course, there is always the argument that raising political and social awareness is a political and social means to an end in itself. However, sometimes this argument of ‘cultural change’ is simply not enough. After all, cultural change is a temporary and fleeting decoration upon the giant scale of corruption involved with elements like capitalism, war, poverty, power and exploitation. In the face of these demons that cover the globe, what significant threat can a relatively small theatrical production with a moral conscience pose? As seen at the end of Ravenhill’s S & F when the characters feed each other ready-meals, the only thing we truly have is each other. In the face of the modern world and all of its problems, whether the issues are the financial crisis, war, poverty or whatever concerns us, there is one thing that unites us all which political theatre gives inspiration to and helps to resurrect: the hope for better days. You only get one life after all, and this hope is one of our strongest weapons against social injustice. All that remains now is to use it.”

Victor really enjoyed this ‘Rage’ course and obtained a 1st for this essay.

7. REVIEW OF ‘LIBRARIES AND SOCIETY’ by RUTH RIKOWSKI
I recently reviewed ‘Libraries and Society’, edited by David Baker and Wendy Evans and this is now on our website, at:
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=395&slink=yes

This is another Chandos book, published earlier this year (2011). I also went to the book launch for the book that was held at CILIP HQ.
Further details about ‘Libraries and Society’, along with information about how to order the book, can be found on the Woodhead/Chandos Publishing website at:
http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=2030&ChandosTitle=1

8. ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG – ‘The Moment’, ‘15 Female Professors’ and ‘Learn to Sing’
http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/

There are 3 new items up on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog. A blog about Douglas Kennedy’s latest book, ‘The Moment’ – a great read. Also, a link to an article entitled ’15 of the First Female Professors in History’, and an entry about singing lessons.

Best wishes

Ruth

30th September 2011

N.B. Thanks to Jasmine Hall for informing me about the article ’15 of the First Female Professors in History’ (see item 8 above) and many thanks to all those that contributed to our website.

Ruth Rikowski's 46th News Update

2011-07-08T02:30:00.000-07:00

Times they are a-changing; moods they are a-changing.

Anyway, whatever – this newsletter (a little late) is a joint effort between Glenn and I.

Glenn spoke in Dublin in May 2011 and he saw this as the first leg in his ‘comeback tour’, as he calls it, leading on from his father’s death in Feb 2009 and alienation from some aspects of academic life. So, for this and other reasons, the sections on ‘Marxism and Education’ in this newsletter (1-4) are written by him and the remainder is written by me.

Glenn’s aim over the last 30 years or so has been very much to re-invigorate Marxism and Education. And from there to take the topic to new heights; breaking new theoretical ground. Single-authored volumes on this topic by him have yet to be written, but they will be in time.

1. GLENN RIKOWSKI TALKING IN DUBLIN, IRELAND AT GradCAM ON ‘THE CAPITORG’

On 25th May 2011, I gave my first public performance (apart from the eulogy at my father’s funeral, and lectures / seminars with my students at Northampton) since 4th July in Rhodes 2008 – for nearly three years. I was invited by the Praxis & Pedagogy Group of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) in Dublin to give a talk. The convenors of the Praxis & Pedagogy Group had read my Battle in Seattle: Its Significance for Education (Tufnell Press, 2001) and wanted me to expand on topics therein. However, given that little of substance has happened to the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) since Seattle in 1999, I did not see much point in that. The Praxis & Praxis Group were interested in the concept of human capital, which permeates education and training policy documents in Ireland, as well as in the UK. Thus, I ended up speaking on that topic.

The title of my talk was: Capitorg: Education and the Constitution of the Human Contemporary Society. The ‘Capitorg’ (meaning ‘capitalist organism’) was an idea originating from Soowook Kim. He based the idea of the Capitorg on my work on the form of the human in capitalist society of the late 1990s and early 2000s. You can see Kim’s original article at: http://www.ccfi.educ.ubc.ca/publication/insights/v10n02/html/kim/kim.html

I based a short article on Kim’s work interesting work, called Planet of the Capitorg in 2007, which you can see at:

http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Planet%20of%20the%20Capitorg

The Praxis & Pedagogy Group produced a fantastic flyer for the event, which you can view at: http://www.gradcam.ie/glenn_rikowski.pdf

I produced a 15,000 word paper for the event: the most substantial writing for nearly three years. This will come out soon at our The Flow of Ideas website. About 6,000 words is new material. The rest in stuff jammed together from previous papers, but with some refinements and brief additions.

The Praxis & Pedagogy Group website is at: http://praxispamphlet.wordpress.com/

My advert for the event (along with quotations from my work and the work of Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur) can be found at: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2011/05/23/capitorg-education-and-the-constitution-of-the-human-in-contemporary-society-glenn-rikowski/

Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Dublin: http://www.gradcam.ie

Many thanks to folks in the Praxis & Pedagogy Group (and especially to Glenn Loughran) for inviting me to speak. They were great hosts. After having turned down so many invitations to speak and write over the last three years in particular, this event can be viewed as the first part of my ‘comeback tour’.

Glenn Rikowski

2. TALK AT THE IPDA CONFERENCE – ASTON UNIVERSITY

For the second gig in my ‘comeback tour’, I have been invited by Cliff Jones of the International Professional Development Association (IPDA) to do a Keynote talk at their forthcoming annual conference in November, at Aston University, in Birmingham. I will speak on Higher Education in Crises of Capital and Labour. For more on this, and the IPDA Conference in general, see: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/international-professional-development-association-conference-2011/

Glenn Rikowski

3. VOLUMES, BOOKS AND SHORT GUIDES ON MARXISM AND EDUCATION

For over 30 years now, I have been developing Marxist educational theory; or, more precisely, theorising education within the totality of capitalist social relations. Thus, for me, it is a momentous occasion when new works on Marx / Marxism and Education appear.

The first I would like to draw your attention to is Critical Education Against Global Capitalism: Karl Marx and Revolutionary Critical Education, by Paula Allman.

This first came out in 2001, and was published by Bergin & Garvey in hardback only. Now, at last, it is in paper back (and much cheaper). Sense Publishers have produced an excellent version, with some new material in the Introduction by Paula. In my view, this is the best book on Marx / Marxism and Education we have today.

For more details and Helen Colley’s introduction, see: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/critical-education-against-global-capitalism-by-paula-allman/

For ordering the book, see:Critical Education Against Global Capitalism: https://www.sensepublishers.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=51&products_id=1122&osCsid=3202bf1d0434f6e0a9d0fb2fcd2ee3d0

Amazon UK:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Critical-Education-Against-Global-Capitalism/dp/946091263X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289034653&sr=1-1

Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Education-Against-Global-Capitalism/dp/946091263X/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_p?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1289037381&sr=1-1

In contrast to Paula’s excellent book is Jean Anyon’s Marx and Education which came out a few months ago (Routledge, 2011). I have not reviewed it myself, but here I will say two things. First, Robin Small’s Marx and Education (Ashgate, 2005), whilst nothing near the quality of Paula Allman’s book, at least indicates that the author knows a fair bit about Marx and his views on education in capitalist society and the transition to communism. Secondly, I find it incomprehensible how anyone could write a book called Marx and Education and not mention Marx’s 3 volumes of ‘Capital’. Apparently, it was not a problem for Jean Anyon. There have been a number of reviews of Anyon’s book already, but for me, it is Curry Malott’s review of Anyon’s book that provides a compelling view regarding the quality of Anyon’s rendition.

Review details for Jean Anyon’s Marx and Education:

For Curry Malott, see: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/another-review-of-marx-and-education-by-jean-anyon/

For Schooling in Capitalist America (blogger), see: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/the-pioneers-of-marxist-thought-in-education-a-review-of-marx-and-education-by-jean-anyon-in-two-parts/

For Ken McGrew, see: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/review-of-marx-and-education-by-jean-anyon/

For m310 (Amazon review), see: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2011/04/19/marx-and-education-misleading-title-and-confusing-narrative/

For details on the book (including how to order it), see: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/marx-and-education-jean-anyon/

Finally, the publishers Continuum, through Professor Richard Bailey, the Series Editor for the Continuum Library of Education Thinkers (see: http://www.continuumbooks.com/series/browse.aspx?SeriesId=2166)

have invited me to write a book on Karl Marx and Education. I declined the offer, mainly because I do in fact want to write such a book (and have done for many years) but not be confined by working to some kind of formula; as Jean Anyon did on her Marx and Education, which was part of the Routledge ‘Key Ideas in Education’ Series, edited by Greg Dimitriadis and Bob Lingard. I have something original to say on the issue of ‘Marx and Education’, which, like so many other topics in Marxist educational theory, will have to wait until my stint as a teaching / driving / marking machine comes to an end (or at least a decline in its intensity).

Glenn Rikowski

4. NEW BOOKS IN THE PALGRAVE MACMILLAN ‘MARXISM AND EDUCATION’ SERIES

In 2004, with Tony Green, I set up the world’s first book series on Marxism and Education: the Palgrave Macmillan Marxism and Education Series. From 2006 I was no longer one the Series editors, but the Marx and Education Series has really developed and Tony Green has facilitated an interesting range of publications under its banner.

Some of the forthcoming books in the Marxism and Education Series (Palgrave Macmillan) are:

‘Marxism and Education: Renewing the Dialogue, Pedagogy and Culture’ edited by Peter Jones

‘Educating from Marx: Race, Gender and Learning’ by Shahrzad Mojab and Sara Carpenter

Mike Cole’s Racism and Education in the U.K and U.S. – Towards a Socialist Alternative, was recently published as part of the Marxism and Education Series. See: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/2011/07/06/racism-and-education-in-the-u-k-and-the-u-s-towards-a-socialist-alternative/

For a comprehensive list of titles in the Series, see: http://www.palgrave.com/products/series.aspx?s=ME

Glenn Rikowski

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And the rest is by me!!

5. PETER McLAREN, MICHAEL PETERS AND THEIR PARTNERS, NATHALIA JARAMILLO AND TINA BESLEY, RESPECTIVELY, ARE TAKING UP NEW ACADEMIC POSITIONS IN NEW ZEALAND IN THE COMING ACADEMIC YEAR

Peter McLaren, Michael Peters and their partners, Nathalia Jaramillo and Tina Besley, respectively, have all obtained academic positions in New Zealand and will be leaving the USA and going to New Zealand later in the year. And what a beautiful country to live in! We have also been invited to give talks/stay with them.

Tony Ward (one of the contributors to my digitisation book) will certainly be able to see more of them and hopefully work with them in one way or another.

We wish them all the very best with their new adventures.

6. TWO NEW ITEMS ON MY ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG

http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/

There are just 2 new items on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog – ‘Capitorg’, which is about Glenn’s talk in Dublin and ‘Moving’, stating simply that Glenn and I are moving forward and are thinking what to do next; where to go next.

7. BOOK LAUNCH FOR ‘LIBRARIES AND SOCIETY: role, responsibility and future in an age of change’ edited by DAVID BAKER AND WENDY EVANS, CHANDOS PUBLISHING, OXFORD, 2011, ISBN 978 1 84334 131 4

http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=2030&ChandosTitle=1

At the invitation of Dr Glyn Jones at Chandos publishing, I attended the book launch for ‘Libraries and Society’, held on 6th May at the Ewart Room, CILIP, London. It proved to be an enjoyable event.

‘Libraries and Society’ is in 25 parts and has a number of different contributors.

As it says in the publicity for the book, it:

“…reviews both the historical and future roles that public, private, academic and special libraries have in supporting and shaping society at all levels. Key aspects of library provision and the major challenges that libraries now face and will continue to face in the future are considered. The book also focuses on the emerging chapter in cultural, economic and social history and the library’s role in serving diverse communities within this new era.”

I particularly like the cover of the book, showing the development of man and reading; from parchment, to paper to ebooks.

8. UCL DIGITISATION LUNCH TIME TALKS

The UCL Digitisation lunch time talks are fading into the background for me. There are not going to be any more talks until the autumn. And when I asked whether they would like me to give a lunchtime talk based around some of the themes in my digitisation book (thinking that it was something that could be of mutual benefit, especially as one of the contributors to the book was a UCL lecturer), this was the reply that I received:

“Dear Ruth,
thanks for your offer to speak.

As you say, we are postponing the lunchtime talks until the start of the
new academic year in the coming autumn. We already have an extensive
programme of speakers from within UCLDH and the wider UCL community
which is our focus. Rossella is currently confirming those slots but we
are already over subscribed.”

As I pointed out, one wonders what the definition of ‘the wider UCL community is’. Also, that my energy needs to be preserved and used wisely! Anyway, we will have to see what transpires.

9. RSPB PETITION AGAINST CUTS AND ‘RED TAPE CHALLENGE’

A school friend of mine, who is a member of the Royal Society of Protection for Birds (RSPB) sent me details of a petition, asking me if I would urge others to sign it. So here it is. The RSPB say:

“Dear Supporter,

A new UK Government review called the 'Red Tape Challenge' is threatening all environmental legislation with the axe. We cannot let this go unchallenged.

We all value the natural world. We all appreciate how fragile it can be. And we all know how vulnerable nature and special places for wildlife are to the ravages of unrestrained human activity.

We also all appreciate that to safeguard our precious wildlife and environment we need to give them legal protection. Wild birds and their nests need to be protected from damage and disturbance. Special places need to be protected from development and preserved for future generations. The Wildlife and Countryside Act does both of these things.

There are 277 other pieces of environmental legislation and regulation in the UK covering everything from National Parks and marine protected areas to greenhouse gas emissions and clean air.

All of our vital environmental safeguards are now under threat. The UK Coalition Government's Red Tape Challenge is aiming to scrap as much regulation as it can. It has put all legal protection for the environment up for grabs. Protection which is a measure of a civilised society, and is the result of reforms won since our charity was created in the nineteenth century.

The RSPB has played a leading role in securing much of this legislation and we will not stand by and allow it to be put at risk.

Please step up for nature and support our campaign to secure the future of this essential legislation.

We have prepared a template e-mail for you to send to the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, who launched the Red Tape Challenge - copies of which will be sent to the Cabinet Office and the Treasury.

Yours sincerely

Mike Clarke
Chief Executive”

10. VICTOR RIKOWSKI OBTAINS A 2:1 BA DEGREE IN ‘MUSIC AND CREATIVE WRITING’ FROM BANGOR UNIVERSITY

We are delighted to say that our middle son, Victor Rikowski, obtained an Upper Second Class Honours degree in ‘Music and Creative Writing’ (which also included some English Literature - poems and plays) from Bangor University. We are now looking forward to going to the graduation ceremony next week.

All in all Victor got a lot out of his degree and the whole experience. As well as obtaining a good degree, he also set up a band, ‘Cold Hands & Quarter Moon’ (and wrote most of the songs for the band), obtained some 1sts, made lots of friend, played at a lots of gigs, performed in some plays, had a good social life in general and did quite a lot of mountain climbing and walking in the beautiful North Wales countryside.

He is currently in the process of compiling a CD of the music of ‘Cold Hands & Quarter Moon’ and he will take this along to his graduation.

Now it is time for him to move on with his life. He is taking on board the next phase of it really enthusiastically and has already obtained work, which he is very much enjoying.

We are obviously very proud of Victor and his achievements and wish him all the very best for the future.

Best wishes

Ruth

8th July 2011

N.B. Many thanks to Tina Sinclair for providing information for item 9.

The next newsletter will be distributed at the end of September 2011.

And finally … check this out……

‘Life is Jerky’ – a video by Carlos Escano, featuring Peter McLaren: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RafAgSg_wns

Ruth Rikowski's 45th News Update

2011-03-31T01:01:00.000-07:00

As I said on my blog, these newsletters for the foreseeable future will now be quarterly, rather than monthly (and I have just realised that I have not sent a newsletter out for 4 months!). Anyway, quarterly newsletters have become necessary to enable me to have more time and space to move on with other things in my life, and right now, for various reasons, I very much want and need to do that!

1. BOOK LAUNCH FOR ‘DIGITISATION PERSPECTIVES’ – EDITED BY RUTH RIKOWSKI The first item in this newsletter is about the book launch for my edited book ‘Digitisation Perspectives’ (Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2011), which was published recently – see

https://www.sensepublishers.com/product_info.php?products_id=1158&osCsid=df3f2d9a50c9034eba1dcf27c5fd1d88

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ruth+rikowski+and+digitisation

ISBN 978 94 6091 297 9 (pbk); 978 94 6091 298 6 (hdbk); 978 94 6091 299 3 (e-book)

Price: £35.00 (pbk); £75.00 (hdbk)

The launch was held at University College London (UCL) on Wednesday, 16th February 2011 (and many thanks to David Nicholas, Director of Department of Information Studies, UCL for making that possible). It went very well; I even found myself with a waiting list which demonstrates, I think, the level of interest that there is in the book and in the topic in general!

There was, in particular, a great level of interest from people in the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. There were some 45-50 people there altogether (restricted by room size and refreshment budget!). This included academics, information professionals, students, librarians, publishers, friends and neighbours etc. There was, indeed, a lovely mix of people.

There were 4 speakers altogether: these were Andy Dawson, Julianne Nyhan, Paul Catherall and myself.

Andy Dawson, Senior Teaching Fellow and MSc Information Science Programme Director, Department of Information Studies, University College London, introduced it. He spoke about my links with UCL, going back to when I studied for an MSc there, in the early 1990s.

Julianne Nyhan, Teaching Fellow in Dept of Information Studies, UCL, then said a few words. Julianne is the maternity cover for Melissa Terras, Senior Lecturer in Electronic Communication at UCL, who wrote the first chapter in the book - ‘The Rise of Digitization: an Overview’.

Paul Catherall is an Elearning Support Librarian at the University of Liverpool. Paul spoke about Part 2 of the book, ‘Digitisation and Higher Education’, which included his own chapter ‘Learning Systems in Post-Statutory Education’. Paul’s talk gave the audience a feel for the meat of the book!

Ruth Rikowski: then, I gave an overview of the whole book, also aiming to bring some humour and passion into it all! I emphasised how this was primarily a scholarly book and that the political message in it was low key, compared with my other 2 Chandos books. I spoke about some of the benefits to be gained from digitisation, such as easy access and good searching facilities, but also made it clear that, as far as I was concerned, digitisation could never totally replace hard copy material. I love books for example; hard copy books that I can take anywhere with me: on the train, to bed, to the dentist etc. etc. The whole feel of them; they are like my friend. An ebook could never, ever be the same for me. There are also the health risks of course. In addition, I highlighted the Houstons chapter, which I think is particularly special, focusing on the digitisation of ancient manuscripts and includes some lovely digital pictures of ancient manuscripts. I also explained how the book emerged out of an edited issue on Digital Libraries in the ejournal Policy Futures in Education – see http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pfie/content/pdfs/6/issue6_1.asp

There was a relaxed atmosphere at the launch, and plenty of conversation and networking. Chandos Publishers were also there, with copies of my Chandos books (‘Globalisation, Information and Libraries’, 2005 and ‘Knowledge Management: social, cultural and theoretical perspectives’, 2007). I also made copies of some of my articles freely available, including a piece about ‘The Feminist Library in London’ which was written by myself and Anne Welsh (a UCL Lecturer in Cataloguing) in 2009. I spoke about the possible digitisation of some of this feminist material.

‘Digitisation Perspectives’ includes contributions from 22 experts around the world and there is a Foreword by Simon Tanner, Director, Digital Consultancy in the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London. I mentioned some of this briefly at the launch, but as this was a launch and not a conference or seminar I obviously did not go into too much detail. Therefore, some further information is given below:

First of all, below are some further details about the contributors.

Lori Bell – lecturer at San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science and adjunct lecturer at University of Illinois; ex-Director of Innovation at Alliance Library System, USA.

Peggy Cabrera – Assistant Librarian, San Jose State University and library liaison to Environmental Studies, Global Studies and Humanities Dept at SJ. Also written on recruiting and training librarians.

Paul Catherall - E-Learning Support Librarian, Liverpool University. Studying for PhD in blended e-learning at Manchester Metropolitan Univ.

Susan Copeland – Senior Information Adviser (Research) at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Member of Board of Directors of Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.

Isaac Dunlap – Professor and Information Systems Coordinator at Western Illinois University Libraries.

Dieu Hack-Polay – Senior Lecturer in International Human Resources Management at London South Bank University.

Ron Houston – obtained PhD from University of Texas at Austin. Since 1987, directed and taught for non-profit educational corporation ‘Society of Folk Dance Historians’, an archive and library of information pertaining to history and practices of recreational international folk dancing.

Heather Joseph – Executive Director of Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), USA, founded by Association of Research Libraries, in 1997. Responsible for SPARC’s overall program development and negotiates partnerships with scholarly publishers.

Yehuda E. Kalay – Dean of Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning at Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. Prior to that, for 18 years was Professor of Architecture at University of California, Berkeley and co-founded & directed Berkeley Center for New Media. Published over 100 scholarly papers & 8 books, including books on architecture & new media.

Mary-Carol Lindbloom – executive director of South Central Region Library Council. Was Coordinator of Renaissance Island, in Second Life, based on Tudor Britain.

Kate Littlemore – Academic Support Manager for Schools of Arts and Applied Sciences at University of Northampton.

Jia Liu - was Associate Professor at Dept of Information Management, Peking Univ, China. Implemented project on metadata and its applications in the digital library; involved in 2 projects on digital reference service in Germany.

Mengxiong Liu – Professor and Engineering Librarian at San Jose State University.

Tatiana Nikolova-Houston – manuscript illumination and calligraphy artist in Austin, Texas. Obtained PhD from University of Texas at Austin

M. Paul Pandian – Head of Library and Information Resource Centre at Institute of Mathematical Sciences, India.

Tom Peters – CEO of TAP Information Services, USA, a small company founded in 2003 to help libraries and other organisations to innovate.

Kitty Pope – Was Executive Director of Alliance Library Systems.

Leburn Rose – Academic Registrar, London South Bank University, former Head of Department of Maths, Stats and Foundation Studies.

Alan Rosling – Academic Support Manager for Schools of Health and Business at University of Northampton.

Melissa Terras – Senior Lecturer in Electronic Communication in Dept of Information Studies, University College London and Deputy Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities. Research focuses on use of computational techniques to enable research in arts and humanities.

Tony Ward – architect, builder and critical pedagogue. For 20 years in New Zealand, directed Community Design Studio, working with students in real-world situations for marginalised communities.

I also commissioned 3 of these contributors to write books for Chandos Publishing. These are: Paul Catherall, Isaac Hunter (‘Hunt’) Dunlap and Jia (‘Jessica’) Liu.

Paul’s book is entitled ‘Delivering E-Learning for Information Services in Higher Education’ (2005)

Hunt’s book is entitled ‘Open Source Database Driven Web Development: a Guide for Information Professionals’ (2006)

Jessica’s book is entitled ‘Evaluation of the World-Wide Reference Service in the Libraries’ (2007)

‘Digitisation Perspectives’ is in 6 parts:

Part 1: ‘Background and Overview to Digitisation and Digital Libraries’ This includes chapters by Terras and Pandian and 2 by myself (Rikowski), the 2nd of which also looks at some of the complexities of digitisation, such as sophisticated search engines.

Part 2: ‘Digitisation and Higher Education’ This includes chapters on student mental models (Rosling and Littlemore); electronic theses (Copeland); learning systems (Catherall) and digitisation in scholarly communication and academic libraries (Dunlap).

Part 3: ‘Digitisation and Inequalities’ This includes chapters on hegemony and the web (Ward) and digitisation in Africa (Hack-Polay and Rose).

Part 4: ‘Digital Libraries, References Services and Citation Indexing’ This section includes chapters on the digital reference service (J. Liu) and citation indexing in the digital library (M. Liu and Cabrera).

Part 5: ‘Digitisation of Rare, Valued and Scholarly Works’ This includes chapters on the digitisation of ancient manuscripts (Nikolova-Houston and Houston); SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) (Joseph) and scientific scholarly publishing and new media (Kalay).

Part 6: ‘Futuristic Developments of Digitisation’ This includes chapters on personal computing devices and mobile technology (Peters) and virtual libraries (Bell et al).

I am also proud to say that the cover was designed by our son Victor Verne Rikowski. He also filmed the speakers at the launch on our small digital camera.

In regard to the future, I am sure that, in one way and another, the themes in the book will be taken forward further. In particular, I know that one of the contributors and a colleague of mine, Dr Dieu Hack-Polay at London South Bank University, is planning to hold a seminar at South Bank around the themes in the book in the autumn of 2011.

I have also been invited along to the lunch time talk sessions run by the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, and can and will raise topics covered in the book as and when seems appropriate.

One of the attendees at the launch, Eric Jukes, who also reviews many books (particularly books on digitisation) kindly emailed me saying that he had recorded the speeches at the launch and could download an audio version on to a CD and send it to me. He did; and I was very pleased with it. It is of a good quality. I was also able to stand back and assess the impact (or otherwise) of the talks from a distance, as it were. Upon listening I thought the talks fitted together well overall, with both Andy and Julianne providing brief introductions and overviews, Paul going into depth on one section of the book, and giving people an idea about the meat of the book and Ruth aiming to provide a passionate and enthusiastic overview, with some further information about how the book became a reality, and how my other books fitted into the overall mould. Eric Jukes kindly said that if any people would like a copy of this CD of the talks at the book launch for ‘Digitisation Perspectives’, then he can happily provide copies. So, if you would like this, do get in touch with me.

Finally, if any of you want a review copy of the book and/or if want to purchase a copy of the book, do let me know. The book is also available as an ebook in libraries.

2. TWELVE NEW ITEMS UP ON MY ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG AND THE FUTURE OF THIS BLOG

http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/

Well, having not sent a newsletter out for 4 months, the entries on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog have been mounting! There are no less than 12 items! However, do not despair (LOL); the endurance is over!

Seriously, I have decided that along with my newsletters, this activity also needs to be seriously curtailed. Thus, I will no longer be regularly reviewing/annotating the novels that I read, and indeed, entries on ‘Serendipitous Moments’ in general now will be rare. I have never reviewed/annotated the novels that I read in this way before (apart from briefly in my early teens but on paper then, of course). I became enthusiastic about the idea of giving readers an actual hands—on feel for my love of the novel (as well as books in general) as it were, and the important, indeed, powerful effect that books have on me, have always had on me, and indeed, always will have on me. And books must be wonderful for so many people, of course. It is one thing to talk about it; but sometimes it is nice to actually demonstrate it. At the time, I also found it to be therapeutic. Hence, my decision, but I cannot be spending all my time and effort on this – that would, indeed, stop me making so much progress on my own novel writing and other things that I want to do with my life. So, we move on. But I hope it has provided some interest and enjoyment to some, at least!

Anyway, since my last newsletter there have been 10 reviews/annotations of novels added to the blog; one item about music and one about my book launch.

I read some modern and some classical novels during this period. The modern novels were ‘The Other Woman’ by Jane Green; ‘P.S. I Love You’ by Cecilia Ahern; ‘Moonlight Eyes’ by Emma Blair; ‘An Apple for Eden’ by Emma Blair; ‘Sweethearts’ by Emma Blair; ‘Darkest before Dawn’ by Katie Flynn, ‘Jemima J.’ by Jane Green and ‘Girl Friday’ by Jane Green. I very much enjoy books by Jane Green, Emma Blair and Katie Flynn.

The classical novels were ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen, ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ by Thomas Hardy and ‘Jude the Obscure’ by Thomas Hardy.

I enjoyed nearly all of it, apart from the Cecilia Ahern book – I certainly do not intend to read any more novels by that particular author!

Re-reading ‘Pride and Prejudice’ proved to be very enjoyable and also worthwhile, as I got some new and different things from the novel, that I had not seen quite so clearly before (in particular, the number of similarities that I actually have with Jane Austen myself!). And re-reading the 2 Thomas Hardy novels was very fortuitous as it coincided in a very timely way with my decision to stop reviewing/annotating the novels that I read. It all fitted together extremely well. Anyway, read more about that on the blog itself. And so we move on.

3. TEACHING AT LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY

Well, well, well – I have a little teaching back at London South Bank University. It is a long, long story, but anyway….there it is, I have come out on the winning side, as it were, and it is useful for me at the current time. Also, as stated above, Dr Dieu Hack-Polay a colleague of mine at London South Bank University, is planning to hold a seminar at South Bank around the themes in ‘Digitisation Perspectives’ in the autumn of 2011. So, that’s all good news.

4. PHILIP BOOTH, CUTS IN LIBRARIES AND FASCISM

Another surprise for us; Glenn spotted in the Daily Telegraph a small piece that mentioned green councillor for Stroud, Gloucestershire, Philip Booth (who we first made contact with following on from him blogging about cuts in libraries in Gloucestershire and relating it to my globalisation book).

The piece was in the Daily Telegraph, on 2nd March 2011 (p.5) entitled ‘Video spoofs ‘Nazi’ library cuts’. I asked Philip Booth what it was all about. Apparently, a video clip was uploaded on to YouTube, that shows Hitler in his bunker, in the last few days of his life, with sub-titles of him wanting cuts in Gloucestershire libraries, but finding opposition! The clip is taken from the 2004 film, Downfall. Philip Booth said that is was ‘great stuff’ and then got accused of causing offence and scoring political points. He apologised on his Ruscombe Green blog, saying that he certainly did not mean to cause offence. He said that he got some 200 comments in response to it all, and that most of them were very supportive. So, well done indeed, Philip, for raising the issue and for getting people’s attention! I must say that the video clip is also very funny; better to laugh than to cry and all that!

Here is the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAMRCY55lnQ

And as Philip said, at least it has enabled the shocking library cuts in Gloucestershire to get more exposure.

Leading on from this, we also then discovered that Phil Bradley, Vice-President of CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) also made a video about library cuts nationwide (focusing more on CILIP itself), using this Hitler clip, with sub-titles about the cuts. See:

http://tametheweb.com/2011/02/10/hitler-concerned-about-savelibraries-campaign-video-by-phil-bradley/

It is an ingenious idea I think; perhaps, if similar such videos were made up and down the country, about library cuts in the various regions, then we might be on to an effective campaign to stop this horrendous entourage. But of course, there needs to be the will to do this, and the belief that it can succeed. But beware of the possible consequences otherwise.

See this interesting piece about book burning:

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005852

At the end of the piece it notes the fact that the 19th century German Jewish poet Heinrich Heine, wrote in his 1820-1821 play Almansor the famous admonition, “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen": "Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people."

So beware – do something before it is too late. What??!! Scream!!

5. ANDREW LANSLEY RAP and ‘THE NHS IS NOT FOR SALE’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl1jPqqTdNo

Leading on from this, we then found out about another video, which is brilliant, this time about fighting for the survival of the NHS (with Mc Nxt Gen). It is entitled ‘Andrew Lansley Rap’. The message is that ‘The NHS is Not for Sale’. The rap talks about the White Paper on liberating the NHS, private companies moving in and much else besides. At certain points, the artist is seen sitting by a gravestone with the words ‘RIP NHS – 1948-2011’.

At the end of the video it quotes from Aneurin Bevan, famously saying that the NHS: “Will last as long as there are folks left with the faith to fight for it.”

6. BOOK LAUNCH and BOOK REVIEW FOR ‘ EVE ON TOP: women’s experience of success in the public sector’ by DAVID BAKER and BERNADETTE CASEY, CHANDOS PUBLISHING: OXFORD, 2011, ISBN 978 1 84334 495 7; £47.00 http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=1992&ChandosTitle=1

At the kind invitation of Dr Glyn Jones at Chandos Publishing, I attended the book launch for the Chandos book, ‘Eve on Top’, on 17th December 2010. The launch was held in the grand surroundings of the Athenaeum Club, in Pall Mall, London. It proved to be a very enjoyable evening, with nice nibbles and interesting conversation.

In regard to the book, as it says on the book flyer: “Eve on Top takes an in-depth look at the position of women in senior positions in the public sector using a case-study approach, based on ten ‘successful’ women and their background, upbringing, career progression, successes and failures, challenges and experiences.”

There is also a Foreword by Harriet Harman, who says that what we learn from the experiences of these women “…will no doubt be a useful input to future policy debate, and new ideas about how we can ensure that the growing pipeline of female talent in Britain makes it to the top.” (pp. xiii-xiv)

A worthwhile aim indeed, albeit rather romantic.

Unfortunately, though, these women were so busy and successful that none of them were able to actually make it to the launch! Still, I had a nice and interesting talk with both Bernadette Casey herself and her daughter and learnt some more about the book and the motivation behind it. Several members of Bernadette’s family were there, which I thought was also rather nice; and is a touch that I like to add to my own work as well of course (such as having 2 of our sons sing at my first book launch). I also got to talk to the other Chandos members of staff and to Wendy Evans, the organiser of the event.

In addition, I have written a review of the book, which is available on our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=386

Finally, Chandos also now distributes a newsletter which contains some interesting news items, such as items on blogging and the Internet.

7. BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE LIBRARY

Heather Dawson of ALISS (Association of Librarians and Information Professionals) organised an interesting visit to the British Film Institute Library, which I went along to on 9th December 2010. I was drawn to the visit, in particular, because our youngest son, Gregory Rikowski is studying for a degree in Film Studies. He has been a member of the BFI and has seen some interesting and unusual films there.

Before I went on the visit I thought the library was housed at the South Bank, along with the BFI itself. So, I was rather surprised to find that, instead, it was rather tucked away in Stephen Street (off Tottenham Court Road). Some other attendees also thought this, so I wasn’t the only one, thank goodness!

I was also surprised to discover just how big the library was and what a truly wonderful collection is there. We learnt that the collections are amongst the best in the world. There are some 60,000 books; 6,000 periodicals and 2 million cuttings (including every film released in UK since 1945 and TV since the 1960s). There is also Screen Online; an online encyclopaedia for British film and TV. In addition, Research Viewings can be undertaken by appointment, for researchers. All this and much more besides is available in the library. And here is the website: http://www.bfi.org.uk/filmtvinfo/library/?q=nationallibrary/

The two members of staff showing us round tried to be optimistic, but it was quite apparent that something was not quite right. Then we learnt that they had been informed that very day that there was to be a 15% cut in the BFI budget, that there were to be redundancies and that their jobs were not safe! Dear oh dear.

And here is a piece about the BFI cuts in the London Evening Standard (of 17th December 2011).

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23907966-budget-cuts-force-bfi-to-axe-jobs-and-southbank-gallery.do

The piece highlights the fact that there are 460 BFI staff members and that 37 of these are likely to go. Also, that by strange coincidence, the library is likely to be relocated to the South Bank but that the digitisation programme will be going full steam ahead. Whatever will be left after Cameron et al have done their worst, one wonders.

8. MARIE BRAGG, MOTHER OF LEFT-WING SINGER AND SONG WRITER, BILLY BRAGG, DIES

At one of the social dances I go to, I found out quite recently that Marie Bragg, the mother of Billy Bragg also attended the dance on a regular basis. The next minute I am told that she has terminal cancer, then a couple of weeks after that she has died. I never got to talk to her, which now saddens me.

Anyway, at the very least, I thought I could include a brief news item about it, as it also provides a wonderful opportunity for us to think a little about the wonderful work that her left-wing singer and song writer son, Billy Braggs does.

As well as being a great singer and song writer (with many songs around peace issues), Billy Braggs is also a real library activist, and has been involved in many and various campaigns against library cuts. He spoke in Dorset in February 2011, about proposed library cuts, for example (where the proposal is to close 20 of the 34 libraries there). See http://www.billybragg.co.uk/press/story.php?ID=221

Billy Bragg’s website can be found at:

http://www.billybragg.co.uk/

9. MY BLOG ‘RUTH RIKOWSKI UPDATES’ HAS BEEN ARCHIVED BY THE BRITISH LIBRARY

I am very pleased to say that my blog ‘Ruth Rikowski Updates’, which comprises these newsletters, is being archived by the British Library, as part of their UK Web Archive. See: http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/49741938/source/search.

That’s all for now.

Happy Easter

Best wishes

Ruth 30th March 2011

N.B. Next newsletter will be distributed at the end of June 2011.

Quarterly Distribution of Newsletter

2011-03-02T02:29:00.000-08:00

This is to inform all subscribers and those interested in reading 'Ruth Rikowski's News Updates' that for the foreseeable future this newsletter will now be circulated on a quarterly rather than a monthly basis.

So, the next newsletter will be distributed at the end of March/beginning of April 2011.

Best

Ruth

Book Launch for 'Digitisation Perspectives'

2011-01-24T01:06:00.000-08:00

There will be no newsletter in January or Febrary 2011 from me, because I am organising a book launch. See details below:

INVITATION TO BOOK LAUNCH FOR

'DIGITISATION PERSPECTIVES'

Ruth Rikowski (ed)

Sense Publishers, 2011

ISBN 978-94-6091-297-9 (pbk); 978-94-6091-6 (hdbk);
978-94-6091-299-3 (e-book). £35.00 (pbk); £75.00 (hdbk)
https://www.sensepublishers.com/product_info.php?products_id=1158&osCsid=f255a6ffa2e20417688cf96c4ae8976e

Cover designed by Victor Rikowski

Part of Book Series:
‘Educational Futures: Rethinking Theory and Practice’
Series Editor: Michael A. Peters

Wednesday 16th February 2011, 17.30 - 20.00

Wilkins Terrace Restaurant
University College London
Gower Street
London, WC1E 6BT, England

Introduced by Andy Dawson, Senior Teaching Fellow and MSc Information Science Programme Director, Dept of Information Studies, UCL
Other speakers: Paul Catherall, Julianne Nyhan & Ruth Rikowski

Refreshments provided

Book includes contributions from 22 experts worldwide. Foreword by Simon Tanner, Director Digital Consultancy, King’s College London, saying the book:
“…seeks to address and answer some of the big questions of digitisation…It succeeds on many levels…”
Topics covered include: electronic theses, search engine technology, digitisation of ancient manuscripts, citation indexing, reference services, digitisation in Africa, new media and scholarly publishing. Final chapter explores virtual libraries, posing some interesting questions for possible futures.

Places limited: R.V.S.P. rikowskigr@aol.com

Ruth Rikowski's 44th News Update

2010-12-05T05:17:00.000-08:00

This month has been more peaceful than last month, thank goodness, and I have read a lot of good novels, which has helped. Well, it couldn’t really have been much worse, but there you go. Below are some of my latest happenings.

1. ‘DIGITISATION PERSPECTIVES’ EDITED BY RUTH RIKOWSKI, PUBLISHED, WITH SENSE PUBLISHERS: ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS, 2010, £35.00 (pbk) ISBN – 10 9460912974; 13 9789460912979 – NOW OUT!

https://www.sensepublishers.com/product_info.php?products_id=1159&osCsid=5ec0f1e88ec839f9c924daeeecca7bbf

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digitisation-Perspectives-Ruth-Rikowski/dp/9460912974/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1290586091&sr=8-5

I am delighted to say that my book on digitisation is now finally out. I received a special delivery, with a boxful of books (including copies for the contributors) on the evening of 29th November 2010. Wow! It was really exciting. I love the cover – designed by our son Victor Verne Rikowski, with a mauve background. Hope you do too (cover at the top of this newsletter). Covers are so important, I think.

The information about the book is up on amazon and the Sense Publishing website. More information will shortly be up on the Sense website, including a free preview of the first two chapters of the book. Sense will also be doing an extensive marketing campaign.
Next thing for me to do is to start to organize a book launch, which will be sometime into the New Year! So, watch this space for that one, as they say.

2. OUR ‘FLOW OF IDEAS’ WEBSITE NOW LIVE ON THE BRITISH LIBRARY ARCHIVE WEBSITE – see
http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/49741937/source/search
I am very pleased to say that our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website is now live on the British Library archive website, which hopefully will ensure that our website will be preserved for many, many years to come. We thought we would have to rely on our sons to preserve and maintain our website, after our demise. So, it is wonderful now to know that the British Library is also taking it ‘under its wing’, as it were. Once again, we must be grateful to the library and information profession for making all this possible.

My blog, ‘Ruth Rikowski Updates’ is also going to be archived by the British Library. This process will begin in mid December, and I will let you all know once that is live.

3. PIECE ABOUT KURT RICHARDS, (NĒE RIKOWSKI), GLENN’S DAD, NOW ON OUR WEBSITE
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=377&slink=yes
The eulogy that Glenn Rikowski wrote for his father, Kurt Richard’s (née Rikowski), funeral, which he read out at the funeral service himself, at St Mary Magdalene Church, Stilton on 25th February 2009, can now be found on our website. It was all very moving and of course, very important for Glenn.

However, as readers of my newsletters know, this has also all been a painful and complex experience for us. Anyway, we both felt that it was time to move on in a particular way, and this meant, inserting this piece on our website.

This is very much a family website; we must and need to try to help and support each other in every way that we can. This eulogy was an important piece of writing for Glenn. Glenn’s dad was very hard-working and determined, and this filtered through and influenced both Glenn and our eldest son Alexander, who both are both hard working, determined and very goal-oriented. So, anyway, we now wanted to make this public; we want and need to move on, and so here it is!

4. ‘DESPERATE TIMES AT MESA COLLEGE’ by JOHN J. CROCITTI
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=378&slink=yes
A new piece has been inserted on the ‘Contributions’ section of our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website - ‘Desperate Times at Mesa College’ by John J. Crocitti. John considers the difficulties of trying to undertake worthwhile teaching at community college at places like Mesa College, USA. He focuses on topics such as the problems of burn out, the associated difficulties of encouraging critical thinking, and the difficulties of successfully nurturing advanced and able students.

5. 10 NEW ITEMS UP ON MY ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG
http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/
There are 10 new items up on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog: 8 book reviews of novels, a blog entry about music and one event.

The 8 book reviews are: ‘The Big Picture’ by Douglas Kennedy; ‘The Hand of Ethelberta’ by Thomas Hardy; ‘Alexa’ by Andrea Newman; ‘The Magic Cottage’ by James Herbert; ‘Northanger Abbey’ by Jane Austen; ‘Push’ by Sapphire, ‘Little White Lies’ by Emma Blair and ‘Forget-Me-Not’ by Emma Blair.

The event is the Firework Display on Wanstead Flats on 5th November 2010, including lots of pictures of the firework displays, which were all really very spectacular.

6. ‘CRITICAL EDUCATION AGAINST GLOBAL CAPITALISM: Karl Marx and revolutionary critical education’ by PAULA ALLMAN, SENSE PUBLISHERS: Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 2010, pbk edition, £35.00 – NOW OUT
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Critical-Education-Against-Global-Capitalism/dp/946091263X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1289721025&sr=8-1
The paperback edition of Paula Allman’s very important book, ‘Critical Education Against Global Capitalism’ has finally now been published – but with Sense Publishers, rather than with the original publishers, Bergin and Garvey. When the hardback edition first appeared, back in 2001, Bergin and Garvey said that they would bring out a paperback edition, but this never saw the light of day. In her new Introduction in the book Paula talks about this, offering some possible explanations, as well as some new theoretical analyses. Anyhow, it is very good that Sense decided that they wanted to take the project on, and to publish this paperback edition.

We wish Paula every success with her book and hope that the paperback edition will mean that many more people will be able to read and benefit from the book and from Paula’s important work in general. Also, that, in time, it will lead to some important and worthwhile changes in society. We must, at least, live in hope!

7. GLENN RIKOWSKI: SOCIAL NETWORKING, BLOGS AND BLOG ARTICLES

Glenn has been very enthusiastic about blogs and social networking for some years now. He was very much in the forefront of much of it all, in fact. Littlejohn and Pegler commented on this in their book Preparing for blended e-learning, published by Routledge: Oxon, 2007. They referred to Glenn’s MySpace profile and his publicity of Marxism and Education in it, and acknowledged the fact that Glenn was very much at the forefront as an academic moving into this field. Now, of course, many academics use social networking tools, including Facebook, although I must admit, that I do wonder sometimes what the students think to all of this. Our friend, Patrick Ainley is certainly a keen enthusiast of Facebook these days, and uses it on a very regular basis. The film about Facebook, ‘The Social Network’ and the Harvard undergraduate that designed it, Mark Zuckerberg, is something that we will hopefully get to see. It is also interesting to note that Facebook was designed by a man, but is used and enjoyed so much by women. I consider some of the potential problems of social networking for females in an article of mine entitled ‘Females and Social Networking’ that was published in Managing Information, Vol, 16, No. 3, 2009.

Anyway, in regard to Glenn, a couple or so years ago the ELearning Officer at the University of Northampton found out about the Littlejohn and Pegler book and Glenn’s contribution in it, and wanted to consider how the university could benefit from it all. At that time, Glenn was writing blogs for his students (insightful short articles, largely around education policy issues) and this person wanted Glenn to engage with not only writing but with evaluating these blogs of his. Glenn agreed and was quite enthusiastic about it all. However, the whole project became very time-consuming.

At the time, Glenn was writing these blog articles for students, as well as giving these students PowerPoint presentations and handouts. He is currently writing his last piece on this now for students for the EDU3004 module Education, Culture and Society. The piece is entitled Schools in England and Bonus Culture.

Here is some further information about these e-articles – all written for the EDU3004 Education, Culture and Society module, for lecture and seminar topics.

Glenn Rikowski wrote these articles over a 4-year period, and the articles were 1300-1400 words long (although a few were longer). Altogether he wrote over 50,000 words. The results were evaluated via a questionnaire for the 2007-2008 EDU3004 students – and they were very positive. These articles were for informing seminar discussions, as well as hopefully being useful for assignments.

Most of the articles were written to the Volumizer, Glenn Rikowski’s AOL blog, which was started up on 29th September 2005. On 30th September 2008, AOL announced that all of its Hometown products, including its blogs and newsletters, would be closed down on 31st October 2008! However, Glenn ‘rescued’ the articles from the Volumizer and put them on our The Flow of Ideas web site. This involved him writing html code into the articles to make them readable, which proved to be quite time-consuming. This work was finished just before Christmas 2008.

The articles currently available online, via our website are (by Lecture Topic):

LECTURE 1: The Concept of Culture and Fear of a Blank Planet:

Rikowski, G. (2006) Moneythought in Higher Education, 15th October, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Moneythought%20in%20Higher%20Education

Rikowski, G. (2007) Fear of a Blank Planet Revisited, 12th November, at ‘Wavering on Ether’: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=14758904&blogID=327677941&Mytoken=44CF619A-7D98-4C30-AB4BD3DEC05464CF51361335

Rikowski, G. (2008) Education As Culture Machine, 25th September, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Education%20As%20Culture%20Machine

LECTURE 2: Cultures of Student & Pupil Opposition – The Lads

Rikowski, G. (2006) Stroppy Individuals or Oppositional Cultures in Schools Today? 7th October, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Stroppy%20Individuals%20and%20Oppositional%20Cultures%20in%20Schools

LECTURE 3: Cultures of Student-Pupil Conformity: The ‘Boffins’

Rikowski, G. (2006) Conforming Schools, Conforming Kids? 15th October, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Conforming%20Schools%20Conforming%20Kids

LECTURE 4: The Culture of Teacher Professionalism

Rikowski, G. (2006) Caught in the Storm of Capital: Teacher Professionalism, Managerialism and Neoliberalism in Schools, a paper prepared for Education, Culture & Society (EDU3004) Students, School of Education, University of Northampton, 30th October: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Caught%20in%20the%20Storm%20of%20Capital

LECTURE 5: Playground Cultures

Rikowski, G. (2006) Playground Risks and Handcuffed Kids: We Need Safer Schools? 10th November, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Playgound%20Risks%20and%20Handcuffed%20Kids

Rikowski, G. (2007) Learning to the Max, with Play off the Tracks, 27th October, London, online at:

http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Learning%20to%20the%20Max

LECTURE 6: The Culture of Bullying in Schools

Rikowski, G. (2007) When Bullies Roam the School, 3rd November, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=When%20Bullies%20Roam%20the%20School

LECTURE 7: Schools and Bonus Culture

Article ‘Schools in England and Bonus Culture’ – to be written.

LECTURE 8: Changing Cultures in Educational Contexts

Rikowski, G. (2006) The Business Takeover of Further Education and the Further Education White Paper, 28th March, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Business%20Takeover%20of%20Further%20Education

Rikowski, G. (2006) The Last Parents’ Evening, 18th November, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=The%20Last%20Parents%20Evening

Rikowski, G. (2007) A Capital-friendly Culture for Further Education in the UK, 17th November, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=A%20Capital%20Friendly%20Culture%20for%20Further%20Education

LECTURE 9: Managerial and Market Cultures in School Life

Rikowski, G. (2007) Marketisation of the Schools System in England, 25th November, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Marketisation%20of%20the%20Schools%20System%20in%20England

LECTURE 10: Multiculturalism in Education

Rikowski, G. (2007) Multiculturalism and Faith Schools, 2nd December, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Multiculturalism%20and%20Faith%20Schools

LECTURE 11: Cultural Capital

Rikowski, G. (2007) Forms of Capital: Critique of Bourdieu on Capital, 18th December, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Bourdieu%20on%20Capital

Rikowski, G. (2008) Forms of Capital: Critique of Bourdieu on Cultural Capital, 6th January, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Bourdieu%20on%20Cultural%20Capital

LECTURE 12: The Learning Society and Lifelong Learning

Rikowski, G. (2008) No Learner Left Unhassled, 12th January, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=No%20Learner%20Left%20Unhassled

LECTURE 13: The McDonaldization Thesis

Rikowski, G. (2008) Are We Loving It? McDonaldization and Education, 23rd January, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=McDonaldization%20and%20Education

LECTURE 14: Post-Fordism and Education

Rikowski, G. (2008) Post-Fordism and Schools in England, 26th April, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Post-Fordism%20and%20Schools

LECTURE 15: Postmodernity, Postmodernism and Education

Rikowski, G. (2008) Postmodern Dereliction in the Face of Neoliberal Education Policy, 27th April, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Postmodern%20Dereliction%20in%20the%20Face%20of%20Neoliberal%20Education%20Policy

LECTURE 16: The Knowledge Economy and Education

Rikowski, G. (2007) Learning Investments: New Private Schools and New Labour Dilemmas in Educational Services Exports, 14th June, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Learning%20Investments

Rikowski, G (2008) Education Incorporated: New Labour, the Knowledge Economy and Education, London, 3rd February, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Education Incorporated

LECTURE 17: Nihilism and the Devaluation of Educational Values

Rikowski, G. (2008) Nihilism and the De-valuation of Educational Values in England, 10th February, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Nihilism%20and%20Educational%20Values

LECTURE 18: Education in the Risk Society

Rikowski, G. (2008) Snowballs and Risk in Schools, 16th February, London, online: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Snowballs%20and%20Risk%20in%20Schools

LECTURE 19: Communitarianism and Education

Rikowski, G. (2008) The Binding Ring: Communitarianism for Schools on a Foundation of ‘British Values’? A paper prepared for the EDU3004 module, ‘Education, Culture & Society’, Education Studies, School of Education, University of Northampton, at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Communitarianism%20for%20Schools

LECTURE 20: Globalisation and Education

Rikowski, G. (2008) Globalisation and Education Revisited, 2nd March, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Globalisation%20and%20Education%20Revisited

LECTURE 21: Neoliberalism and Human Capital Theory

Rikowski, G. (2007) Education Repetition: Brown Follows Blair’s Neoliberal Education Reform Agenda, 8th June, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Education%20Repetition

Rikowski, G. (2007) Academy Chains: Building on the Neoliberal Education Policy of Tony Blair, 3rd June, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Academy%20Chains

Rikowski, G. (2007) My Tony Blair, and His Neoliberal Education Policies, 12th May, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=My%20Tony%20Blair

LECTURE 22: The New Marxist Educational Theory

Rikowski, G. (2008) Marx and Education Revisited, 21st April, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Marx%20and%20Education%20Revisited

Rikowski, G. (2008) Marxism and Education Revisited, 25th April, London, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Marxism%20and%20Education%20Revisited

In time, we hope and intend to turn all this valuable material into a book.

Glenn now has 3 other blogs:

Rikowski Point (a Blogspot blog) – with 1,510 visits (since June 2010, when the statistics begin, plus 700 Profile views since December 2008 when it was set up) at: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com/

Wavering on Ether (MySpace) – with 40,563 visits, and 24,386 Profile views, since 2005, at: http://blog.myspace.com/glennrikowski and

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski (a Wordpress blog) – with 87,461 visits since September 2008, at: http://rikowski.wordpress.com/

What is on these blogs is mainly advertising (books, events, conferences and political meetings). For example, Glenn recently inserted a piece about some work of his friend Mike Neary, as ‘Student as Producer’ - see
http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog/539928709

However, from 2005-2007 Wavering on Ether includes a number of short articles. Mostly, these were ‘reproductions’ of articles on the old AOL Volumizer blog. There is, however, one significant article which is only on this MySpace blog, which includes music references (on Porcupine Tree in particular):

Rikowski, G. (2007) Fear of a Blank Planet Revisited, 12th November, at ‘Wavering on Ether’: http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=14758904&blogID=327677941&Mytoken=44CF619A-7D98-4C30-AB4BD3DEC05464CF51361335

Glenn has plans to write further articles on his blogs in 2011.

8. ALEXANDER RIKOWSKI’S KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON, MARXIST PHILOSOPHY and PHILOSOPHY OF MIND ESSAYS (2009-10) ARE NOW AVAILABLE ON OUR ‘FLOW OF IDEAS’ WEBSITE
I am very pleased to say that the essays that Alexander Rikowski wrote on ‘Marxist Philosophy’ and ‘Philosophy of Mind’ for his Philosophy degree at King’s College London (for the Pre-Submissions in his 3rd year) are now available on our website.

Here are the Marx essays (he got his best mark in this module incidentally – 69%):

‘What is alienated labour, and what would unalienated labour be like?’
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Alienated%20Labour

‘Does historical materialism need to appeal to functional explanation? If not, how can historical materialism otherwise be made consistent? If so, is this a strength or a weakness?’
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Historical%20Materialism%20and%20Functional%20Explanation

‘Marx did not think that capitalism is unjust, and in fact, said that it is just.’ Discuss.
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Marx%20and%20Justice

Alex explains alienation very well and clearly in his alienated labour essay, I think. He explains that in Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts Marx says that there are four aspects of alienated labour under capitalism. These are: alienation from the product of labour; humankind’s alienation from her/his product (the product that she/he produces); humankind’s alienation from his/her species-being and alienation from others. Alexander examines these 4 modes in his essay.

In regard to alienation from the product of labour, as he says: “Under capitalism the workers produce products, but Marx argues that they are alienated from the products they produce.” (p.1) Whilst, in regard to being alienated from our species-being:

“Man’s species-being is alienated from both his body and the outside world...Marx is saying that we human beings co-operate with one another in order to achieve things – we are essentially social beings. But the problem is that, under capitalism, instead of seeing ourselves as part of a large co-operation of humans, we think in a selfish linear way in order to survive in the system we are in.” (p.4)

And in his concluding paragraph in the essay he says that:

“Marx himself believed that in coming to terms with unalienated labour, the workers would unite in breaking free from their alienated states.” (p.6)

Yes, indeed! And it is this clarity of thinking that we need if we are to effectively analyse capitalism, uncover its integral flaws, and then seek to break free, move beyond it, and overcome it all.

In his justice essay, Alexander says that the capitalist mode of production has its own inbuilt system of justice; this in effect, is what ensures that capitalism is able to function successfully. Therefore, it is, in fact, by necessity (in its own terms) a just system. And to the extent that capitalism does offer some form of a civilised society and some quality of life (over barbarism, for example), then we need to accept this form of justice within capitalism, in some way (‘you can’t have your cake and eat it’ type scenario). However, whether we actually see it as being just depends on what class one comes from to quite a large extent, Alex says.

“Members of the ruling class perceive capitalism as being just, whilst working class persons see it as unjust because they are being exploited by the ruling class...” (p. 2-3)

Furthermore, he says that:

“For Marx, justice and morals are concepts related to the laws of the state, and what is just is that what ensures that the current mode of production carries on working effectively (Wood, 1972, p.11)...under the capitalist mode of production, it is a fact that capitalism is just.” (p.2)

But what we need to do is to get beyond this mode of production and beyond a justice system altogether, and live at some higher, more fulfilled level, in a system beyond capitalism, and beyond simplistic notions of justice, morality and ethics. Then to move towards a system where love, fulfilment and self-expression rather than morals and justice are what motivates and guides us, thereby overcoming our alienated states.

This topic became important for Alexander because when he was growing up he had to grapple with and was presented with various moral and human rights dilemmas. My childhood upbringing was a religious (Christian) one, and in various ways I was brought up according to a strict moral code. Although I have abandoned formal religion, this moral code still very much guides me in much of my everyday life. Aiming to treat people morally and justly on an individual basis is important, I think, but obviously will always very problematic whilst we live in capitalism. However, Glenn said that in capitalism there is not and cannot be any rights. So, Alex grew up with these 2 rather at times seemingly confusing and contradictory strands. It made rough sense to us, somewhat intuitively, I guess, but not necessarily so for our offspring! So, anyway, this is something that Alex had now made explicit.

In this essay of his, Alexander sort to unravel this, and articulates the arguments clearly, and that is a real achievement, and is something that could be of benefit to a lot of people, I think. In its own right, it is ground-breaking, in this way. In capitalism we do and must abide to some sort of moral code, in order to get by; and that of course, is why Christianity can be seen to be so conducive to the continued success of capitalism, and why it has endured so long. But this of course, means that it is all based more on morals and duty, rather than on love. However, if we do not abide by a moral code and some ethical principles in capitalism, then people can get exploited more rather than less, and their lives can get messed up. Sadly, it is too romantic, and just impossible for love to rise above it and solve it all. On the other hand, without love at all, we would be sadly lost. Capitalism could not keep going without people loving each other to some extent, and yet, at the same time, it exploits it. In addition, capitalism seems to provide people with ‘rights’ but they are only rights within the system, to ensure the continued success of capitalism, and are not rights for the essence, for the ultimate good of the human. For love, self-fulfilment, real human rights and self-expression and actualisation to fully and properly flourish, and for humans not to be alienated from their species-being, we need to move towards a world beyond capitalism and beyond simplistic notions of justice.

So, specifically, in regard to Marx, Capitalism, Justice and Communism, Alexander says that:

“...Marx believed that justice is determined by the current mode of production, and according to the capitalist mode of production, exploitation of the workers is just. Marx did not think that capitalism is unjust, because he believed that whatever protects the current mode of production is just....Under the capitalist mode of production, it is a fact that capitalism is just. Also, although Marx believed we would be better off under communism, he thought that a communist society would be beyond justice.” (p.6)

He concludes by saying that:

“...in order for us to understand what Marx actually thought about both communism and capitalism, we need to appreciate the fact that for Marx, although justice is a concept used in rationalizing the workings of our capitalist society, it is of no use in helping us to understand what communism is all about.” (p.6)

So, in an ultimate sense notions of justice are not really helpful and we need to move beyond this.
I can see that Alexander’s position and argument will cause problems for many people. I have read and re-read this essay of his many times, and keep thinking about it again and again, weighing it all up, and always end up being firmly of the opinion that he is right. But it is not an easy thing to accept. One’s initial instinct for those of us that are so disturbed by all the injustices that exist in the world is to conclude that capitalism is unjust. But the problem with such a position is that others who seek to defend capitalism will try to prove very hard that capitalism is just, and indeed, bring in various laws, rights, declarations and principles as and when is necessary in order to prove that it can be made to be just, when various stark injustices rear their head – i.e. that even if it is not just now, that it can be made to be just. Then, it can be argued that it is a good system, and there is no need to seek to look beyond it. But if the argument is turned on its head, as Alexander does here, then all that becomes impossible, and instead, we need and can then meaningfully start to think and work towards a system beyond capitalism, rather than thinking that somehow or other, we can get capitalism to work for the ultimate good of humankind, according to some general principles and laws of justice, rights, ethics and morality. We have to be brave to engage with this mode of thinking though; but it is surely the only sensible way forward.

Alexander’s King’s College, London Philosophy of Mind essays are also now up on our website. These are:

‘Is it right to define an action as an event caused by a reason?’
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Actions%20Reasons%20Events

‘What is intentionality? What philosophical problems does it present?’
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Intentionality

‘Mary could know all the physical facts, but not know what it is like to see red. So physicalism is false.’ Discuss.
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/index.php?page=articles&sub=Physicalism

Alexander’s degree, in general, proved to be very demanding; he had to read the raw text of many of the great philosophers (e.g. Kant, Berkeley, Descartes, Marx, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Aristotle, Plato, Hume, Rawls, Nozick Quine, Mill). Not many first degrees demand that students read the raw text of the great thinkers in their subjects to that extent (I certainly did not do this for my degree). Most rely far more on secondary sources.

After all this reading, he concluded that his 2 favourite philosophers were Marx and Wittgenstein, closely followed by J.S. Mill. He also concluded it has to be said, that many of these great philosophers were not actually saying all that much when it got down to it. But still, the groundwork has to be laid, to enable us to move on in our thinking.

In regard to Wittgenstein he said that he laid the ground rules for effective language and communication and that Marx implemented these tools. This was the case, even though Wittgenstein came after Marx. Marx was a genius; he was doing this instinctively without actually having Wittgenstein’s hard core ‘base’ to help him and to work with. He knew that it was absolutely vital to use words and concepts correctly and effectively, in order the unravel the complexities of capitalism, to analyse it and then seek to move beyond it. As Marx famously says: ”The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”

However, people use words and concepts ineffectively and inappropriately on a daily basis, and this is what Wittgenstein sort to address. He also thought that much of Philosophy was a mistake, so in this way Wittgenstein and Marx also had a lot of similarities (apart from them both being geniuses of course). They both thought Philosophy was useful (and wrote their dissertations in Philosophy), but both could clearly see the limitations of the subject. This is why Wittgenstein left his position as a Philosophy Lecturer at Cambridge University for a long period, and worked as a gardener and a teacher instead. He returned to Cambridge years later, having changed/adapted his philosophical thinking, and because of this we have the early Wittgenstein and the late Wittgenstein. Marx in contrast, never worked at a university at all, was never a lecturer and did not play the ‘academic game’ (wise man, I am now starting to think!). Obviously, he had Engels to support him, but he also worked in the editing and publishing field. So, both Marx and Wittgenstein thought Philosophy was useful, but that it should know its place, and that one should not be spending ones lifetime merely philosophising. Indeed, if we do, Wittgenstein thought that we would be likely to be in the game of creating problems rather than solving them. In this frame of mind, he used to advise his Philosophy students to go off and do some manual work.

Then, finally, we have J.S. Mill. As I have said before, I was heartened to discover relatively recently that Mill’s wife, Harriet Taylor, helped him with quite a lot of his writing, even writing some bits for him. I think this helps to explain why Mill’s writing is so clear, readable and approachable. Because his writing is so very much this way though, I think that it can be rather taken for granted; it can all be seen to be just so obvious. However, presenting and explaining ideas and ways of thinking simply and clearly is a real art, in fact. It is much easier to confuse! Yet, when it seems to be so obvious, it can then seem to be not that important sometimes. This is what Mill is up against, I think. The civilised society that we live in today (such as it is – with all its flaws etc) is partly a result of Mill-type philosophy. You know, the good parts come from Mill (liberty etc). For me, his work on Utilitarianism (originating from Jeremy Bentham) is particularly valuable, and certainly fits in with Marx in regard to the essence of what it is to be human and how we should be aiming to live life in a full and rounded way; whilst also living this way for the good of the many rather than just for the few (‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’).

In sum, then, I tend to agree with Alexander about who are the 3 best philosophers (even though I have not read all the philosophers that he has read, of course). But certainly, the works of Marx, Wittgenstein and Mill are all brilliant and have helped humankind just so much in general with their overall conception and understanding of life.

So, anyway, in overall conclusion, Alexander’s King’s degree was very demanding albeit rewarding, with weekly essays of 1,000 words in the first 2 years and with 12 pre-submission essays of 3,000 words in the final year. But it was a very worthwhile experience for him, and he can now present arguments very clearly and logically and unravel many complexities in life. All this very much built on the Philosophy Diploma that he studied for at Birkbeck College, University of London, prior to this.

9. THE VALUE OF COMPLETING WORTHWHILE WORKS
Leading on from item 8 seems an appropriate time and space to talk briefly about the importance of completing worthwhile works in general, I think, as opposed to taking short cuts. Alexander was all very much for doing a very worthwhile, life-changing degree (in regard to his outlook on life, and his ways of thinking and being in general). Not for him the shortcuts and easy options. Whilst it meant that he did give himself a very steep learning curve (having left school at 16 years of age), it also meant that he came away with something very worthwhile and lasting.

Now, many seek to short-change things, I think, and come away the poorer rather than the richer. This can be done for various reasons, such as pressure from society, individuals and well, just laziness sometimes, I think, in all honesty.

Glenn and I have never been into that game, although sometimes despite ourselves, we have got sucked into the mentality for short periods (it can be particularly difficult when one’s writing is valued and various offers are made to one). Our way is, of course, very time-consuming and requires a lot of hard work, diligence and patience. But it is also very inspiring and rewarding. Indeed, for us, it is the only way to achieve lasting happiness, fulfilment and success – that is for sure.

And so, this also of course, leads us to be passionate about books, and indeed, worthwhile, creative works in general. Taking time and being patient is important for creating anything really worthwhile, whether this be writing books and articles, music (composing, dancing, choreography work etc), rearing children, decorating a house, painting pictures, making films, taking professional photographs, writing poetry or whatever. I knew this instinctively in regard to books when I was growing up.

Yet, many people still continue to take short cuts. They often do not realise, appreciate and fully understand the effort that some people put into creating worthwhile, lovely and quality things and how this can enrich ones life, as well as the lives of so many others. Neither do they celebrate the wonders enough (take Mozart, for example, being so very poor, living hand to mouth and dying at the age of 35 years). But let us not be negative; let us rise above things, and aim to celebrate and lead life at the high level, where the human essence is seen to be something that is fundamentally wholesome and wonderful, rather than sick. My Salsa dance teacher, Kerry, incidentally is a wonderful living example of this.

With these thoughts in mind, I will return shortly to my latest important project. Watch this space in time, for further information in regard to this – although not for some while yet it has to be said because as I say, these things take time, work, patience, diligence and determination. But after all that, comes the beauty and the flowers, shining fully and ripely on the world, and then we can celebrate and enjoy.

Best wishes

Ruth

4th December 2010

Ruth Rikowski's 43rd News Update

2010-10-31T21:17:00.000-07:00

Well, overall, this month has not been good; not been good at all, I am sorry to say. Right now, I have really had enough of certain universities – namely, Kingston University London and London South Bank University! Anyway, read below and you will find out more and why (if you want to, that is!).....That and a few other news items (some of which are, thankfully, somewhat more positive) are included in this newsletter.

1. KINGSTON UNIVERSITY LONDON AND LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY: WORK/NO WORK?
Well, I have had a real double-whammy this month with these two new universities. Both Kingston University London and London South Bank University have really let me down big time, and put me through a lot of stress and uncertainty – and this continues. To such an extent, that I have had to visit the doctors! There is also the ‘time of life’ factor of course. Still, writing this newsletter in itself has provided some therapy! The more I look at it, the more I seem to appreciate the wonder and beauty of writing, editing and publishing over the university, the supposed ‘seat of learning’

KINGSTON UNIVERSITY LONDON
In regard to Kingston University London, in my last newsletter (No. 42) in the first news item I wrote excitedly and enthusiastically about the Letter of Appointment that I had received unexpectedly from Kingston, offering me a position as a Part-Time Lecturer. Well, what happened next, in fact the day after I sent out the newsletter, was that I received a letter also ‘out of the blue’ from a certain Dawn McGuire, Faculty Finance Officer at Kingston, (as opposed to Beverley Reading, the Human Resource Administrator that sent me the formal offer), saying that this had been a mistake! I was informed that the mistake had arisen through them receiving my CV, and from that they had concluded that I was requiring a Part-Time Lecturers contract, whereas in fact, I had been invited to give a guest lecture. Victoria Perselli asked me to send her a copy of my CV back in July 2010 (shortly after she had invited me to give this Keynote Lecture), which she obviously then forwarded to the Finance Office and Human Resources. Shocked? Well, I certainly was. Totally gobsmacked! How can this behaviour go on? Also, I had not pursued work elsewhere, particularly at London South Bank University because I thought I had this Kingston work and did not want to take on too much. What a dreadful way to treat someone, is it not, especially in this current economic climate!

In addition, shortly after I received the letter with the formal offer, I telephoned the Human Resources Department at Kingston to make sure that all was correct in regard to the contract (because as I say, it had come as a surprise). They assured me that all was correct and asked me to send back a signed copy of the letter along with photocopies of my certificates etc, which I duly did. I also emailed Victoria saying how pleased I was, how much I was looking forward to working with her, and enquiring about what teaching I would be doing, my hours of work etc. I also emailed Sense Publishers https://www.sensepublishers.com/about_us.php?osCsid=1a7, asking Peter de Liefde to change my affiliation in my forthcoming digitisation book from London South Bank University to Kingston University London. I cc’ed this to Victoria, and also emailed her separately, checking that she was OK with this. There was no reply. Meanwhile, Dr Glyn Jones at Chandos Publishing Oxford, on the other hand, was happy for me to insert Chandos as my affiliation, so now my affiliation will read ‘Freelance Editor, Chandos Publishing, Oxford’. And that is certainly the way that it will remain for the foreseeable future, that’s for sure!

Anyway, after receiving this letter from the Finance Officer, I immediately phoned ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service) informing them about what had happened and seeking their advice. They advised me to consult with an Employment Law Solicitor, for an initial free consultation/interview. I consulted two such solicitors. They were both of the opinion that this was a breach of contract, and that it was something for an Employment Tribunal and I am currently now investigating all this further.

Upon receiving this offer of appointment I naively thought that I was being offered this contract ‘out of the blue’ because of the high regard that they held for my work – you know, kind of ‘head-hunted’ shall we say. Now, this is not actually all that far-fetched, because I am pretty well-known, after all, am I not, and as I have said before various people over the years have approached me directly and ‘out of the blue’ like this, making me various offers and putting various proposals and opportunities my way. Graham Coult, the editor of Managing Information contacted me this way, way back in 2001, asking me if I would like to be the Book Reviews Editor for the magazine. And then, later, Dr Glyn Jones at Chandos Publishing, Oxford, offered me a position as a Commissioning Editor. And in 2003 Professor Michael Peters approached me, asking me if I would like to write an article for his, at the time, new international refereed ejournal Policy Futures in Education. Then later he invited me to edit a special issue for the journal on digitisation and then a book on the same subject with Sense Publishers.

Indeed, I have been approached by a large number of different people over the last few years, for many different reasons, and on a wide variety of topics. And, so I naturally thought that this was something similar. Well, anyway, Victoria inviting me to give the Keynote was an unexpected invitation in itself. After then receiving the contract I thought that the offer of the Keynote Guest Lecture was some informal way of double-checking whether I was what they wanted, and after that (the lecture did go well), they decided that I was, and so sent out the contract. Well, nothing could be further from the truth, it seems. Dear oh dear!

Mind you, as I reflect, other signs did indicate something rather different; so I guess I should have followed my instincts more. What do I mean by this? Well, when I gave my Keynote, Victoria Perselli did not really seem all that interested in my work and my writing, it has to be said (even getting my affiliation wrong in her introduction, saying that I taught at the University of East London rather than London South Bank University). Neither did she distribute copies of my articles to the students even though I laid out copies for people to take (with so much on my mind, I forgot to distribute them myself). People usually take loads of my articles when I give presentations. So, I sent Victoria some copies in the post afterwards but she did not acknowledgement receipt of them and I have no idea whether or not she actually received them and distributed copies. Also, in my lecture I spoke about the importance of trying to preserve the valuable collection housed at the Feminist Library in London. Victoria said, in passing, that perhaps it could be moved to Kingston; somewhat like the way in which the Philosophy Department had been moved from Middlesex to Kingston. But then she quickly made it pretty clear that she did not want to pursue that idea much further.

However, the biggest concern is in regard to the filming of my talk. Toni Samek asked me if it could be filmed (see item 1 in my previous newsletter, No. 42 for a little more information in regard to this). I made this request to Victoria way back in July, shortly after she invited me to speak. I received no reply from her. She went on holiday for a month to Turkey (which apparently she badly needed!). Lucky her – we didn’t manage to get away at all this summer, not even for a weekend, and I told Victoria this. Anyway, just a couple of days before I was due to give my talk, she emailed me asking if the technician at Kingston had been in touch in regard to filming my talk. I replied, saying that he had not, but not to worry, because my son Alexander was willing, happy and able to come and film it on our small digital camera – not ideal, but at least then we would have a recording. Victoria replied, saying that was good, and that probably Alex would be more dedicated to the job anyway, as he was my son (or some such words). And so Alex came along to video it (a long way for him to go). On arrival then, we were most surprised to find a technician from Kingston with some flash, new equipment there; he was also going to film it after all apparently. So, rather than have no film, we now apparently had two films. Strange old life! I then forgot about the filming and got on with my talk. The lecture turned out to be very interactive; they were the type of students that were keen to engage and contribute. That was all very good. Alex filmed the students talking, as well as filming me.

However, upon returning home and watching the video I could see that consent forms from the students that spoke and were videoed would need to be completed. I had some experience of this following on from the speeches at the book launch for my globalisation book. Deian Hopkin, the then Vice-Chancellor introduced this; I explained to him that someone from the States wanted to come over and film the whole thing, and asked him how best to proceed in regard to this. He said that all the speakers would need to complete consent forms, saying that they were happy to be filmed; but not that everyone at the book launch had to complete these forms. It seemed obvious to me then, that the students that Alex actually filmed needed to sign the consent forms. I emailed Victoria about this. She replied saying that some of the students had been concerned about the filming, even though they had enjoyed my lecture and it had generated much food for thought. She was not happy about the existence of the films. I replied saying, that how then, did she propose to raise some of the important issues that I talked about, particularly in regard to the possible digitisation of some of the Feminist Library material, as this was something that she had actually inspired me to think about. I suggested coming to Kingston again perhaps, giving another similar talk for payment, but this time, getting the consent forms signed properly (I also cc’ed all of this to both Toni Samek and Anne Welsh; as I wrote the original article about the Feminist Library with Anne). Victoria did not reply to this. When I got the contract in the post, I thought I understood why. Victoria was making me a better offer; and a better offer for the Feminist/Marxist cause in general of course. Rather than just doing a one-off lecture raising awareness about the topic, I was being offered an actual Lecturing position there, which would give me/us ample time and space to be able to explore and promote these topics further. Can you wonder that I became so excited? But apparently, nothing was further from the truth!

In addition, when Victoria and I went out to dinner afterwards, in terms of publications we really only talked about Marxism and education stuff; including her own chapter for a book with Palgrave Macmillan, based on the Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues III seminar. Neither did she seem unduly concerned that Glenn Rikowski was no longer involved in the book series, or with the MERD seminars in general come to that. Instead, she spoke about how she was also going to re-jig her chapter and use it elsewhere; and within this context she mentioned the Discourse, Power and Resistance conference. I am shocked to discover Marxist Educators treating each other this way, I must say. Having said that, on another level I should not be shocked; I have had many indications giving a different, even opposing message; see item 5 in this newsletter below, for one such example. Is it any wonder then that Glenn’s enthusiasm for it all has somewhat waned? Or perhaps the message that they are trying to send out is that Glenn should separate from me; divorce me, because I am no good to him; hindering him with his Marxism and education stuff? But if that is the case, then why are they not keener to promote Glenn’s work better and more effectively in its own right? In all of those MERD seminars that Glenn organised, for example, we received no indication that the people that attended had actually read and engaged with Glenn’s work all that much; it seemed to us that they used it all more for their own career purposes, than anything else (although some used it for political reasons – e.g. Movement for a Socialist Future). But it does seem to us that the main ‘name of the game’ for the academics is to use Marxism and Education, both in terms of the seminars at the Institute and publishing with Palgrave Macmillan, to further their own careers, as well as helping them to cope with their, at times, difficult academic lives; having to deal with organisations and inconsistent policies etc. MERD-stuff was a way of ‘cheering them up’; a legitimate and safe way of enabling them to ‘think outside the box’. And of course, Glenn by putting Marxism and Education back on the map in this way, through all his hard work (both practically and theoretically), re-invigorating it, making it respectable once again and taking it to new pastures, has made all this possible. Again, dear oh dear! Victoria also mentioned the fact that she was the external examiner for the education department at Middlesex University where Dave Hill now works. All this should have been a clear warning to me. But there you go – we live and learn!

So much for me re-invigorating my enthusiasm for MERD-type stuff a little in my last newsletter - that was clearly a big mistake. So much, also, for me speaking so warmly and positively about Victoria – how wrong could I have been!

This is no way to treat supposed fellow Marxist Feminists (or indeed, any human being in general) is it - and when I phoned Victoria, about this supposed ‘mistake’, she was cold and distant, and said that the ‘mistake’ was nothing to do with her, and there was certainly no hint of an apology. In fact, it was almost cruel. I came away from the phone upset. Why ever did I give her all that praise in my last newsletter (No. 42) I kept asking myself? I only sent my CV to Victoria; she was the only one that could have forwarded it to Human Resources, so the blame simply cannot be laid completely at the door of Human Resources. At the very least, Victoria’s wording in the email that she sent, forwarding my CV, must have been ambiguous, and that is very serious, when it concerns people’s work and way of life; and ends up upsetting ones lifestyle. And as I say, because of this, I did not seek employment elsewhere, and now I find myself currently without any university work. Great! And I am supposed to take all this in my stride, am I?

LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY
In regard to London South Bank University, well this one has been brewing up for a long time, so is not such a shock, but even so, it is very serious; on one level, more serious in fact, as I have invested a lot of time and energy into South Bank over the years in one way or another. It is shocking to witness that writing and publications, apparently, are given so little regard there, or is perhaps something else going on, such as prejudice? Anyway, I was not given any teaching work at South Bank this semester. This did not over concern me much at the time because I thought I had the Kingston work; and that would have been postgraduate work, which I prefer. But after the letter from Dawn McGuire, I obviously had to rethink things. I quickly made contact with the union (University and College Union), and a meeting was arranged at London South Bank University. Following on from this, there was a meeting on 20th October 2010 that included my Head of Department, Milo Crummie, Dipo from Human Resources, Stephen Bellas, the union representative and Lee Rose, as a friend and writing colleague.

To begin with, I asked if I could tape-record the meeting and I was informed by both Dipo and Milo that I could not. Great! I wanted to do this, because when I had a meeting with Milo on my own which included talking about me studying for the teaching certificate a few years ago, Milo said that if I did that, he would then make sure that I had some teaching work, but as you can see, that certainly has not come about – far from it. So, clearly, trust is breaking down here. But anyway, it couldn’t/didn’t get tape-recorded. So that was that.

I asked why I had not been given any teaching work this semester; I also asked who was teaching on the course that I taught on this time last year, and whether there were any hourly paid/sessional lecturers teaching on the course, or whether it was only full-timers. Milo said that he thought that there was one sessional, but that he could not be sure. I asked him if he would go and check this, but he said that he was not prepared to leave the meeting to do that. I looked to Lee Rose for support; I wanted him to ask Milo to go and check the time-table/staffing, but no joy there either. And this was despite the fact that it was only due to me that Lee started getting his writing published at all anyway. I find this very strange; the ‘pen is mightier than the sword’ in many ways, but people largely do not want to acknowledge this until they actually get stabbed (heavens – got to bring a bit of humour into this!). Anyway, I then said, well ‘forget about that one’ then. Lee Rose asked what the criteria for selection was. Milo said that it was to do with ones area/level of expertise. I said that I had loads of experience; and asked what experience the person had that was doing the work now. But as I say, I was getting nowhere. Steve Bellas asked if I had ever been appraised; Milo said that I had not and that I had never asked to be. We both referred to the teaching certificate that I studied for though.

I then moved the meeting on. As I had not been given any work, and leading on from the European Directive and the 4-year rule, this meant that, in effect, I have been Unfairly Dismissed, I said, and that as such this would be something for an Employment Tribunal. Milo disagreed with this, and said that it had to be looked at over the whole academic year, and not just one semester. But, at this point Dipo in Human Resources seemed to be getting a bit jittery and I could see that his thought processes were immediately then going down the redundancy path. ‘Quick – send her out a redundancy letter, with a 7-week notice period, and let’s finish this matter, for heavens sake’, he seemed to be thinking. I pushed for this; I wanted clarity. Either I am given work; I take out a legal case on an Unfair Dismissal charge, or I am made redundant and given some redundancy money and a package. Dipo’s thoughts were going quickly down the redundancy path, which is what certain people had been angling for, for some time anyway, I feel sure – all because I have got a mind of my own and write and publish boldly. I am too dangerous it seems; I write and think too much! Is that what comes then from choosing to work at new universities, where I thought I might help some of those students that are not so well-off in various ways? Or is something else going on? Is it prejudice? Perhaps, they do not like white educated women with working-class accents! I explained though, that this would not be a free ride/a free ticket. If the redundancy path was chosen, then I would write articles and make it all very public in prominent places. I told Dipo something about my writing and publications, especially in regard to my Knowledge Management book and the fact that the then Vice-Chancellor, Deian Hopkin, wrote a Foreword for it and that there were contributions from other academics at South Bank. This cut a bit of ice with him, but not overmuch. When I said that I would write and expose it all, he seemed to think that I would write some boring report, that could be forgotten and put in the bin. He seemed a little bit more concerned, when I made it clear that I would make it public; although not overly-so, it has to be said. I said that part of the remit of a university was research (along with teaching etc as well of course). And that to ignore writers was rather like going into a bakers shop, but not being able to buy bread, but only being able to buy cars. It was a complete nonsense. I said that you would think that a university would be bending over backwards to try to encourage people such as myself who write and publish to stay, rather than seeking to give them the boot. Furthermore, that I had inspired many students, including those from the developing world, particularly with the guest lectures that I had given to masters students (on the MBA) on topics such as globalisation, knowledge management, leadership etc.

Milo said that it was possible that I would be offered some work next semester, but not likely. If we go through a whole year with no work, then I can see that it will be easier for them to go down the redundancy path. I need to think this all through more, but so far, the clarity that I seek from them still very much remains elusive. I also really want and need to look towards the future.

In general, though, this all certainly makes you think. To what extent are universities (especially perhaps the new ones) places for new ideas and theories, critical thinking, writing etc, rather than just being sophisticated sausage-making factories, churning out ‘rubber-stamped’ graduates, one wonders. Also, of course, the old universities are starting to take on some of the ways of the new universities anyway of course; the new universities are now the leading lights, the beacons it seems (talk about ‘putting the cart before the horse’). Consistency in academic standards is essential for sanity and survival, but somehow, the universities are trying to bypass this one; indeed, to turn it on hits head, in many ways. When it comes to the marking and giving of degrees, there is still a lot of consistency; indeed, that is what we have moderation meetings for. But in other areas it ‘goes out of the window’. I remember our son Alexander talking about one of the lectures he had at King’s College, where the lecturer was talking about the inconsistency and irrationality in policy (leading on from the proposed redundancies at King’s at the time), whilst the lecturers were in the business of trying to teach students logic and consistency. Crazy eh. This is the type of thing that we are now starting to witness starting to take place more and more in universities.

On a final note, if anyone has any suggestions in regard to how I might best handle/deal with any of this, then please do please feel free to get in touch!

2. 7 NEW ITEMS UP ON MY ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG
http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/
There are 7 new items up on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog. There are four reviews of novels; two items about feminism and one about musicians.

The book reviews are for the following novels: ‘North and South’ by Elizabeth Gaskell; ‘Shadows in the Watchgate’ by Mike Jeffries; ‘To be the Best’ by Barbara Taylor Bradford and ‘Hold the Dream’ by Barbara Taylor Bradford.

Also, two people made contact with me, saying that they liked my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog, which was nice, and then told me about a couple of short pieces about feminism on the web, asking me if I would include a link to these pieces on my blog. I agreed, and so, there are now these two entries. One is entitled ’10 Fascinating Sub-Movements within Feminism’ and the other is entitled ’10 Essential Works of Feminist Fiction’. I think the titles are fairly self-explanatory!

Finally, there is an item about how Elton John is supporting talented musicians, which I think is truly wonderful. Doing something positive for young people, rather than keep ‘putting the boot in’, which is what these politicians seem to be largely about. Let us hope that this is something that can be built on further by Elton himself, as well as by some other musicians.

3. ‘LIBRARIES IN A DIGITAL AGE’ CONFERENCE
I went to this ‘Libraries in a Digital Age’ conference (which Martyn Everett kindly informed me about) and it proved to be quite an interesting day. It was organised by The Association of Independent Libraries and was held at the Royal Astronomical Society, Burlington House, London on 14th October 2010. It focused on the problems and opportunities facing libraries in the age of the Internet.

The session was opened by Gwyneth Price, from the Institute of Education London library on the topic of: ‘Social networking: just a lot of twittering?’ Gwyneth began by saying that the institute library held the most comprehensive collection on education in the UK, and probably the largest in Europe. She then referred to the LASSIE (Libraries and Social Software in Education) project which she has been involved with. She spoke about various types of social networking and their advantages and disadvantages. She made the point that blogs, for example, make things very live, whereas websites can be rather flat.

In particular, I was most surprised to discover that the Institute library has a rota for blogging; two people each week are expected to produce something for the blog. So far this has been through professionals volunteering, but even so, I am not quite sure that this is quite in the spirit of blogging! But anyway, it seems to work for them. Whilst Delicious is Gwyneth’s favourite shared resource – see e.g. www.delicious.com/gwynethp.LibDigAge. Things that are useful can be collected and shared here and she jokingly said that her life goes into Delicious! Someone in the audience mentioned the issue of control; and the possible dilemmas in establishing boundaries between the personal and the institutional. Gwyneth thought that this was not such a problem at the Institute, because they are so innovative, although personally I remain somewhat sceptical on that score!

Meanwhile, Tim Coates (author and head of Waterstone’s bookshop in its early years) sought to defend public libraries in his talk. He also said that he thought there was too much management in libraries. Whilst Michael Popham, Head of the Oxford Digital Library spoke about the The Oxford-Google Book Digitization Partnership, which is something that I also refer to in my digitisation book. The Bodleian Library, founded in 1602, has a ‘Republic of Letters’ principle, he made clear, focusing around sharing resources, and it was this principle that led the Bodleian Library to couple up with Google for the Book Digitization Partnership. Google, on the other hand, wants to organise the world’s information, and to make it accessible universally, of course; and so this makes it a good partnership. Discussions between the Bodleian and Google started in 2003. The Bodleian and Google staff worked closely together, handling and evaluating the material. Google said they would commit for 20 years, which as Michael said, is a long time for them! There is now a massive amount of digitised content apparently; which opens up the collection to new readers and users, and provides new ways to add value to content and services. See: http://books.google.com

Next, was John Thompson, Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, giving a talk on the publishing industry in the 21st century, which was very interesting and John was certainly in love with his subject. John has undertaken 500 interviews with people in the publishing industry, resulting in years of analysis. In his talk he gave us the benefit of some of his overall conclusions from all of this. He said that there have been three crucial changes in regard to the way that the publishing world works. Firstly, there was the growth of the retail chains; secondly, the rise of the literary agents and thirdly, the emergence of publishing corporations. Now, there are many large publishing corporations and many small publishing businesses, but few middle-sized publishing companies (Bloomsbury being one of them; courtesy of J.K. Rowling of course). He said that it is hard to survive as a medium-sized publisher today apparently. John spoke about ‘extreme publishing’, where there must be 10% growth, and where some books that are not selling are quickly removed (sometimes after only about 3 weeks). He thought there was too much ‘short-terminism’ in the publishing industry. Some authors reach middle-age finding that they haven’t ‘made it’, but on the other hand, he did not want to be over-negative. Some good stuff does get published; and some excellent writers and editors are able to shine through, despite it all, he said.

Finally, Martyn Everett spoke on the topic of ‘Copyright and the Knowledge Commons’, saying that libraries have an important role to play in the creation of knowledge. I also spoke to Martyn Everett at lunch and found out more about ‘The Association of Independent Libraries’, which is an organisation for subscription libraries. Martyn said that he does some voluntary work for a subscription library in Saffron Walden. I was also reminded of the good subscription library that there used to be in Norwich, which has now been turned into a restaurant, although still retains the name of ‘The Library’. When we were there we asked a member of staff where the original collection had gone; she did not know, but thought that it had probably gone to the University of East Anglia. Not much interest in the library there then! That saddened us. Still, at least Norwich has a lovely, spacious, comparatively new public library (after the old one sadly got burnt down a few years ago).

Whilst speaking to one of the delegates I also found out about the British Federation of Women Graduates, which was interesting. See:
http://www.rdfunding.org.uk/queries/ListCharityDetails.asp?CharityID=448

In addition, we were given a tour of the Royal Astronomical Society Library and looked at some of the material, which was interesting. It is now largely a library for historical interest; rather than much live usage, as most members now obtain their material through the web (subscription-based ejournals etc), and many of the subscriptions for hard copy journals have been stopped.

4. ‘E-BOOKS AND EDUCATION: SOME REFLECTIONS’ BY PAUL CATHERALL
Paul Catherall inserted quite an interesting piece on the Information for Social Change website recently, about ebooks and education. Here is the link:
http://www.libr.org/isc/occasional_papers/ebook%20reflections%20Paul%20Catherall.pdf

5. GLENN RIKOWSKI BEING APPROACHED BY KALKEDON YAYINLARI, A TURKISH PUBLISHER EARLIER THIS YEAR, IN REGARD TO PUBLISHING SOME OF HIS WORK IN TURKISH
In February 2010, Glenn Rikowski received a surprise email from one Baris Baysal from a Turkish publishing company in Istanbul, called Kalkedon Yayinlari. Baris said that this publishing company said that they had been reading some of Glenn’s articles on our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website, really liked the material, and wanted to translate some of these articles into Turkish and publish them as a book.

Kalkedon Yayinlari translated into Turkish and published Red Chalk: on schooling, capitalism and politics, by Mike Cole, Dave Hill and Peter McLaren and Glenn Rikowski, published originally in English by the Institute for Education Policy Studies, London, 2001. It was published in 2006; entitled Kizil Tebeşir’

Kalkedon Yayinlari also publish the Turkish edition of Monthly Review, an ‘independent socialist magazine’, which they have been doing since January 2006. When Baris wrote they were reaching the 22nd Turkish Monthly Review and were very proud of that, of course. Also, of course, Albert Einstein wrote an article for the very first issue of ‘Monthly Review’, back in 1949, in a piece entitled ‘Why Socialism?’

In addition, Baris made the point that it is relatively difficult to publish some Marxist books or journals, in countries like Turkey. He thought that there were a lot of reasons for this, including the “conjuncture and the characteristics of the readers”. Still, as Baris said, Kalkedon Yayinlari manage to overcome these obstacles, and they continue to publish Marxist books, especially the ones that include topics such as critical pedagogy and neoliberalism vs ecology. He was clearly proud of this, and rightly so.

Baris then listed the articles that they wanted to translate into Turkish and publish and were now seeking Glenn’s permission to do this. The articles were:

The Binding Ring, Ten Points on Marx, In Retro Glide, Fear of a Blank Planet Revisited, Educational Theory 1, Education and the Politics of Human, Distillation, Critical Pedagogy and the Constitution of Capitalist Society, Caught in the Storm of Capital, Against What We Are Worth, Marx and the Education of the Future.

Glenn replied to this, saying that, yes, certainly, he was very interested in having these articles of his published with Kalkedon Yahiniari.

He did also make the point, though, that the presentation of his work was very important to him. He said that he wants “...to make sure that readers appreciate the nature, purpose and origins of what I write.” And that, for this reason, he proposed an additional chapter; namely Introduction: Education in a Crisis of Capital. Such an introduction would place the articles in some sort of context, and would also introduce each article, he said.

In addition, he said that he would eventually want to publish two volumes of his previous works: Vol.1 on the early works (1990-2003); and Vol.2 (2004 - present day) and that both of these volumes would be in English. The volume of articles that Kalkedon Yayinlari is proposing would correspond to Vol.2. Due to this factor, Glenn said that he would obviously need copyright. He noted that in the translation of Red Chalk that Kalkedon Yayiniari had the copyright. With this book, he would want copyright to be awarded (and clearly stated) to Glenn Rikowski.

He also wanted the book to have a proper Foreword, written by someone that knew his work. He also thought it would be useful to have an index, even if it is was only basic. Obviously, he would be looking to the publisher to do this, as he does not know Turkish. He said he would be interested in Baris’s views in regard to all of this and noted that Red Chalk did not have an index. He also asked about the contract and royalties.

Glenn said that he was also interested to know how and why they chose the particular articles that they did. On the whole, he said that he liked their choice of articles.

Glenn then listed the articles that they wanted to publish, with full bibliographical details, in chronological order. Here is the list:

THE ARTICLES:

Rikowski, G. (2004) Marx and the Education of the Future, Policy Futures in Education, Vol.2 Nos. 3 & 4, pp.565-577, online at: http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pdf/viewpdf.asp?j=pfie&vol=2&issue=3&year=2004&article=10_Rikowski_PFEO_2_3-4_web&id=195.93.21.71

Rikowski, G. (2005) Distillation: Education in Karl Marx's Social Universe, Lunchtime Seminar, School of Education, University of East London, Barking Campus, 14th February: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Distillation Rikowski, G. (2006) Education and the Politics of Human Resistance, Information for Social Change, Issue No.23 (Summer): http://libr.org/isc/issues/ISC23/B3%20Glenn%20Rikowski.pdf

Rikowski, G. (2006) Ten Points on Marx, Class and Education, a paper presented at Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues IX Seminar, University of London, Institute of Education, 25th October: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Ten%20Points%20on%20Marx,%20Class%20and%20Education

Rikowski, G. (2006) Caught in the Storm of Capital: Teacher Professionalism, Managerialism and Neoliberalism in Schools, a paper prepared for Education, Culture & Society (EDU3004) Students, School of Education, University of Northampton, 30th October: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Caught%20in%20the%20Storm%20of%20Capital

Rikowski, G. (2006) In Retro Glide, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies, Vol.4 No.2 (November): http://www.jceps.com/?pageID=article&articleID=81

Rikowski, G. (2007) Critical Pedagogy and the Constitution of Capitalist Society, A paper prepared for the ‘Migrating University: From Goldsmiths to Gatwick’ Conference, Panel 2, ‘The Challenge of Critical Pedagogy’, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 14th September 2007, online at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Critical%20Pedagogy%20and%20Capitalism

Rikowski, G. (2007) Marxist Educational Theory Unplugged, a paper prepared for the Fourth Historical Materialism Annual Conference, 9-11th November, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London:
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Marxist%20Educational%20Theory%20Unplugged

Rikowski, G. (2007) Fear of a Blank Planet Revisited, London, 12th November, online at 'Wavering on Ether':
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=14758904&blogID=327677941&Mytoken=44CF619A-7D98-4C30-AB4BD3DEC05464CF51361335

Rikowski, G. (2008) The Binding Ring: Communitarianism for Schools on a Foundation of ‘British Values’? A paper prepared for the EDU3004 module, ‘Education, Culture & Society’, Education Studies, School of Education, University of Northampton, 24th February, at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Communitarianism%20for%20Schools

Rikowski, G. (2008) Against What We Are Worth, a paper prepared for the Post-Graduate Programme: Gender and New Educational and Employment Environment in the Information Age, ‘Summer Workshop on Gender’, at the University of the Aegean, Rhodes, Greece, 4th July, at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=articles&sub=Against%20What%20We%20Are%20Worth

However, as Glenn pointed out, publishing the articles in chronological order would not he particularly helpful for the reader. So, he proposed the following outline/structure for the book:

Proposed Structure

Foreword

Introduction: Education in a Crisis of Capital

PART ONE: EDUCATION, LABOUR POWER AND CAPITAL

Distillation: Education in Karl Marx's Social Universe (2005)

Ten Points on Marx, Class and Education (2006)

In Retro Glide (2006)

Marxist Educational Theory Unplugged (2007)

PART TWO: POLITICS AND POLICY

Education and the Politics of Human Resistance (2006)

Caught in the Storm of Capital: Teacher Professionalism, Managerialism and Neoliberalism in Schools (2006)

Fear of a Blank Planet Revisited (2007)

The Binding Ring: Communitarianism for Schools on a Foundation of 'British Values'? (2008)

Against What We Are Worth (2008)

PART THREE: CRITICAL PEDAGOGY

Marx and the Education of the Future (2004)

Critical Pedagogy and the Constitution of Capitalist Society (2007).

Glenn thought that this structure gave some coherence to the book, whilst also having an eye on chronology. He said that he was interested to know what the publishers thought of the proposed plan. He thought that the plan would also make for a good English edition. Incidentally, it was very important to Glenn that the articles were not published just as the publishers initially seemed to want, because that might have lead to further marginalisation of his work.

So, Glenn concluded by saying that he looked forward to hearing from Baris. And guess what – he never heard from either him or the publisher again. What does this say, one wonders? Whatever is all this silence about?

Still, it clarified Glenn’s thinking in this area; and he now has the ‘red print’, as it were, for English editions of these works (something that he had been thinking about anyway, but had not got round to putting pen to paper, as it were). But still, hopefully, you also take my point that Marxist Educators are not always exactly what one would hope or think! Perhaps, should just concentrate on the theory and less on the people! That’s the opinion that we are starting to form and is certainly one possible, sensible, solution!

6. DANCING
Finally, after all that, I thought I should end on a positive note, so decided to talk about dancing, which is something that I have been very much enjoying over the last few months or so.

I have always loved dancing; all kinds of dance. But somehow I thought that the traditional dancing was not perhaps ‘hip’,’ trendy’ and ‘cool’ in some way or other; and/or I thought that there was not that much of it about any more. How wrong I have proved to be on both counts.

The dancing that I first really loved was Barn Dancing. I discovered this on Holiday Fellowship holidays that I went on every year with my mum and dad as a child and a teenager. HF has guest houses all over the country; in wonderful scenic places, such as Devon, Cornwall, Wales, the Lake District etc. As a child, I visited most of these beautiful and scenic places in Great Britain with my parents in this way. HF were walking holidays; with graded walks – A for the most difficult, which included a lot of mountain climbing, very long walks etc; B for the medium walk and C for the easiest walk. The walks were taken by ‘leaders’ who knew what they were doing and where they were going; compasses, maps, mountain boots, mountain lunches etc. abounded. And in the evening, there were various forms of entertainment, and for me, the best here, was the Barn Dancing. I loved it. ‘Strip the Willow’ – heaven, being swung round like that, skipping up and down; that was my favourite. Then there were dances like the ‘Mississippi Dip’. Those memories have always remained very vivid in my mind. Then, in my mid-teens at school, I did part of the Duke of Edinburgh award for a while, and for that, I did some ballroom dancing, including the waltz, quick-step and the cha-cha. But then at university, and since then, disco dancing took over; all that free expression; wonderful. And boy did I travel. Mind you, not for me the club dancing in a small square.

Anyway, earlier this year, I decided to really ‘go’ for the traditional dancing, once again, and to properly learn more of the steps this time. I looked around on websites, trying to decide what I wanted to do. In the end, I decided to focus on five main types of dances: ballroom, latin American, sequence, salsa and the Argentine tango.

It was and still is a wonderful journey; a journey of self-discovery, as much as anything else. I absolutely love it; dancing is really me! Why did I not do more of this before now, I ask myself? My life has been transformed. I have learnt just such a lot in the last few months; it has, and continues to be just so wonderful. And I have made some nice new friends. What could be better? And also as I go from one dance to another I am now starting so see some familiar faces.

At the traditional dances – both social and tea dances, there is ballroom, latin American and sequence dancing. I would now quite confidently get up and attempt any dance, as and when I am asked. That, for me, is a real achievement in itself. I have overcome the barrier. Whilst Salsa is lovely because it is lively and includes a wide age range. I actually go to free salsa dance classes in Newham; amazing eh! And I have gone to a few Argentine Tango classes at Conway Hall in Holborn. The Argentine Tango is just so elegant; also intimate. It is sensational. I am reminded of the film ‘Evita’ that Madonna starred in. Wow – wonderful. I love Madonna.

Kerry who teaches the free salsa classes is an amazing person; she is just so positive and lovely; knows everyones names; has a wonderful figure and posture - a real role model. Well, I find all these dance teachers real role models, to be honest. I went to some formal ballroom dances somewhat earlier in the year at Wanstead House, and Sylvie who takes these classes also has a wonderful pose and posture. Such elegance; such style!

Having returned to my early love, I will never, ever leave it again. Books and dancing - two real passions of my life. Not exercise classes though; I learnt that all over again as well. And interestingly Kerry, after having her baby, took a course for teaching exercise; she then got a job teaching exercises but when they discovered that she could teach dance, they wanted her to do that instead. And she loved that, and she wondered what on earth had possessed her to go into the exercise regime. Dancing can be a wonderful workout in itself as well anyway; but such a pleasurable, sensational one, as opposed to yucky exercise classes. Kerry adores dancing; all types of dancing – and so do I.

The rhythm; the music; the engagement; the intimacy; the beauty; the importance of thinking, self-expression and yet letting go (as a follower) all at the same time – breath-taking, sensational, brilliant. At its best, it can take you to another plane.

Kerry has also been talking about ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ – I must try to remember to watch that. Mind you, I don’t want to take a competitive attitude to it all; it is the sheer wonder, elegance, style, beauty and art that is where it is all at for me; that is what I love.

So, as you can see, I am hooked and will continue to keep on dancing, dancing, dancing.

Best wishes
Ruth

P.S. Writing this newsletter has proved to be therapeutic for me, and has helped me to cope with these very difficult issues. It must also be remembered though, that it has been written in a very stressful phase of my life (also in the middle of a very difficult family situation right now). But writing the newsletter has also helped me to overcome some of my own hang-ups and inhibitions, and has helped to enable me to now move on. Once again, the wonder and beauty of writing!

1st November 2010

Ruth Rikowski's 42nd News Update

2010-10-08T04:40:00.000-07:00

Well, the summer draws to a close. It was very jam-packed for us; hence the delay with this newsletter. Anyway, here are some of the highlights.

1. KINGSTON UNIVERSITY LONDON, EDUCATION DEPARTMENT: KEYNOTE LECTURE AND LECTURING APPOINTMENT!
Well, the real highlight for me was that leading on from me giving a Key Note Lecture at Kingston University (at the invitation of Victoria Perselli) I suddenly and unexpectedly received in the post an offer of a lecturing appointment at Kingston, in the Education Department!

The teaching will be up to 8 hours a week, working as a Part-Time Lecturer, based in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, and is effective from 1st October 2010. So, I am now very much looking forward to this of course, and to working more closely with Victoria.

Meanwhile, my keynote lecture was for the Education Doctorate programme. The programme includes four weekend sessions a year, with lectures, tutorials, presentations, workshops etc. The title of my talk, given on 19th September 2010, was: ‘I.T.: a form of liberation for females?’ The weekend also included a talk by Professor Keith Grieves on ‘Education and Globalisation’ (which has been one of Glenn Rikowski’s passionate interests of course). In fact, Keith and I briefly discussed Glenn’s Seattle book and his House of Lords paper.

I spoke for 75 minutes covering the topics of females in I.T. in general (and the gender inequalities that exist within it), social networking, the Feminist Library in London and digitisation. There were some 25 people there altogether; Education Doctorate students and academics (including an academic from Roehampton University, as Kingston and Roehampton run their Education Doctorate jointly).

I delivered an interactive lecture. There was a lot of lively interest, engagement and participation, which was great. The discussion included talking about Second Life; social networking in general (especially Facebook and Wikipedia); identity; the primary school sector, females and I.T; proactivity in general and ideas around the possible digitising of some of the Feminist Library in London material.

After the event Victoria and I went out to dinner and I stayed in a hotel, Brook Hotel, all courtesy of Kingston University, which was all very lovely. Upon my return Victoria emailed me saying that I had given the students a lot of food for thought and that my talk had generated much discussion over the whole weekend. So, that was all good to know.

Now, hopefully, in time we can raise some of these important topics still further in a meaningful way, which will hopefully result in some actual real and positive changes being made. One of my big motivations for writing has been the hope that it can all lead to some actual and real changes in society, particularly given the fact that today, the formal democratic processes and associated political activities can often seem to be just so inadequate (witness the current right-wing British government, for example; something that the electorate ended up with, despite having not given it a mandate).

Anyhow, leading on from being offered this lecturing appointment at Kingston I am now optimistic and hopeful that Victoria and I can raise some very important topics and make some difference. Victoria, by inviting me to give this Keynote, for example, inspired me to think about the possibility of digitising some of the Feminist Library in London material in order to assist with the preservation of the material. This, then, is a positive start.

Prior to me giving this Keynote Lecture, Toni Samek Professor in the School of Library and Information Studies and Research Fellow at the University of Alberta in Canada contacted me saying that she thought that some of the issues raised could hopefully be raised still further in various ways through videoing. Also that, in fact, she was using my filmed London South Bank University talk on globalisation and internationalisation (see http://www.libr.org/isc/events/minitalk.html) with her students, and was finding it helpful.

Perhaps, then, further such filming will be possible in the future. This is not something that I have done much of up to date, it has to be said although Martha Spiess did come over from the States to film the book launch for my globalisation book, including my own talk at it (see http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=perform&sub=Ruth Speech). This is all food for thought for the future anyway.

In regard to Victoria herself, Victoria Perselli is someone that Glenn Rikowski first connected with. With her Marxist/Feminist stance she has become someone that both Glenn and I have both very much liked and admired over the last few years. She seeks to raise many important issues, particularly within the field of Marxist education.

Glenn first connected with Victoria through his passion about re-invigorating Marxism and Education. He invited her to speak at one of the ‘Marxism and Education: Renewing Dialogues (MERD III) seminars that he organised at the Institute of Education, University of London: see http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=events&sub=MERD. MERD III was held on 22nd October 2003 and this particular MERD was also reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education, by Scott McLemee (over from America), on 5th December 2003. The article by McLemee was entitled ‘Scenes from the classroom struggle’. Other speakers at this particular MERD included Paula Allman, Carmel Borg, Helen Colley, David Guile, Peter Jones and Peter Mayo.

Victoria is now contributing a chapter to a book, for the Palgrave Macmillan series on ‘Marxism and Education’, which Glenn Rikowski and Tony Green obtained a contract for. This book, edited by Peter Jones, will build on MERD III, which was on the theme of ‘Pedagogy and Culture’ and will include contributions from many of the speakers at MERD III.

On a final note, interestingly we received a news item by email from Sebastien Budgen recently, about an article by the same Scott McLemee, this time with him writing about the C.L.R. James Library in Hackney. As McLemee points out C.L.R. James has been a real figure in society, writing a definitive history of the Haitian slave revolt in 1938, for example, providing (with his associates) an English translation of Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, as well as being one of the founders of Marxist Humanism. Shockingly, McLemee reports that there is a proposal to rename the C.L.R. James Library to simply the Dalston Library and Archives. A petition against this move can be signed at:
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/saveclrjameslibrary/

Glenn also inserted information about this on his blog – see
http://rikowski.wordpress.com/?s=clrjames+library&searchsubmit=Find+%C2%BB

Tony Green has also been circulating the information.

2. CHIBU ONYENDI, A LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY MASTERS STUDENT, MAKING CONTACT WITH ME
Just as I was on my way out to give this Keynote Lecture at Kingston I got an unexpected phone call from one Chibu Onyendi. Who was this, I thought? I was struggling. Then, gradually, as he explained, the ‘penny dropped’. He was a London South Bank postgraduate student that came to see me in my office about one year ago, requesting me to be his supervisor. He had seen my Globalisation, Information and Libraries book on display in the foyer at South Bank, read the abstract of it, and was convinced that I was the supervisor for him! His masters dissertation (for an MSc in Information Systems Management) was on the topic of ‘Globalisation and its potential effects on ICT in Nigeria’.

Having passed the taught part of the course, but not the dissertation, he then decided that he thought that I was the person that could guide him academically to a successful completion of his dissertation.

We had little time to play with, but managed to fit it in. Chibu kindly bought me lunch and we discussed his dissertation. I took it away to read and comment on and gave him some feedback (which I also forwarded to some other academics at LSBU).

Chibu is now in the process of re-registering. Let us hope that a successful outcome to it all can be found. All this is also, though, taking place within a period of restructuring, redundancies and early retirement at South Bank.

This leads me on nicely to refer to item 11 in my newsletter No 41. In this news item I highlight the fact that I had given a large number of guest lectures at London South Bank University and that:

“The understanding was that, through giving these guest lectures [to masters students] (which were on a variety of topics and proved to be both demanding and time-consuming, albeit also enjoyable), that I would then be integrated into the masters programme, but this never came about (at least, so far, to date it has not come about)!”
But to date, it has still not come to pass. Indeed, my situation at South Bank has deteriorated rather than improved! But let us not go into that right now.

3. CHANDOS BOOK CONTRACT FOR DINESH GUPTA ON MARKETING
As you presumably are aware, as well as university teaching I also commission books and articles. Recently, I secured a Chandos book contract for Dinesh Gupta on marketing (marketing being Dinesh’s specialist area). The proposed title for the book is:

A New Paradigm of Library and Information Services Marketing

Dinesh will be starting work on his book in November 2010, and of course I wish him all the very best with it.

4. 7 NEW ITEMS UP ON MY ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG
http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/

There are 7 new items up on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog. These are:

‘Emily Christophers and Public Libraries’, ‘Some Ex-Colleagues in Newham Library Service’, ‘Inspiralled Café’ and ‘Urban Green Fair, Brockwell Park, Lambeth’. Also, three book reviews: ‘The Women in his Life’ by Barbara Taylor Bradford, ‘Thyme Out’ by Katie Fforde and ‘A Sweet Obscurity’ by Patrick Gale.

Emily Christophers used to be a student of Glenn’s and has been taking a lively interest in our writing, for example, whilst Victor Rikowski recited some poetry (or to be more precise lyrics to songs that he had written) at the Urban Green Fair at Brockwell Park, which proved to be a pretty successful event overall, I understand. I haven’t been reading as many novels lately as I usually tend to do (been just too busy!) but anyway, there are reviews of 3 novels that I have read recently on my blog.

5. ‘INFORMATION ETHICS’ EDITED BY MIKAEL BŐŐK IS NOW ONLINE (the latest issue, No. 30, of the ejournal INFORMATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE) – see http://www.libr.org/isc/toc.html

The latest issue of Information for Social Change is now out (inserted on the web by Mikael Böök this time, rather than by Paul Catherall, the formal ISC webmaster).

Here are the details of the Contents and the Editorial:

Contents and Editorial
Contents
Contributors
Google: An Ethical Corporate Pirate? (Mikael Böök)
Regarding the Google Interview (comments by Paul Catherall)
Articles, Part 1
Introduction to the Ethics and Ecology of Reading (Luca Ferrieri )
Talking About Information Ethics in Higher Education (Toni Samek)
Ethical Reflections on the 9/11 Controversy (Elizabeth Woodworth)
Data Absorptents, Data Emitters and Databases in Politics (Amelia Andersdotter)
On the Closing of the Scientific Library of the Finnish Meteorological Institute (Marke Hongisto)
Public Lending Right: General Considerations and Controversial Aspects (Marianna Malfatti)
Articles, Part 2
Introductory Note (Mikael Böök)
It Takes A Community to Create A Library (Kenneth Williment)
The US and the European Social Forum: Strategic Challenges for the WSF (Francine Mestrum)
Book Reviews
Elizabeth A. Buchanan and Kathrine Henderson: Case Studies in Library and Information Science Ethics (reviewed by Mikael Böök)

6. ‘WHY STUDY EDUCATION STUDIES?’ BY LOUISE JEMMETT and ‘WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY: EXPLAINING THE RISE OF UNIVERSITIES IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE’ BY AMY LEACH – TWO NEW ARTICLES UP ON OUR ‘FLOW OF IDEAS’ WEBSITE

There are two new pieces up on our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website: both of which, originally, were essays written by two of Glenn Rikowski’s undergraduate students. The first is:

‘Why Study Education Studies?’ by Louise Jemmett (written in 2009)
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=374&slink=yes

Louise concludes by saying:

“...Education Studies provides the individual with skills and knowledge that will be relevant to life after education, helping them to become employed in a stable and financially rewarding career of their interest. It is because of this self-sufficiency and development it creates that I believe the individual should study Education Studies.

The second is:

‘What is a University: explaining the rise of universities in medieval Europe’ by Amy Leach (written in 2009)
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=375&slink=yes

And Amy concludes by saying that:

“...universities have risen in popularity and importance due to the overwhelming need to educate oneself further, whether at an undergraduate, postgraduate or research level. Universities are linked to the building or place in which they exist, but it is the people inside the university that are of most importance; the institution, and what they accomplish within it. The essential product of a university is “not a book but a man” (Christopherson, 1973, p.33).

7. ‘BUILDINGS FOR THOUGHT’ BY JONATHAN GLANCEY – AN ARTICLE IN THE GUARDIAN, 31st AUGUST 2010, FOCUSING ON MIKE NEARY’S WORK ON CRITICAL SPACE IN UNIVERSITIES
http://www.poten.com/NewsDetails.aspx?id=10612184

An article about the work on critical space on university campuses that Glenn Rikowski’s good friend, Mike Neary is doing, was published in The Guardian, on 31st August 2010. The article ‘Education: buildings for thought’ is by Jonathan Glancey, and ‘investigates the quiet revolution in university design that is transforming the way campuses are organised and run’.

Mike, who is Dean of Teaching and Learning and Director of the Centre for Educational Research and Development at the University of Lincoln, says that university campuses are not ‘business parks’. With this in mind, over the last three years he has been leading a research project called Learning Landscapes in Higher Education. Working with architects and space-planners Mike Neary and his colleagues visited 12 universities in Scotland, England and Wales, conducting extensive interviews. The aim has been to “...help re-think what universities are, what they are for and how they might build, occupy and use space intelligently – even critically...”

Mike Neary wants to improve the way in which campuses function. With this in mind he says that: “It’s been an academic exercise, and this is just what it needs to have been. Universities are academic. What we need to do is to think of the ways in which the process of research, of critical, academic thinking by students and teachers alike can shape the physical environment around them.”
He thinks that the best new university buildings are those where “students are given real responsibility for managing and supervising the spaces within which they learn...” And that “The Learning Grid at the University of Warwick is the most developed form of this new kind of space.” Yes, utilising space effectively for meaningful discussion and dialogue is clearly very important.

Then Mike said the following, which I thought was an absolute gem and just so, so, right:

“What’s wrong is the whole approach to treating universities as businesses, as an appendage to the economy, rather than places where ideas can be dangerous.”

Absolutely! That is definitely what universities should be about, as far as I am concerned: about developing new, exciting, dangerous, life-changing and life-enhancing theories and ideas.

We wish Mike all the very best with this very important and worthwhile research that he is doing.

8. ‘LIBRARIES IN A DIGITAL AGE’: ONE-DAY CONFERENCE ON 14th OCT 2010 TO BE HELD AT ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY, LONDON

Martyn Everett kindly informed me about this very interesting conference (that he is also speaking at). I have booked a place on it, as it should fit in well with my forthcoming book on digitisation. Here is the information about the conference that is being circulated:

The Association of Independent Libraries

Libraries in a Digital Age

A one-day conference on the
problems and opportunities facing libraries
in the age of the Internet
to be held at the
Royal Astronomical Society,
Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BQ
Thursday 14 October 2010
10.30 a.m. – 4.30 p.m.

Programme

10.30 Coffee and Welcome

10.45 Social networking: just a lot of twittering? Gwyneth Price

Gwyneth Price is Head of Collection Development Services at the Institute of Education (London) and is particularly interested in information literacy and the use of social networking software in libraries. Her presentation will focus on some examples of Web 2.0 technologies and how they impact on libraries in
the digital age.

11.30 A plan for the future of our public library service. Tim Coates

Tim Coates is an author and was head of Waterstone's bookshops in its early years. For the last decade he has become widely known for his pursuit of the improvement of the public library service. For his address to the conference on libraries in the digital age Tim has indicated his intention to use this opportunity to make a major statement on the state of libraries in England and what needs to be done for them to survive and fill a role for future generations.

12.15 The Oxford-Google Book Digitization Partnership. Michael Popham

Michael Popham is Head of the Oxford Digital Library, a core service of the Bodleian Libraries, serving the University of Oxford. Michael has been working in the fields of digitization and electronic text creation for more than two decades, and co-ordinates Oxford’s collaboration with Google Books. The Bodleian Library was one of the first five libraries to began collaboration with the Google Books Library Project (see http://books.google.com/googlebooks/partners.html) This presentation will outline the Partnership’s efforts to digitize the Bodleian's entire holdings of out-of-copyright C19th material, and the lessons we have learned from this challenging endeavour.

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Merchants of Culture: the publishing industry in the 21st century.
Professor John B Thompson

John B. Thompson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. His publications include Books in the Digital Age (2005) and Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century (2010). The book publishing industry today is facing some of the greatest challenges it has known since Gutenberg. Caught in the pincer of an economic downturn and a digital revolution, everyone involved in the
book business - publishers, agents and booksellers - is being forced to rethink what they do. Based on ten years of in-depth research on the publishing industry, Thompson analyses some of the key changes that have transformed the industry in recent years and shows how publishers are seeking to rethink their practices in the face of an uncertain future.

14.45 Copyright and the Knowledge Commons. Martyn Everett

Martyn Everett, writer, historian, former librarian and Chairman of Saffron Walden Town Library Society. The internet and digitisation provide the opportunity to create a knowledge and information Commons in which libraries could play a key role. Yet the combination of new technology, commercialisation, and changes in the nature of ‘copyright’ threaten to constrict and regulate access to information as never before. Which side are you on?

15.30 Tour of the Royal Astronomical Society Library including a short talk about the Library’s digitisation programme by Librarian Peter Hingley.

16.30 Concluding remarks

Timings are approximate and the organisers reserve the right to change the programme without notification

Cost £40 per person including lunch.
Please make cheques payable to “The Association of Independent Libraries’
and send to:
The Association of Independent Libraries
c/o The Leeds Library
18 Commercial Street,
Leeds LS1 6AL
Tel: 0113-245-3071
enquiries@theleedslibrary.org.uk

9. POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION ‘MOST POPULAR ARTICLES’ CHART
The international ejournal Policy Futures in Education has a ‘Most Popular Articles’ chart. Glenn Rikowski’s article ‘Marx and the Education of the Future’ (published in Vol. 2, No, 3, 2004 of the journal) has been 1st or 2nd in the chart for some considerable time now, which is great. At the current time, it is 1st with 391 hits!

What has happened recently though is that Jia Liu’s (who likes to be known as ‘Jessica’) article ‘Digital Library and Digital Reference Service: integration and mutual complementarity’ (published in Vol. 6, No. 1, 2008) has shot up the chart to No. 4, with 288 hits. There have been news items from Jessica in the last couple of issues of my newsletter. Jessica is also one of the contributors to my forthcoming edited book Digitisation Perspectives.

The chart can be seen at:
http://www.wwwords.co.uk/stats/popular.asp?j=pfie&view=total

10. MORE VICTOR RIKOWSKI AND ‘COLD HANDS & QUARTER MOON’ MATERIAL UP ON YOUTUBE

Our middle son, Victor Rikowski, has been busy putting some more songs up on YouTube. This includes some other numbers from his band, Cold Hands & Quarter Moon and some solo singing by him, with him singing various country and western songs. Here are the links:

5 country and western covers sung and played by Victor:

‘Heartaches by the number’ (Harlan Howard)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuBIiml2Yqg

‘I love you because’ (Ernest Tubb)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nz7VdDYFKtQ

‘I want you out of my head and into my head’ (Loretta Lynn) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d6dN0_JQBc

‘Rock me to Sleep’ (Sally Timms)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxp_SEhrOY8

‘Slipping Around’ (Ernest Tubb)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETgP35qqEqw

3 ‘Cold Hands & Quarter Moon’ numbers:

‘It’s a Dead End’ – written by Victor Rikowski
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_z2tb3cLHs

‘The Letter’ (live performance) - written by Alex Lowther-Harris and Victor Rikowski
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxE-icpvCr8

‘Mudane Maniacs’ (live performance) – written by Victor Vikowski http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZF3SyzOCIhg

11. ‘COLD HANDS & QUARTER MOON’ ON STORM FM, THE BANGOR UNIVERSITY STUDENT RADIO ON 3rd OCTOBER 2010, FROM 3-5pm
Finally, just as I was about to circulate this newsletter, Victor suddenly phoned us to say that ‘Cold Hands & Quarter Moon’ were about to go live on the local Bangor University student radio station – Storm FM. See:
http://www.bangor.ac.uk/studentlife/features/storm.php.en

Storm FM was set up in October 2001 by the then President of the Students’ Union, Niall Duffy. The station was also short-listed for the ‘Best Station Sound’ in the SR Association Student Radio Awards in November 2004 and these awards are supported by Radio 1.
So, as you can imagine, we were really excited about all of this! We quickly told a few friends and relations and got some recording material together. Then, we relaxed, listened and enjoyed (through Facebook)!

The programme was on Sunday 3rd October, from 3-5pm. The whole 2-hour programme was basically devoted to ‘Cold Hands & Quarter Moon’, with a couple of other musical interludes and a musical quiz (which CH&QM also participated in). CH&QM were first discovered by Storm FM on the ‘Bangor’s got talent’ contest.

The band played four numbers altogether: ‘Human Herbs’ (their very first number); ‘Slaves and Masters’; ‘It’s a Dead End’ (a new song and an exclusive for Storm FM) and ‘The Animal Song’.

The band were asked a wide variety of questions by James McAllister, such as what gigs/venues they had played at; their best and worst gigs; where else they would like to perform outside of Bangor (Chester seemed a good idea next, they thought, perhaps followed by Manchester). They also liked the idea of playing at Leeds Festival; and later perhaps at Reading Festival.

Other questions included: what was the first album that they had each bought; what was the first band they saw and who would they most like to perform with. Victor said that he would most like to perform with Jon Langford from the Mekons, and that indeed the Mekons had been a big influence on his song writing in general. Victor was also asked to explain the background behind the songs, the inspirations and what messages they were aiming to convey. He said that some of the songs he writes are quite political. ‘It’s a Dead End’ is a wake-up call to people, for example, to warn them not to live a life that leads to a dead-end and ‘The Animal Song’ says something about working-class struggle. They were also asked some amusing questions such as who would they most like to be with on a desert island.

All the members of the band are very talented, I think. As they said on the radio programme, Louie Ashton-Butler, for example, is a classically trained singer, and sings various operas for the university, such as Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’ and Nick Frost plays violin in the university orchestra. The band members also gave Victor full credit for being the leader and the main inspiration behind ‘Cold Hands & Quarter Moon’, as well as for writing all the material of course. That was great, I thought, and raised my level of respect and admiration for the band members still higher. Victor says that they are all great people!

All being well, the programme will be going online in a few days time. And they are also planning to make a CD of it all, accepting donations for it at the moment, but in time (given all the hard work they have put into it), they might well decide to charge. Personally, I think they should, at some point. Also, in time, as they said on the radio, I am sure that they will start to play in various venues outside of Bangor, in places such as Chester, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Reading and London.

So, the band goes from strength to strength, on to better and better things and we wish them all the very best of luck with it all. We will have to see what we can do our end, about getting them to play in some London gigs. Perhaps, even around Christmas. Who knows! But, anyway, watch this space!
Best wishes

Ruth
N.B. Many thanks to Martyn Everett for providing information for item 8.

8th October 2010

Ruth Rikowski's 41st News Update

2010-07-31T01:21:00.000-07:00

I hope you are enjoying the summer. In one way or another, there always seems to be quite a lot going on in my life, and I can only ever really report on some of it. So, anyway, here are some of the latest highlights from me below.

1. VICTORIA PERSELLI INVITING ME TO GIVE A KEYNOTE SPEECH AT KINGSTON UNIVERSITY
I received a lovely, unexpected email ‘out of the blue’ from Dr. Victoria Perselli, Chair of Programme Directors, Education Doctorate and Course Director, MA Education (English Language Teaching), School of Education at Kingston University, inviting me to give a Keynote Speech at Kingston. Giving a Keynote will be a first for me, so is obviously special and something that I am excited about.

My talk will be in mid-September, 2010 and will be entitled ‘Information Technology: a form of liberation for females?’ I will look briefly at the traditional computing industry, which is very male-dominated, and then consider whether specific areas of IT can provide a new form of liberation for females; and in particular, whether social networking tools can help in this regard. I will argue that whilst these tools are useful they need to be used with care and they do not necessarily empower females; instead, they can even help to create new levels of vulnerability and can be time-wasting. Rather, females need to be more pro-active in general. I will then look briefly at the Feminist Library in London and drawing on my forthcoming book on digitisation, will argue that in order to preserve this wonderful collection the digitisation of some of this material could prove to be highly advantageous.

2. ALEXANDER RIKOWSKI OBTAINING AN UPPER SECOND HONOURS DEGREE IN PHILOSOPHY FROM KING’S COLLEGE...AND NEWS OF SOME OTHER RESULTS
Our eldest son, Alexander Rikowski recently obtained a 2:1 for his Philosophy degree at King’s College, London, which we were obviously all delighted about. He worked very hard for it; it was a very demanding degree, with weekly essays and involved reading the raw material of many of the great philosophers. Also, most of the other students there had been to public school, so came from very different and privileged backgrounds compared to Alex; so he had that to handle as well. Alex thought that these people were definitely being groomed specifically to enter into the upper class/upper-middle class. Interestingly, Alexander got his best mark (69%) in Marxism. In particular, he has worked out some ground-breaking and very important ideas in regard to justice; but more about that on another occasion.

Meanwhile, our middle son, Victor, got a good upper second overall at the end of his second year at Bangor University, working towards his degree in Music and Creative Writing there. He also got Firsts in courses on Music Composition and Creative Writing for Children; so that was all great, and once again, demonstrates the extent and range of his artistic and creative ability.

Finally, my second cousin Neil Whitehead (who designed our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website – www.flowideas.co.uk) got a Double Distinction for his Foundation Degree in Photography at Southampton University, so he is safely through to the degree programme! He is also already planning to self-publish his second book – showing great initiative for someone that is just embarking on a first degree, I think.

3. WRITING CONSULTANCY WORK
For the last few months I have become very passionate about dancing (something that I have always loved but have not taken quite so seriously before). But now, I am determined to learn many of the steps properly. So, believe it or not, I am now learning ballroom, sequence, salsa and argentine tango dancing. It has, and continues to be, truly wonderful!
Anyway, a few weeks ago, someone at one of the dances noted that I was writing something down, and came over and asked me if I was a writer. To cut a long story short, having established that I was indeed a writer, he then asked me if I would help him with some of his own writing, offering to pay me for this. This assignment has now been successfully completed. Which now leads me on to say that if others are interested in me working for them on this basis (in whatever writing/editing/publishing capacity), then please do feel free to get in touch, and we can explore the possibilities together!

4. FOUR NEW ITEMS UP ON MY ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG
There are four new items up on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog: 3 items about some events in our local community which we not only went to but were involved with and one book review. The 3 local events were: the Forest Gate Carnival, the Big Lunch and Forest Roots. The choir that I am in, Forest Voices sang at both the ‘Forest Gate Carnival’ and ‘Forest Roots’ and our son Victor, played acoustic guitar and sang at both the ‘Big Lunch’ and ‘Forest Roots’. The Forest Roots event was a first for Victor; he has played at lots of venues in Bangor, North Wales (both with his band and on his own), but it was the first time that he had performed solo to a musically-appreciative community-based London audience. He played one of his own compositions, ‘Today’ (which he composed just the day before) and a country and western song ‘Choices’ by George Jones, from the album ‘Cold Hard Truth’. There were many different musical acts throughout the evening at ‘Forest Roots’, with the main act being the band ‘Acoustica’ – all very enjoyable.

The book review is a short one of a bestselling novel, ‘Highland Fling’ by Katie Fforde, which I found to be a pleasant read.

5. PROPOSAL FOR A THIRD INTERNATIONAL MEETING FOR PROGRESSIVE LIBRARY ORGANISATIONS
Having completed his interviews with progressive librarians in various parts of the world, Al Kagan, African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration Africana Collections and Services at the University of Illinois Library is now hoping to bring about a third international meeting for progressive library organisations. He is currently pooling ideas and I wish him every success with this worthwhile project.

6. NEWS ITEM FROM JESSICA (JIA LIU), ONE OF THE CONTRIBUTORS TO MY FORTHCOMING BOOK PERSPECTIVES ON DIGITISATION, FOCUSING ON A PROFESSIONAL CONVERSATION BETWEEN Dr. JIA LIU & Prof. ELMAR MITTLER
Below is another news items kindly sent to me by Jia Liu (who likes to be known as Jessica (following on from 2 news items from her in my last newsletter, No. 40, in item 4). This news item focuses on a professional discussion that she had with Professor Elmar Mittler.

“VISIT BY PROFESSOR ELMAR MITTLER
Recently I visited Professor Elmar Mittler, my former supervisor when I implemented a research project with the fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, in the historical building of the Göttingen University and Lower-Saxony State Library (SUB Göttingen).

Prof. Elmar Mittler (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmar_Mittler) had been the director of SUB Göttingen from 1990 to 2006. Before that he had been the director of the Heidelberg University Library and the Bad State Library in Karlsruhe. The deepest impression I have had about him was his open mind and kind attitude. With his leadership, SUB Göttingen has been one of the biggest research libraries all over the world and he has a very high reputation in the worldwide library circle. Though he retired in 2006, obviously he’s still been very energetic and active in a variety of fields. During our last meeting, I invited him to talk a little on several points. This is what he said:

“ “ Activities for the time being
In respect of librarianship, I’m currently the chairman of the Consortium of European Research Libraries (CERL, http://www.cerl.org/web/), which is aimed at promoting Europe's cultural heritage in manuscript and print. On the one hand, it develops the database, the Heritage of the Printed Book in Europe, c. 1450 - c. 1830, a database of records from major European and North American research libraries. Also, it develops services and tools. The CERL Thesaurus provides multi-lingual information about names of persons and places found in catalogues of books of the hand-press period. And the CERL Portal offers cross-searching of catalogues of European manuscript materials, with the option to search selected early-printed books databases. So far 30 European libraries have been involved in CERL.

In the meantime, I give lectures on the book history in the Department of History of the Göttingen University. My main interest is how historians take advantage of modern techniques in the virtual research environment. I focus on the book heritage and book database. I teach in the Department of Book Science of the University of Mainz as well.

Cooperation with libraries of the United Kingdom

In addition to cooperating with some libraries of the United Kingdom within the activities of CERL, the Göttingen University Library collaborates on LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche, in English, Association of European Research Libraries, at URL http://www.libereurope.eu/) with some English leading academic research libraries. The Göttingen University Library plays the leading role in these two organisations. I had been the president of LIBER for 4 years and now my successor continues the work.

On the other hand, the other European project my successor is running is open-access.net (http://open-access.net/de_en/homepage/), the platform providing open access to scholarly information.

Cooperation between your library and Chinese libraries
In the last two years, the Göttingen University Library had cooperation with the Shanghai Library. In the meantime, our library takes part in information exchange with Chinese libraries. This activity is mainly driven by the German National Library of Science / Technology and University Library Hannover (Technische Informationsbibliothek / Universitätsbibliothek Hannover, TIB Hannover). The main field related is nature science.

Current status of the German libraries
German libraries have the same financial problem[1]. The background is that the price of the science journal increases but the library budget keeps the same as before. There is no difference between the staff cost and the maintaining cost and they belong to one budget. Under the case that the whole budget shrinks, in order to keep the maintaining cost, the library director has to reduce the personnel. The libraries are really under great pressure and such situations started about 6 years ago in Germany.

On the other hand, German research libraries get additional funding these years. The German students began to pay the tuition, some part of which is used to maintain and develop the library. A part of the tuitions has been taken advantage by the Göttingen University Library to provide longer service time. Besides, there are some investment programmes of the government to support the library. The additional funding is used to refresh the new building of the Göttingen University Library. That’s the similar situation in other German libraries. “ “

7. MICHAEL WILBY – WINNER OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY PRIZE 2010: ‘THE SIMPLICITY OF MUTUAL KNOWLEDGE’
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a923143368~frm=titlelink Michael Wilby, a former A-level philosophy student of Glenn Rikowski’s (in the early 1990s) at Epping Forest College, won the Philosophical Essay Prize, 2010, for his essay on ‘The Simplicity of Mutual Knowledge’. Upon leaving Epping Forest College, Michael went on to obtain a degree in philosophy and then a PhD from the University of York, and he now teaches at Anglia Ruskin University, on the Cambridge campus. We were obviously delighted to find out about Michael winning this prize and wish him every success in the future. Michael is the son of the famous journalist, Peter Wilby, columnist of the Sunday Observer and the Guardian, and former editor of the Independent on Sunday and the New Statesman.

8. RECENTLY RELEASED FILM ‘INCEPTION’ INCLUDES SYNTHESISER PROGRAMMING BY HOWARD SCARR, A FRIEND OF GLENN RIKOWSKI’S
http://www.loudouni.com/people/2010-07-23/music-behind-inception
Some of my family went to see the newly released film ‘Inception’ recently, which they thoroughly enjoyed. What was particularly exciting for Glenn though was that his friend Howard Scarr from undergraduate university days, (they played in a regressive band called ‘Wavering on Ether’ along with Vincent Woodward and Derek Roche, at the University of East Anglia), did the synthesiser programming for the music in the film, working with Hans Zimmer in the process. Glenn said that the music was powerful and intense and really made the film tick. Howard went on to become a member of England’s first all-synthesiser band, ‘Zorch’, which came back to the University of East Anglia (UEA) to perform in 1976 (where we saw them play). See Zorch at MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/zzorch

9. ‘BLUE SEAS THINKING’
Glenn spotted in the Guardian (EducationGuardian, 20th July 2010, p. 9) an article about the sociologist Dr Karen Throsby, from Warwick University. ‘So what?’, you might well ask. Well, Karen used to be a neighbour of ours, and then by a total coincidence, she went to work at Warwick University with Glenn Rikowski’s good friend, Mike Neary. The article ‘Blue Seas Thinking’ by Chris Arnot, looks at Karen’s research which explores what motivates people to engage in extreme sports such as Channel swimming. Karen has obtained funding from the Economic and Social Research Council in order to undertake this research. She herself enjoys swimming long distances and says that it is relaxing and ‘empties the mind’. I love swimming, but do not think I would at all enjoy long distance swimming. Anyway, we wish Karen every success with her research.

10. CLARIFICATION OF THOUGHT, EXPLANATIONS, WRITING AND COMMUNICATION
In my previous newsletter (No. 40), item 9 focused on the utilitarian philosopher, J.S. Mill. In this item, I referred to the benefit to be gained from the clarity of thought and communication, and remarked on the fact that J.S. Mill was particularly good in this regard. Also, that he was assisted in this process by his wife Harriet Taylor. In this news item I would like to explore this a little more.

I am of the opinion that the fact that Mill was a child prodigy and that he had to think so deeply and intensely from such a young age, must have helped him in the long-run to improve the style and clarity of his writing. Mill had a mental breakdown when he was just 20 years old, following on from his rigorous childhood upbringing. This must have resulted in him having to rethink his whole way of thinking and of expressing himself quite radically in various ways, I would have thought, the result of which led to his having greater clarity of thought, and also probably assisted with his production of beautiful, enticing and pleasant writing. This feel for his writing was what came across to me very powerfully when I first read his work as an undergraduate.

Now, a talent and ability like this can be very under-estimated, I think. We can take it all too much for granted; it all seems so obvious. But the person has probably gone through a lot of pain; a lot of deep and complex thought-processes, grappling with complicated topics, in order to arrive at what can then seem to be a simple conclusion and outcome; whilst also perhaps creating something beautiful. After all, J.S. Mill’s philosophy has been the bedrock of western democracy in many ways, but few people really clearly recognise this as such (most everyday people do not really appreciate where much of it comes from). It has just all become embedded in the bedrock of our society. In this way, Marx probably gets more credit than Mill actually. Whilst I think, obviously, that Marxism in the long-term is the most effective way forward; we clearly need to analyse capitalism and then move beyond it, at some point. But meanwhile, Mill has helped to make the world that we currently inhabit far more pleasant and tolerable. Also, many philosophers really write quite badly when it comes to style and clarity (take Kant and Aristotle, as examples), and Mill really stands out as someone very different; as someone that cares about his readers and the experiences they are having. Indeed, such writing is an art form in itself.

Similarly, I also aim to write clearly and to give readers something of the ‘feel good’ factor when I write. I now think that this can also probably be partly explained by the fact that, like Mill, I also had to think so very maturely as a child. But also like Mill, this can mean that my work is not always appreciated as much perhaps as I would like it to ideally be (both for my own satisfaction and for the long-term benefit of society at large). In my first book, on globalisation, for example, I grappled with many very deep and complex issues. Once I had sorted these out I was then able to explain these issues fairly simply and clearly to my readers. But then, some people rather than appreciating what I had done just seemed to think that it was all very obvious really; indeed, that perhaps I had even been repeating myself in parts (this became apparent from some of the book reviews). Heavens! Marx was also sometimes criticised for repeating himself; but that is because capitalism is circular and mad in so many ways, so in our efforts to explain it all, we can indeed, sometimes seem to be going round in circles. But rather what we really witness is a genius endeavouring to deal with something very complex.

So, people who develop important new theories can often summarise the main theories/conclusions simply; perhaps, in just a couple of lines. Others can then say, ‘well that is easy – what is all the big fuss about?’, without appreciating the pain, struggles, work and depth of thought that the person has gone through to arrive at this ‘oh so simple conclusion’. So, as and when some of us do develop new theories, we need to be careful about how we handle and present them to the world, I think. This is something that I am very mindful of these days.

Meanwhile, thinking about this further and building on the work of Wittgenstein, we should remember that the purpose of language is to communicate and understand each other, and within this we use different words and concepts to convey meaning in order to arrive at the same conclusion. The important thing is that we understand each other. So, for example, Existentialism means that ‘existence precedes essence’. But some will say, ‘well, what on earth does that mean?’ So, then we need to offer a simpler and clearer explanation. Whilst others might say that existentialism means ‘freedom and responsibility’. But this could be interpreted as being quite right-wing; this would then have to be explained in more depth. The existentialist, Sartre, for example, was after all, very left-wing. And so these are the sorts of problems that we can come up against and why we need to be mindful of the people that we are conversing with and remember that we communicate in order to effectively understand each other. And coming full circle, Mill was brilliant at this.

Making something that involves a lot of hard work and/or heart ache appear afterwards to be easy, can apply to many areas of course, and not just to writing. It can apply to organising a successful music gig, for example, or to the beautiful decorating of a house. We do not always want to go into details about the mundane effort undertaken in order to arrive at the beautiful outcome; rather, sometimes we just want people to enjoy and celebrate the finished result. And on that note, I will end this section.

11. VIDEO OF MY PRESENTATION ON ‘GLOBALISATION AND INTERNATIONALISM’ AT LONDON SOUTH BANK UNIVERSITY (PART OF THE CERTIFICATE IN LEARNING AND TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION) NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE AT:
http://www.libr.org/isc/events/minitalk.html
As part of the Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (CLTHE), that I studied for a couple of years ago at London South Bank University, we had to give a talk that was observed by half a dozen other people (both fellow student-teachers and teachers) and we received feedback on our performances. The presentations were also videoed. Now seems an appropriate time to inform subscribers about this video, and the fact that it has now been made available on the Information for Social Change website – see http://www.libr.org/isc/events/minitalk.html

In my talk, I drew on some of the material from my book, ‘Globalisation, Information and Libraries’; and considered, in particular, the terms ‘Globalisation’ and ‘Internationalism’, in themselves. In addition, I delivered the presentation through the interactive lecture approach. This involved inviting participation from the audience as I was giving my talk.

Prior to this, I had been asked on a number of occasions by George Bell to give some guest lectures to masters students (on the MBA and International courses) on the topic of globalisation at South Bank. I related this to the term ‘Internationalism’, which was the term that George had been using, trying to obtain funding on this topic. The understanding was that, through giving these guest lectures (which were on a variety of topics and proved to be both demanding and time-consuming, albeit also enjoyable), that I would then be integrated into the masters programme, but this never came about (at least, so far, to date it has not come about)! The topics I spoke on included: ‘Globalisation’; ‘Leadership in the New Economy’; ‘MBA: the way forward – what next?’; ‘Knowledge Management and the Knowledge Revolution’; ‘Knowledge Transfer’ and ‘Knowledge Management across Cultures’. In regard to my lecture about possible ways forward for the MBA, for example, I suggested that it could prove to be highly beneficial if ‘hot topics’ such as globalisation, knowledge management and the knowledge revolution, IT and transferring knowledge across cultures were clearly incorporated into the MBA programme. The students found my lectures very interesting and seemed to be very pleased indeed excited, to be engaging with a published author. Also, many of them, like me, approached the topics from a left-wing, critical stance, which I found to be very heartening.

Many thanks to Jessica (Jia Liu) for providing information for item 6.

Best wishes

Ruth

30th July 2010

[1] The problem means that since the budget of the Canadian libraries was reduced, the personnel had to be shrunk again and again.

Ruth Rikowski's 40th News Update

2010-07-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

Well, the weather in London recently has certainly been lovely – reminded us of when we went to Rhodes 2 years ago! I wonder how long it will last; still enjoy it while we can. Our youngest, Gregory Rikowski, has just celebrated his 21st Birthday. Goodness – so, now they are all ‘fully-fledged adults’, as they say. So, anyway, in the throws of mid-summer, here is the latest from me below.

1. ARCHIVING OF OUR ‘FLOW OF IDEAS’ WEBSITE (www.flowideas.co.uk) WITH THE BRITISH LIBRARY (www.webarchive.org.uk)
We received a lovely email ‘out of the blue’ from the British Library (BL), saying that they would like to archive our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website. As you can imagine, we were very delighted about this, as it means that hopefully, our website will be preserved over time, and will not be disappearing through changes in companies, technologies, decision-making and policies (which was what happened to our AOL blogs).

The British Library web archiving programme selects and archive sites to represent aspects of UK documentary heritage. These websites will then remain available to researchers in the future. It works closely with leading UK institutions to collect and permanently preserve the UK web. The BL archive can be seen at www.webarchive.org.uk.

As the British Library say this means that selected website owners have an historical record of their websites, and it aims “...to develop preservation mechanisms to keep your publication permanently accessible as hardware and software change over time.”

Various quality insurance checks are currently taking place on our website, but soon all-being-well our website (along with my blog) will be added to the archive and made available to the public through the British Library archive website. I will keep you informed of progress.

2. TONY WARD VISITING US
Tony Ward, one of the contributors to my forthcoming, edited book Perspectives on Digitisation, came and visited us a couple of weeks ago, which was lovely. It was the first time that Tony had been to the UK for many years! Tony was born here in the UK, then went to work as an academic in the USA (at the University of California, Berkeley); and then on to New Zealand (at the Auckland University). He has had a very interesting and eventful life, and it was good talking to him and finding out lots more about it all.

Tony’s background is in architecture, but he moved into the area of critical pedagogy some years ago, and of course, that is where we overlap and have some common interests.
At Auckland University Tony directed the Commuity Design Studio for 20 years, working with marginalised communities, on areas connected with social equity across cultural boundaries. Much of his work in New Zealand has been with the Maori community. Tony has recently completed a year, working as a Wiepking Distinguished Visiting Professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, USA.

Tony has a website (www.TonyWardEdu.com), which is a free educational resource with downloadable essays, articles and projects. He is also currently writing a book on The Ward Method of creative consensus-building and social transformation. In addition, he circulates a newsletter.

We informed Tony about some other academics/friends of ours that are involved with critical pedagogy in the UK, and we look forward to continued fruitful discussions and communication with Tony and others in the future, on these and other related important matters.

3. FIVE NEW ITEMS UP ON MY SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS BLOG
http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/
There are 5 new items up on my Serendipitous Moments blog; two events and three book reviews. The events were: the Folk Festival at Leigh-on-Sea, and Janet Daniels Open Garden. The book reviews and reflections were on Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre and Past Secrets by Cathy Kelly.

Janet Daniels lives near to us, and her garden is truly amazing – never seen anything like it before. And the Folk Festival at Leigh-on-Sea was wonderful – singing and dancing all day. At the two events I took some photos and these are also on my blog. In regard to the books, Past Secrets was another best-seller, but Nausea and The Age of Reason saw me going back into classical-reading mode. The Age of Reason, a very important book, addresses the issue of trying to marry up Existentialism with Marxism (a difficult, if not impossible task), and Nausea addresses the issue of how important it is to have direction in life; to avoid going round in circles, and indeed, feel sickened by ourselves. I think it is wonderful that Sartre could see the value of writing both fiction and non-fiction in this way; presumably he must have decided that certain philosophical issues can be addressed better and more effectively through fiction than non-fiction.

4. TWO NEWS ITEMS FROM JESSICA (JIA LIU), ONE OF THE CONTRIBUTORS TO THE FORTHCOMING BOOK PERSPECTIVES ON DIGITISATION
Another contributor to my digitisation book, Dr Jia Liu (who likes to be known as ‘Jessica’) sent me 2 items for inclusion in my newsletter; one of the items is in regard to her professional work and the other is about Verena, her lovely little baby girl.

Jessica’s two news items are below.

“Online Presentation for the Zhongsan University
Recently I was invited to release an online presentation to the graduate students of the Department of Information Management, Zhongsan University, China. The topic was my research supported by the Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Foundation, the world famous institution aiming at promoting the international academic communications and cooperation between German and foreign scientists. The Foundation maintains a network of more than 24,000 Humboldtians from all disciplines in over 130 countries worldwide - including 43 Nobel Prize winners and so far only one of them is majored in library. The presentation was given on the platform supported with Elluminate Live! (http://www.elluminate.com/), a virtual environment optimized for learning. This was actually the first time for me to use such networked learning suite and the experience was really fresh to me. Later my former colleague of the Peking University told me that the Peking University has already supplied such software to the instructors of the university and some of them have taken advantage of it for teaching. Doubtlessly the online education is becoming one of the main types of instruction all over the world.

Baby Meeting
Our family and two families of Su (my husband)’s colleagues had another meeting (in German, Babytreffen). The common thing of we three families is that each of us has a baby and all the babies (Alina, Mark and Verena) were born around September 2008. The director of the Physics Institute, Goettingen University, Professor Samwer, even took the birth of these three babies as the top news of the institute of 2008. It’s well known that nowadays few German families would like to give birth to a baby. That’s why the German population has declined for years. The first baby meeting happened not long before Christmas of 2008. I just brought my baby Verena from Toronto to Germany to settle down with her dad. During that meeting, all three babies were held by their mothers and fed twice with the breast milk. Occasionally one baby burst out of tears possibly because he or she just wanted to have some attention and soon another babies followed. This time the babies have been 21 or 22 months old and they had been busy in playing on the ground by themselves. It was interesting that Alina and Mark seemed to have no interest playing with other babies and they only needed their parents’ attention every now and then. Only Verena went to the other babies and tried to communicate with them but got no reply. My poor baby! Hopefully in the next meeting the babies could react well with each other. On the morning next to the latest meeting Kasten, Alina’s dad, put a photo of the three little ones on the poster wall in the Institute and proudly wrote some words about their growth there. Prof. Samwer might also, perhaps, smile if he could see the three lovely standing babies.”

And here is a picture of Jessica’s lovely little baby girl, Verena.

Some Biographical information about Jessica
Jessica has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Information Management, Peking University, Beijing, China. From 2004 until 2006, she had been a Research Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH Foundation), Germany. During that period, hosting in the Lower-saxony State and Goettingen University Library, she implemented a project on the subject of metadata and its applications in the digital library. Later, with two resumed fellowships from the AvH Foundation, she conducted two other projects on digital reference service in Germany. After that, as a Visiting Scholar, she visited the Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, Canada. Her main research interests are metadata, digital library and digital reference services. Jessica is the author of Metadata and Its Applications in the Digital Library, Libraries Unlimited, USA, 2007 and Evaluation of the World-Wide Reference Service in the Libraries, Chandos Publishing: Oxford, 2007.

5. JOHN PATEMAN AND JOHN VINCENT’S NEW BOOK ‘PUBLIC LIBRARIES AND SOCIAL JUSTICE’, TO BE PUBLISHED WITH ASHGATE, SEP 2010
John Pateman and John Vincent have a new book coming out in the autumn with Ashgate Publishing, entitled ‘Public Libraries and Social Justice’.
978-0-7546-7714-7 (hdbk); c. £40.00 It will also be available as an eBook
ISBN 978-0-7546-9432-8, see: www.ashgate.com

This is what it says in the information that is being circulated:

“The need for public libraries to tackle social exclusion and engage in social justice becomes ever more urgent as the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, and the very survival of public libraries in the heart of the community is open to debate.

If public libraries are to develop and grow in the future and become relevant to the majority of their local communities, then they need to abandon outmoded concepts of ‘excellence’ and fully grasp the ‘equity’ agenda. This book examines the historical background to social exclusion and the strategic context in terms of government and professional policy. The authors propose a compelling manifesto for change and outline practical ways in which public libraries can be
transformed into needs-based services.”

The book includes an historical view of social exclusion, how to tackle social exclusion, developing a needs-based library service and where to go next.

Alistair Black, Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA has this to say about the book:

“Created a century and a half ago by the middle classes partly for their own use, the public library has nonetheless from the start professed itself to be the servant of the social whole. However, although over successive generations it has catered
well for a traditional auto-didactic working-class clientele, the public library has been less successful in addressing the needs of those at the margins of both society and social opinion. In light of this historical legacy as well as the ongoing diversification of society, Pateman and Vincent’s call to prioritise the social-justice purpose of the public library is not only appropriate but also timely’.”

I wish John Pateman and John Vincent all the very best with their forthcoming book.

6. MARXISM AND EDUCATION: RENEWING DIALOGUES (MERD) XIII, 24th JULY 2010, ‘LATIN AMERICA AND EDUCATION’
MERD XIII on the theme of ‘Latin America and Education’ will take place on July 24th 2010, from 10.30 – 4.30, at the Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, WC1, in the Drama Studio.

The following papers have been confirmed:

‘Education for the Creation of a New Venezuela’
Dr Francisco Dominguez (Head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies, and secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign)

‘The Bolivarian Revolution, Twenty-first Century Socialism and Counter-hegemonic Education in Venezuela’
Prof. Mike Cole (Centre for Education for Social Justice, Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln)

‘Nicaragua’s “Participative Education Revolution”: Development and the ALBA Education Space’
Dr Thomas Muhr, (Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies, University of Bristol)

The seminar is free but places are limited. To reserve a place email: amaisuria@ioe.ac.uk

Convenors: Tony Green and Alpesh Maisuria

7. GLENN RIKOWSKI IS ON THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ILLICH STUDIES
http://ivan-illich.org/journal/index.php/IJIS/index
Glenn Rikowski is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Illich Studies.
The journal is an open access interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal “dedicated to engaging the thought and writing of Ivan Illich and his circle.” It welcomes contributions that “intersects with the wide range of Illich’s ideas, or that represent a version of the social critique for which he became famous on matters such as modern developmentalism, industrialized ‘progress’, institutional bureacratization, the heuristic role played by historical consciousness, the moral life, and/or the privatization/publicization of the lay commons.”

Illich’s book on ‘Deschooling’, in particular
(http://www.amazon.co.uk/Deschooling-Society-Open-Forum-Illich/dp/0714508799/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278232873&sr=8-1)
had a powerful effect on me when I read it as an undergraduate. I remember thinking that it was a bit extreme, but never-the-less that it made many good points.

8. ANNIVERSARY OF MICHAEL JACKSON’S DEATH
Of course, the anniversary of Michael Jackson’s death has now been and gone. I tried not to think about it too much; I got just so upset last year! I have noticed though, that several people recently have been looking at my Michael Jackson article, which is on our website – http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=362&slink=yes
Let’s just hope that it will make a few people think!

Some while ago, ‘Jackopedia’ (http://www.jackopedia.com/wiki/Main_Page) said that I had written a ‘great Michael Jackson article’. So, that was nice. ‘Jackopedia’ (a wikki) is the only online encyclopedia and community dedicated to Michael Jackson.

I also recently watched the Michael Jackson film ‘This Is It’ on DVD, which of course, consists of clippings from the rehearsals for his planned 50 ‘This Is It’ London concerts. I was quite loathe to do this for some while, as I thought it was somehow yet another way of exploiting him. Instead, society should have been looking further into how he died (which was basically the result of so many wanting a ‘piece of him’). But no – instead once again, money was made out of him. The cruelness of capitalism in its raw extremities (also without a truly loving and caring family) knows no bounds, it seems.

Anyway, in the end, I decided to watch ‘This Is It’; me not watching it wasn’t going to change anything. It was amazing; sensational; one could never have seen from that, that he was about to die. The concerts would certainly have been spectacular. I guess Michael Jackson was probably just too full of drugs which had become necessary to keep him going throughout it all, did not have enough sleep and did not eat enough. He should never have had to endure such a rigorous regime.

Still, what it said on the blurb on the back of the DVD was nice:

“In raw and candid detail, MICHAEL JACKSON’S THIS IS IT captures the singer, dancer, filmmaker, architect, creative genius and great artist at work as he creates and perfects his planned final London shows.”

9. J. S. MILL: THE UTILITARIAN PHILOSOPHER AND ANOTHER CHILD PRODIGY
What happened to Michael Jackson got me thinking a bit more about child prodigies. Well, that and talking specifically to my eldest son Alexander, about the philosopher J. S. Mill. Mill is a philosopher that I have liked and admired, since my undergraduate days. I particularly really enjoyed reading his book, Utilitarianism. As well as conveying many important and worthwhile messages, the book also in itself gave me a good and happy feeling; which was what his utilitarian philosophy was about anyway – ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest number’. It was also very well-written of course. So, strange that it had this immediate effect on me, on such a personal basis and at such a young age. I felt that whilst Marxism was so right on such a deep level; his work was very complex and difficult, and also that the world that needed to be created leading on from his work could not come about over night. In contrast, Mill’s work gave one a certain feeling of happiness and contentment in a more immediate and direct way. On reflection, I now think that perhaps I took Mill’s work a bit too much for granted for this reason; it seemed very simple and straightforward. Someone who does something well can make it look easy, and many others have just no idea about the amount of work and effort that has gone into producing that simple, wonderful and very effective result. I am sure that some of you must have examples of this on a personal basis.

Anyway, it was only more recently that I found out a little more about J. S. Mill, the man. I found out, for example, that his wife Harriet Taylor, wrote some of his material with him; even some of it for him. From then on I understood a little more about his work, and I thought that this probably partly explained why some of his writing had that slightly softer approach. Mill was a feminist before people hardly knew what feminism was. And it has to be remembered that quite a few philosophers in the past held dreadful views about women, seeming to think that they were almost incapable of thinking for themselves; take the philosophers Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, for example. So, Mill was brave, standing out from the crowd, in this way.

Then, more recently still, I found out some more about Mill’s rigorous upbringing; and how like Michael Jackson and myself, he was not able to have a proper childhood. But at least, Michael Jackson and J.S.Mill’s parents pushed them because they wanted them to be big in their own fields; whereas mine was really more clearly a case of child exploitation. Having said that, I was brought up to believe that I was bright; indeed, that was necessary, in order that I could and would look after my confused mother, apart from anything else. Once I became an adult I sought to use that to my advantage, and indeed, have sought in various ways to do that ever since then.

Anyway, I think the seeming simplicity of Mill’s work on one level is probably also a result of his upbringing and in this way, I also think that his work can be under-estimated. Because he could explain his views and ideas so clearly they seemed simple and easy; but that is an illusion. It must have taken him a long time to work it all out; to clear his mind. Indeed, he had a mental breakdown when he was just 20 years old (after having been pushed so hard from such a young age), and he then had to rethink things somewhat. So, in all probability being pushed from so young an age forced him to have to think simply and clearly to avoid him having any more such breakdowns. This is in contrast to a book such as ‘Nausea’, which I read recently (see item 3 above). Jean-Paul Sartre wrote this book before he had properly ‘sorted his own mind/head out’, I think. Not that one can ever completely sort this out, but hopefully, you get my drift. So, although ‘Nausea’ does have some important messages to convey, and for this reason it is a valuable book, it would have been a better book if Sartre had taken his time over it more, I think, and sought to engage the reader more effectively and just basically made it a more enjoyable read.

Strangely enough, I am also battling myself with some similar issues at the current time. Whereas someone without such complex backgrounds can, in all probability on one level, more easily write simple and engaging fiction plots (but not saying or indeed, attempting to say, anything very deep and profound). Take a pleasant book that I am reading by Katie Fforde at the moment, for example. This is what it says about the author on the cover of the book: “Katie Fforde lives in Gloucestershire with her husband and some of her three children. Her hobbies are ironing and housework but, unfortunately, she has almost no time for them as she feels it is her duty to keep a close eye on the afternoon chat show.” I say no more.

In regard to Mill’s childhood, he was educated by his father, with the advice and assistance of Jeremy Bentham and Francis Place. He learnt Greek at 3 years old, Latin at 12 years old, and by 16 years of age he was a competent logician and a good economist. His father and Bentham were both utilitarians and wanted J.S. Mill to continue and further the work. But after his mental breakdown, J.S. Mill had to rethink things somewhat, and he added some humanism and idealism to the basic utilitarian philosophy.

J.S. Mill, like Michael Jackson aimed to live life at the high level, with high pleasures, I think; and that is also what I am about. This way of thinking and behaving is perhaps partly a result of not having a proper childhood, and being denied some simple, childlike pleasures.

10. NEIL WHITEHEAD’S BOOK, WHISKY BREATH CONFESSIONAL, BLURB CREATIVE PUBLISHING SERVICE, 2010, ARRIVED IN THE POST http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1356191
We have now received in the post our own copy of my second cousin, Neil Whitehead’s book, Whisky Breath Confessional. The photographs are very colourful, powerful, reflective, convey certain moods and are all on fine quality paper. They include photographs of the sea, trees, the sun, buildings, hedges, roads and of Neil himself. The self-published book was compiled using the Blurb software (Blurb creative publishing service, for self-publishing books) which seems to be quite something. This is a trend that we might well see increasing in the future. I wish Neil all the very best with his book, and hope that he sells lots of copies.

11. PHOTOS OF ‘COLD HANDS AND QUARTER MOON’ BAND
And in the final item, here are some photos of Victor Rikowski’s band, ‘Cold Hands & Quarter Moon’ - see
http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewAlbums&friendID=527173812

Best wishes

Ruth

N.B. Many thanks to Jia Liu (Jessica) for providing information for item 4

6th July 2010

Ruth Rikowski's 39th News Update

2010-05-28T09:59:00.000-07:00

My newsletters seem to be settling down to around a monthly distribution, but there has been some delay in sending out this 39th one. This is because I have been working on the final stages of the manuscript for the digitisation book that I am currently editing. I am very pleased to say that this is now with the publisher (Sense Publishers) and the book should be published around autumn/winter 2010. This newsletter includes some further information about this, along with a number of other news items, including two new pieces that are now up on our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website; me meeting up with Al Kagan from the USA; some of my thoughts and reflections leading on from the results of the UK General Election and some book and book review matters. This and much else besides is included in this newsletter.

1. MANUSCRIPT FOR ‘PERSPECTIVES ON DIGITISATION’ EDITED BY RUTH RIKOWSKI – NOW WITH SENSE PUBLISHERS
I am delighted to say that the manuscript for the book that I am currently editing entitled Perspectives on Digitisation is now with Sense Publishers. As readers know, Glenn and I have been through a very difficult period over the last 18 months or so, with the death of my father-in-law and the related emotional and practical issues that have arisen from it all. All this has caused quite serious delays with this book, but finally now, we are getting there. Now, we are very much looking forward to seeing it published of course, and hopefully, we can have another book launch for it. We certainly feel that, by then, it will probably be time to party again!

The book had to prepared and formatted according to Sense Publishers instructions, and for camera-ready copy, which was also what really took up a lot of the time. This means, of course, that a lot of the preparation in the final stages has to be done by the author and editor, rather than by the publisher. On the positive side, though, this also means that the final stages should go comparatively quickly and smoothly. Altogether, there are 22 contributors in the book along with a Foreword by Simon Tanner, Director, King’s Digital Consultancy Services, King’s College, London. The book is divided up into 6 parts: ‘Background and Overview to Digitisation and Digital Libraries’, ‘Digitisation and Higher Education’, ‘Digitisation and Inequalities’, ‘Digital Libraries, Reference Services and Citation Indexing’ and ‘Futuristic Developments of Digitisation’. Further information about the book will follow in future newsletters.

2. ‘DIGITAL LIBRARIES’ ISSUE EDITED BY RUTH RIKOWSKI AND ISAAC HUNTER DUNLAP IN POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION IS NOW FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE
The issue on ‘Digital Libraries’ edited by Ruth Rikowski and Isaac Hunter Dunlap in the international refereed ejournal, Policy Futures in Education, 2008, Vol. 6, No. 1, is now freely available online. See:
http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pfie/content/pdfs/6/issue6_1.asp

3. ‘LEARNED HELPFULNESS’ BY STEVEN OSMOND IS NOW AVAILABLE ON OUR ‘FLOW OF IDEAS’ WEBSITE - see
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=contributions&sub=Learned Helpfulness by Steve Osmond
OR
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=372&slink=yes
(for print-friendly version)

Another article by Steven Osmond, entitled ‘Learned Helpfulness’ is now available in the Contributions section of our website. This article should ideally be read in conjunction with Steve Osmond’s other article in this section, which is entitled ‘A Staff Development Model for Cost Effective Mental Health Provision’. In ‘Learned Helpfulness’, Osmond “Reflects on the educational experiences of emotionally and behaviourally disturbed young people and the impact of the human givens in the secure care system.”

4. ‘CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT THROUGH LIBRARY AUTOMATION SYSTEMS: SOME THOUGHTS’ BY INDRANI BHATTACHARYYA IS NOW AVAILABLE ON OUR ‘FLOW OF IDEAS’ WEBSITE - see
http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=contributions&sub=Customer Relationship Managment through Library Automation Systems by Indrani Bhattacharyya

OR

http://www.flowideas.co.uk/print.php?page=373&slink=yes
(for print friendly version)

An article by Indrani Bhattacharyya is now also available in the Contributions section of our website. As Indrani says, her article: “...aims to relate functions of a library automation system in the context of a large library in Kolkata with CRM concepts and practices.” She argues that the application of CRM concepts can help to lead to an overall increase in the usage of library services. Indrani Bhattacharyya was one of the contributors to the book ‘Library Management: trends and opportunities’, edited by Roshan L. Raina, Dinesh K. Gupta and Ramesh C. Gaur, (Excel Books: India, 2005). I was also one of the contributors, and wrote a chapter entitled ‘Change Management Processes’, which assessed the change management procedures for the initial implementation stages of the Unicorn library automated system at the international law company, Clifford Chance. I was the Project Manager there, at the time (1999-2000) and managed the initial implementation of Unicorn. The chapters by Indrani and I appear in a section entitled ‘Change Management’ in the book.

5. FOUR NEW ITEMS UP ON MY ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG
http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.com/
There are four new items up on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog – again, they are all book reviews of novels that I have been reading recently. These are ‘Laceys of Liverpool’ by Maureen Lee; ‘Taming the Beast’ by Emily Maguire; ‘The September Girls’ by Maureen Lee and ‘Second Chance’ by Janet Green. ‘Second Chance’, by strange coincidence, is also the name of a choir that I belonged to for a while. In addition the novel is set around school friends reuniting after some 20 or so years, and I had a reunion myself with my school friends a year or so ago. So, these factors, amongst others, drew me to pick up the book and try reading it. And it proved to be an enjoyable read. Also, interestingly, the author Janet Green, was a former journalist, who decided to write an account of a real woman being single in the city, and this then became her first novel, Straight Talking. Indeed, as Douglas Kennedy remarked, how useful is that messy thing called ‘Life’ for the writing of good novels! And this of course, helps to bring fact and fiction together, and emphasises the point that I have been feeling very keenly lately, that some things simply cannot be expressed adequately in non-fiction and that this is where fiction comes very much into its own, and indeed, where it becomes so crucially important. But watch this space for more on that one!

6. MEETING UP WITH AL KAGAN FROM THE STATES
Al Kagan, African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration Africana Collections and Services at the University of Illinois Library came over from the USA to meet up and talk to various progressive librarians in the UK and Sweden. Leading on from this, he plans to write a book with MacFarlane about progressive librarians and progressive library groups. Al emailed me about all this, saying that he would like to interview me. We met up at London South Bank University on 1st May 2010 and he asked me some set questions, which he tape-recorded. We also had a nice informal conversation together. Al also interviewed various other members of the Information for Social Change editorial board. I wish Al Kagan every success with his project.

7. UK GENERAL ELECTION MATTERS: SOME THOUGHTS OF MINE
Well, I wonder how Britain will fare with this new coalition government! Personally, I feel pleased, at least, that the voters got the politicians into a bit of a flap. I am also a little hopeful that, perhaps, Labour will return to a few of its roots (but won’t get carried away with it all mind – had too many disappointments!). My hope (rather thin perhaps) is founded on the hope that one of the Miliband brothers will lead the Labour Party and that from that, they take on board some of the wise words and thinking of their father, Ralph Miliband. The work of Ralph Milliband, the Marxist intellectual, political theorist and sociologist had a profound effect on me, and indeed, really helped to deepen and alter my ways of thinking in various ways, with its critique of capitalism. It was Ralph Miliband’s book ‘The State in Capitalist Society’ (Quartet Books, 1973) (see http://www.amazon.co.uk/State-Capitalist-Society-Analysis-Western/dp/0704330822/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274729902&sr=8-2) that really did it for me. This book was almost like the Bible on my Sociology degree at the University of East Anglia, 1974-1977 (well, it was a Social Studies degree, but I majored in Sociology). Both Glenn and I thought it was a truly fantastic book. Reading that book along with some very other worthwhile and important text at the time, such as the writing of C. Wright Mills, Stephen Luke’s little book on ‘Power’ and Richard Hyman’s book, ‘Strikes’ really helped to deepen and change my whole perspective on how I saw the world. And all that gave me an even more critical radical left edge.

My thinking now is that, although both David and Ed Miliband seem rather to have embraced the Blairite/New Labour message, the current situation (with the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition) might well led them to want and need to return to some Old Labour Party principles. That within this framework and ways of thinking both of the Milibands might well think further about and return to the profound words of their father, and embrace some of it more in their positions in the Labour Party, and then try to influence the Labour Party accordingly. It is interesting here, perhaps, to bear in mind the fact that Ralph Miliband himself joined the Labour Party in 1951 and sought to influence it. Anyway, all that is my hope.

Meanwhile, a couple of people that we know personally, stood in the general election, and I thought that I would like to mention them here briefly. They are Anneliese Dodds, Dave Hill and Anne Gray.

Anneliese Dodds stood in Reading East, against the Conservative Rob Wilson, a former shadow minister for higher education. Rob Wilson retained his seat of course (with 21,169 votes), the Liberal Democrats came second (with 13, 664 votes) and Anneliese came third, with 12, 729 votes. I think this is a good result for Anneliese, and I wish her every success in her future political career. There was also a report by Melanie Newman about Anneliese Dodds in the Times Higher Education, 15th-21st April 2010, p. 10, talking about Anneliese standing as a Labour candidate for Reading East.

I first got to know Anneliese Dodds when she was a student and involved in a student political group called ‘People and Planet’. At the time, I was editing a special issue on ‘Globalisation and Information’ for the ejournal Information for Social Change. I was looking for people to write for it; I approached Anneliese and she agreed to write a piece. Her article was entitled ‘GATS, Higher Education and Public Libraries’ and was published in ISC, issue 14, winter 2001/02 - see http://www.libr.org/isc/articles/14-dodds.html. At a later date, in December 2005, both Anneliese and I were invited to speak about globalisation issues at a mini-conference that was held at Swansea University. The mini-conference was organised through the Career Development Group, Wales (of CILIP – the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). For more information about this, see http://www.libr.org/isc/events/swansea.html.

Anneliese Dodds is currently based at the Institute for the Study of Public Policy, King’s College, London and her research interests include regulation and risk in health and education. She has been involved in politics since she was 18 years old. As a student as well as being involved in ‘People and Planet’ she was involved in a campaign to wider access to university and Melanie Newman said that Anneliese was ‘appalled’ by the ‘closed nature’ of institutions such as Oxford.

Meanwhile, our friend Anne Gray stood in Tottenham, London for the Green Party. She secured 980 votes, but unfortunately found herself in a position where she was standing against a like-minded person – Jenny Sutton of the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (so that split the vote of course). Jenny obtained 1057 votes and Anne obtained 980 votes. Still, all in all, a very respectable result, I think. Once again, I wish Anne every success in the future in her work in the Green Party.

Whilst Dave Hill stood in Brighton Kempton for the ‘Trade Union and Socialist Coalition’, but unfortunately only obtained 194 votes. He was also competing against a Green candidate, Ben Duncan, who obtained 2,330 votes. The Conservative won the seat with Simon Kirby securing 16,217 votes; Simon Burges of the Labour Party came second with 14,889 votes and Juliet Williams, the Liberal Democrat came third with 7,691 votes.

Finally, personally, I was delighted to see Caroline Lucas of the Green Party become the first Green MP - the MP for Brighton Pavilion. I certainly wish her every success.

8. CUTS IN PHILOSOPHY?
Philosophy at university seems to be getting quite a lot of attention lately in various ways.
King’s College, London were all set to make cuts in Philosophy (including the redundancy of 3 Professors) as part of the cuts in the Arts and Humanities programme there. Suddenly, now they have decided that there will be no cuts in the School of Arts and Humanities at all at King’s, and that all the necessary savings can now be made without job losses (see http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/ - for more details). Indeed, in the Philosophy Department, instead of redundancies, they are going to create two new posts! Strange times indeed! I can’t help thinking that the newly formed Conservative/Liberal Democrat government might have had something to do with this change in thinking and decision-making.

Meanwhile, though, as far as I know the proposed cuts in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London and Middlesex University are still going full-steam ahead.

First of all, let us then look at the Birkbeck College, University of London situation. There is a proposal to reduce the range of courses offered by the Certificate in Philosophy from September 2010. Following a review by the university, the Department of Philosophy has decided that the courses are no longer financially viable. It intends to cut the number of courses down from more than 30 currently on offer to just 8; these are Epistemology, Metaphysics, Politics, Ethics, Logic 1&2 and History of Western Philosophy 1&2. Certificate students would then not have their own separate sessions, but would have to attend the undergraduate lectures on the same subjects. This would be followed by a ‘back up’ seminar to discuss the issues raised in the lecture.

Currently the programme is very approachable to everyone; no matter what their background. This is something that our son, Alexander Rikowski, very much benefited from. He went to Birkbeck with no A’ Levels. He did not like the formal, test and assessment-based school system; instead, he wanted the opportunity to be able to engage in independent, critical thinking. Studying Philosophy at Birkbeck provided the perfect solution. After successfully obtaining a Diploma in Philosophy at Birkbeck, he then went on to study for a degree in Philosophy at King’s College, London. He is now in his final year and it has been a wonderful, rich, albeit demanding, experience for him.

The Sessional Lecturers at Birkbeck College, University of London informed Alexander and other Birkbeck students that they intend to protest against these cuts and also to suggest ways to continue with something like the current programme but in a more financially viable form. They think that the costs of the courses could be considerably reduced if they were ‘non-accredited’, without leading to CATS points and the accompanying costs of assessment. Unfortunately, all Birkbeck courses now are starting to move to a ‘CATS-based agenda’.

If they cannot continue to run these non-accredited courses at Birkbeck then the Sessional Lecturers are considering running them independently.

The online petition in regard to this (which I have just signed) can be found at http://www.petitiononline.com/bcpcp/petition.html

The situation at Middlesex University is even more dramatic, with a proposal to close the whole of the Philosophy department – heavens! The following information is being circulated by Jeremy Gilbert of Radical Philosophy. At Middlesex:

“... Philosophy is the highest research-rated subject at Middlesex University, with 65% of its research activity judged 'world-leading' or 'internationally excellent' in the UK government's recent Research Assessment Exercise. It is now widely recognised as one of the most important centres for the study of modern European philosophy anywhere in the English-speaking world. Its MA programmes in Philosophy have grown in recent years to become the largest in the UK, with 42 new students admitted in September 2009. Middlesex offers one of only a handful of programmes left in the UK that provides both research-driven and inclusive post-graduate teaching aimed at a wide range of students, specialist and non-specialist. It is also one of relatively few such programmes that remains financially viable, currently contributing close to half of its total income to the University's central administration.Needless to say, Radical Philosophy very much regret this decision to terminate Philosophy at Middlesex, and its likely consequences for the teaching of philosophy in the UK. This is a shameful decision which essentially means the end of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, a hub for internationally renowned scholarship (http://www.web. mdx.ac.uk/ crmep/; staff include Eric Alliez, Peter Hallward, Mark Kelly, Christian Kerslake, Peter Osborne and Stella Sandford). This act of wilful self-harm by the University must be resisted.

Please join the facebook group and spread the word:
http://www.facebook .com/group. php?gid=11910256 1449990

Campaign email: savemdxphil@ gmail.com

A video of interviews with those protesting to save Middlesex University Philosophy Department from closure:

http://vimeo.com/11523774

More information about the protest & campaign here:

http://savemdxphil.com/”

What is also tragic about all this is that Continental/European Philosophy is only being taught at a few universities in the UK, such as at Warwick University and at Essex University.

Philosophy is an important subject, I think; if approached correctly, it can aid with clarity of thought, as well as critical and independent thinking. Let us hope that some positive ways forward can be found in regard to all of this.

9. CULTURAL LOGIC: AN ELECTRONIC JOURNAL OF MARXIST THEORY AND PRACTICE: NEW DOUBLE ISSUE NOW OUT
The latest issue (a double one) of ‘Cultural Logic’: an electronic journal of Marxist theory and practice, is now out and is available at: http://clogic.eserver.org/

Issue 2008: http://clogic.eserver.org/2008/2008.html

Issue 2009: http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/2009.html

***********************

Cultural Logic
ISSUE 2008

http://clogic.eserver.org/2008/2008.html

Articles

Stephen C. Ferguson II: "Contractarianism as Method: Rawls contra Mills"Melissa Hull Geil: "Shakespeare and the Drama of Capital"

Nigel M. Greaves: "Intellectuals and the Historical Construction of Knowledge and Identity: A Reappraisal of Gramsci’s Ideas on Leadership"

Sven-Eric Holmström: "New Evidence Concerning the 'Hotel Bristol' Question in the First Moscow Trial of 1936"

Nicola Masciandaro: "Consciousness, Individuality, Mortality: Basic Thoughts about Work and the Animal/Human Boundary"

John H. McClendon III: "The African American Philosopher: The Missing Chapter in McCumber on McCarthyism"

J. C. Myers: "Traces of Utopia: Socialist Values and Soviet Urban Planning"

Garry Potter: "Humanism and Terror: Merleau-Ponty’s Marxism"

J. Jesse Ramirez: "Rage Against the Dying of the Light: Herbert Marcuse and the Politics of Death"

Jacek Tittenbrun: "Between Subjectivism and Individualism: A Critical Appraisal of the Austrian Case for Private Ownership"

Reviews

Lukas MacKenzie: Mark S. Blumberg, Basic Instinct: The Genesis of Behavior, and Michael Tomasello, Constructing a Language: A Usage-Based Theory of Language Acquisition

Poetry

Bruno Gulli: "Hölderlin's Window"

Howard Pflanzer: "The Endless War"

***********************

Cultural Logic Issue 2009

http://clogic.eserver.org/2009/2009.html

Articles

Jeffrey Cabusao: "The Social Responsibility of Filipino Intellectuals in the Age of Globalization and Empire: An Interview with E. San Juan, Jr. and Delia D. Aguilar"

Alzo David-West: "The Literary Ideas of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il: An Introduction to North Korean Meta-Authorial Perspectives"

Barbara Foley: "Rhetoric and Silence in Barack Obama’s Dreams from My Father"

Grover Furr: "Evidence of Leon Trotsky's Collaboration with Germany and Japan"

Bülent Gökay and Darrell Whitman: "Mapping the Faultlines: A Historical Perspective on the 2008-2009 World Economic Crisis"

Dave Hill: "Culturalist and Materialist Explanations of Class and “Race”: Critical Race Theory, Equivalence/Parallelist Theory, and Marxist Theory"

Michele Frucht Levy: "'For We Are Neither One Thing Nor The Other': Passing for Croat in Vedrana Rudan’s Night"

Gregory Meyerson: "Post-Marxism as Compromise Formation" (Foreword by E. San Juan, Jr.)

Michael Joseph Roberto: "Crisis, Revolution, and the Meaning of Progress: The Poverty of Philosophy and its Contemporary Relevance"

Spyros Sakellaropoulos and Panagiotis Sotiris: "Peter Gowan’s Theorization of the Forms and Contradictions of US Supremacy: A Critical Assessment"

E. San Juan , Jr.: "An African American Soldier in the Philippine Revolution: An Homage to David Fagen"

Daniel F. Vukovich: "Uncivil Society, or, Orientalism and Tiananmen, 1989"

Reviews

Paul M. Heideman: Michael E. Brown, The Historiography of CommunismDavid Schwartzman: Eileen Christ and H. Bruce Rinker, eds., Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis

Poetry

Christopher Barnes: Selected Poems

10. ‘POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION’, Vol. 8, Iss. 1 and Vol. 8, Iss. 2, 2010 ARE NOW OUT - see http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pfie/content/pdfs/8/issue8_1.asp
(Vol. 8, Iss. 1)
http://www.wwwords.co.uk/pfie/content/pdfs/8/issue8_2.asp
(Vol. 8, Iss. 2)
The latest two issues of the international refereed ejournal, Policy Futures in Education, which Glenn and I are on the Editorial Board of, are now out. Vol. 8, Iss. 1 includes an article by an academic colleague of mine, John Opute, at London South Bank University. John approached me a while ago, asking me if I could help him to get his first article published. The article, entitled Managing Reward in Developing Economies: the challenge for multinational corporations, forms a small part of his PhD. I read the piece through for him, thought it was something that was worthy of publication and sent it off to Professor Michael Peters. So, now it is good to see that it is published. I look forward to working further with John Opute in terms of both publications and teaching in the future.

11. IRENE SENDLER: ‘THE PRIZE DOESN’T ALWAYS GO TO THE MOST DESERVING...’
My cousin, Helen Whitehead kindly sent me this information about Irene Sendler. I thought it was important stuff, so decided to circulate it in my newsletter. Please forward to others as and when you can.

”There recently was a death of a 98 year-old lady named Irena. During WWII, Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw Ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an 'ulterior motive' .... She KNEW what the Nazi's plans were for the Jews, (being German.) Irena smuggled infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried and she carried in the back of her truck a burlap sack, (for larger kids..) She also had a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers of course wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.. During her time of doing this, she managed to smuggle out and save 2500 kids/infants. She was caught, and the Nazi's broke both her legs, arms and beat her severely. Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she smuggled out and kept them in a glass jar, buried under a tree in her back yard. After the! war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived it and reunited the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.
Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize ... She was not selected.Al Gore won, for a slide show on Global Warming.”

12. DINESH K. GUPTA’S BLOG: ‘MARKETING MANTRA’
www.marketing-mantra-for-librarians.blogspot.com
Dinesh K. Gupta, one of my ex-book reviewers for Managing Information and one of the editors of the book ‘Library Management Trends: trends and opportunities’ (referred to in item 4 of this newsletter) informed me recently about his blog, ‘Marketing Mantra’ and sent me some useful and interesting information about it, which I said I would be happy to circulate on my newsletter. This information was originally published in a journal from the University of Barcelona, entitled ‘Bid’. The piece that was published is reproduced below, with kind permission from ‘Bid’.

“Marketing-Mantra-for-Librarians"

Dinesh K. Gupta
Associate Professor of Library & Inf. Sc.
V M Open University, Kota, India

dineshkg.in@gmail.com

It was a pleasant surprise for me to receive a communication from Angels Massisimo of the University of Barcelona requesting me to write about my blog ‘Marketing-mantra-for-librarians’ for the Faculty's e-journal "BiD" (http://www.ub.es/bid). In her email, she wanted, “…..just an introduction to the blog itself and its goals, etc. and a vision of its power in making librarians aware of the crucial role of marketing in the modern librarianship”...

In all modesty, I shall attempt to do that here.

Marketing of library and information services has been my area of work for the last decade or so and I have been authoring research and review papers on a regular basis in journals and conference proceedings, apart from three edited books (including IFLA book ‘Marketing Library and Information Services: International Perspectives)(1). However, these being the traditional scholarly media, they were no suitable avenues to dash off those occasional ideas, random thoughts, comment on issues or even aggregate works that I thought would be of interest to librarians involved in marketing. Further, having been following a few blogs myself, I found that there were no blogs from this part of the world on marketing for librarians. Thus, in September 2008, I began my saga with my blog

www.marketing-mantra-for-librarians.blogspot.com.

Blogging was slow in the first few months as I managed just about one post in the first year, later tried to post at least a post per month. Even for the most avid blogger, many times, the sheer lack of time to text thoughts can make the blog go blank. Besides, keeping in view that the aim of the blog is to act as a focal point for scattered information on marketing for librarians, I began to incorporate posts from other blogs and websites and also syndicate videos from other sites, most often, Youtube. Through RSS feeds, I regularly scan the contents of about 50 blogs and websites that occasionally have content on marketing for librarians and re-post relevant content on my blog giving the appropriate out links to the original.

A list of ten other blogs that I think is a must-read for librarians interested in marketing is also given on the home page of my blog. Likewise, details of relevant new books, articles, bibliographies, etc. are also given. Having got into a blogging rhythm, the frequency of posts increased and currently, I post at least once a week.

The blog posts include from simple themes of ‘what is marketing’ to the newest theme ‘marketing 2.0’ various activities, conferences, taking place on the marketing area is taken care.

The blog has had its share of, what I consider high points. The first was when, using my rudimentary digital videography skills, I recorded an exclusive interview with the then IFLA President, Claudia Lux during her visit to India and made it available on my blog through YouTube. A few more such videos are available through the blog. These are about IFLA International Marketing Award, Award distribution ceremony, and video clips of conference photos.

The IFLA Management & Marketing Section in collaboration with Emerald Group Publishing Limited offers the IFLA International Marketing Award (www.ifla.org/en/management-marketing/marketing-award) to recognize libraries in the global community that develop and implement effective marketing programs, Presently I serve as Chair of the Jury of the Award. Award Applications for the year 2011 will be announced in July on the IFLANET. The winner receives airfare, lodging and registration for participation in the next IFLA conference and a cash award of USD 1000. Concorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona (CBB), Spain won the Award in 2003 for its project ‘Literary Pathways’.

Of late, I have been attempting to have worldwide experts on library marketing to write for the blog. The first one by Christie Koontz was posted and later two more posts from colleagues from India and USA who are runner ups for the IFLA International Marketing Award-2010.

These features of the blog have not gone un-noticed. The blog has been recommended as a part of readings in marketing classes at the Florida State University (USA) and Tallinn University(Estonia). It has so far been accessed from 63 countries, Spain among them. Evidently, the blog has been useful to professionals from around the globe for connecting, sharing and facilitating communication on the subject of library marketing.

As we are aware, mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that are capable of “creating transformation”. My pursuit is to establish continuous dialog among library marketing practitioners and researchers from around the globe so that the libraries are transformed to more marketing-centred libraries. I hope, the blog Marketing-mantra-for-librarians, is of some help for those seeking the transformation.

1. Gupta, Dinesh K. et al, Marketing library and information services: International perspectives(Edited on behalf of IFLA), Munich: K. G. Saur

13. GRAHAM COULT AND ‘MANAGING INFORMATION’
Those of you that follow my newsletters fairly closely, will know something (at least) of my relationship with the monthly Aslib magazine Managing Information and with its editor Graham Coult. In this item, for historical reasons and for clarity, I would now like to expand on this somewhat. Getting my first article published (10 years ago now – wow!) was a very exciting experience for me. But once I had decided that I was really going to make it happen, then I sure as hell was going to make it happen! And of course I did. I am like that in general about things; once I really decide, then that’s it! Anyway, I thought clearly about just how to get something published, and made absolutely certain that I wrote an article that could and would be published. And indeed, as I say, that is exactly what I did!

To cut a long story short Graham Coult initially made contact with me, in regard to writing an article, having been given a tip-off from Paul Pedley, Head of Research at the Economist Intelligence Unit, who I had been having some phone conversations with about implementing I.T. systems, writing and other related matters. From there, possible topics were discussed with Graham Coult and the theme of writing about the relationship between library/information departments and computer/IT departments was decided upon and I wrote the article in a short space of time. It was entitled ‘The Essential Bridge: a new breed of professional’ and it was published immediately in the very next issue (April 2000, Vol. 7, Iss. 3). All great stuff!

Then, however, I quickly became disillusioned. My managers did not see things the way I did; they did not congratulate me as they should have done; neither did they take the important messages seriously enough that I was endeavouring to convey. The problems that I was trying to tackle were, indeed, very real and serious. These included problems and issues around communication, thought and expression; status and pay and recruitment procedures. In regard to the communication problem, I said for example that:

“Computer experts and information professionals think and express themselves very differently. The former tend to think in terms of numbers and logic (and are far more likely to have mathematical minds) and the latter in terms of language. How many times have we heard information and library professionals complain about the lack of easily readable and understandable documentation for their computer systems, or user-friendly front-ends? We need to find a means of enabling these two types of experts to communicate effectively and understand each other, as past experience shows there can be strong benefits.” (p. 40)

My thoughts on these communication issues very much developed leading on from the MSc in Information Science (Computerised Systems) that I studied for at University College London (1990-1994). Also, from my subsequent work in the I.T. field, implementing library computer systems where I witnessed firsthand, some of the difficulties that people had in understanding each other. I think that a greater awareness is needed in regard to all this; then, perhaps, some more effective ways to overcome this quite serious communication problem can be found.

In essence, I argued that a ‘new breed of professional’ was needed that could tackle these complex I.T. issues effectively within the information profession. Also, that there was a need for information professionals to be much more pro-active in this regard. I concluded by saying that:

“We need to take control of events and initiate rather than letting things happen to us. What do we need to do to change? Then, let’s go for it! The computer world world is changing rapidly – it won’t wait for us. It is up to us to do the moving. Then, perhaps, we can start to shape the future ourselves. Information professionals could be responsible for the design of their own software products and start to dictate the pace and direction of change in the future – i.e. be proactive. Learning to think differently is more important than learning a particular product or skill.” (p. 45)

Indeed, I am very much ‘for’ people being more proactive in general.

I thought that writing about all this in a published piece might help to solve the problems, that people would listen and pay more attention, but alas ‘no’. So, I quickly became disillusioned; I left my work, working as a ‘Project Manager’ for the international law company, Clifford Chance, where I took them through the initial implementation stage of the Unicorn library computer management system. (See also item 4 in this newsletter for further information in regard to this – in addition, if anyone would like a copy of either my chapter in the book on the topic and/or the article ‘The Essential Bridge’ then do let me know, and I will send it to you).

So, anyway, I decided to ‘go for it’ with the writing and publishing, and to obtain some university teaching work, to do alongside it all. It became a rich and rewarding experience, and far removed from my previous 9-5 library world!

Whilst pursuing this very different path, and also whilst preparing an issue on ‘Globalisation and Information’ for the ejournal Information for Social Change (ISC), I got a phone call ‘out of the blue’ from BBC Radio 4, asking me if I would like to go on a radio programme. I was delighted; I accepted. I went on ‘You and Yours’ in October 2001 talking about the General Agreement on Trade in Services and Libraries (GATS). The transcript for the programme can be found here at: http://www.libr.org/isc/media/ruth1.html. Graham Coult got to find out about this via Paul Pedley (as I was still keeping in contact with Paul). Graham then also emailed me ‘out of the blue’ asking me if I would like to write an article based on the radio programme for Managing Information. This was all very exciting; I agreed very enthusiastically, wrote the article, and again, he published it straightaway. Graham Coult then invited me to be the book reviews editor for Managing Information. I accepted enthusiastically, and the rest, as they say, is history.

I loved the book review work; I made contacts with many interesting people and writers (some of who now receive this newsletter) and then made contact with Dr. Glyn Jones at Chandos Publishing, Oxford. I got several Chandos books reviewed; Glyn then asked me if I would like to write a book myself. Wow – great! I accepted enthusiastically; I was away. Finally, I was to get to write that book; something that I had dreamed about doing from childhood. Although, then it had been very much a novel that I had wanted to write as a child; certainly not non-fiction. I didn’t like reading non-fiction stuff at all much in those early childhood days to be honest; in fact I only really read religious books!

So, anyway, my first book was then published with Chandos Publishing in 2005 of course on the topic of ‘Globalisation, Information and Libraries’. At the same time, Dr Glyn Jones also asked me if I would like to work for him as a Series Editor and later as a Commissioning Editor. Again, I accepted enthusiastically. Although, unfortunately, that also meant that I had to give up the book review work for Managing Information, because of the ‘conflict of interest’. Somehow, ever since then (i.e. since 2003), I have had to try to deal with this difficult situation as best I can.

Over the last few years I have written many articles and reviews for Managing Information on a wide range of different subjects. Last year (2009), for example, three articles of mine were published in the magazine. These were:

1. ‘Michéle Roberts: librarian, novelist and radical inspirational writer and thinker’, Vol. 16, Iss. 1, pp. 64-69
2. ‘Females and Social Networking’, Vol. 16, Iss. 3, pp. 50-59
3. ‘The Feminist Library in London’ by Ruth Rikowski and Anne Welsh, Vol. 16, Iss. 5, pp. 65-71

In regard to the article about the Feminist Library in London, for example, I wrote this piece with Anne Welch, who is a lecturer in cataloguing at University College London, and is someone that is also, like me, passionate about feminist-type issues. We both value and treasure the Feminist Library in London and want to do all that we can to help to preserve it and we wrote this article with all this very much in mind. The Feminist Library houses the material from the Feminist Movement of the 1970s and is distinct from the Women’s Library at London Metropolitan University, which houses the material from the Suffragette Movement of the 1920s. The Feminist Library has over 10,000 books and 1,500 journal titles, pamphlets and research papers. It is now run solely by volunteers; in contrast to when it was under the GLC (Greater London Council) when there were three paid librarians working there. We conclude our article by saying that:

“The way in which the Feminist Library has survived over the years, maintaining its independence is really quite something...It is important, we think, to try to help to preserve, safeguard and cherish this wonderful collection.” (p. 70)

Anne and I are keen to raise awareness further on this important topic, and with this in mind, we have discussed the possibility of giving a talk about the Feminist Library in London at a future CILIP in London meeting. Hopefully, in time, we can start to raise awareness still further. Meanwhile, if anyone would like a copy of the article, and/or would like to discuss this topic further with me, then do feel free to get in touch.

Returning once again to Graham Coult specifically, I would like to thank him once again for being right there for me straight after my father-in-law died, and at such a difficult time in my life. Graham lent me books, he recommended books to me, he sent me music links to songs on YouTube that he thought I might like and provided me with further information about the singers and the bands, and he recommended various book talks to me. He really helped me to pull through a very difficult period, and as I say, I am very appreciative to him for all of that.

Now, of course, Graham Coult works for Emerald Publishing. I wish him every success with his future work with Emerald, from where he will be continuing to edit Managing Information.

On another level, though, it has to be said that this writing game has brought some difficulties. Overall, it has been very positive, and life-changing. But a part of me felt sure that getting my writing published would also bring about some new and different problems from those that I had encountered before in my life. And this has, indeed, proved to be the case - job insecurity being one of them. But one thing I had not anticipated was the extent to which single-mindedness is key as is the need to be vigilant in regard to ‘opening possible cans of worms’, as the saying goes. Anyway, I continue to aim to do all I can to overcome the difficulties and set-backs.

Anyway, now, finally, I am in a position where I can turn my attention to writing a novel, so that’s great!

14. STEPHEN BARBER – REVIEWS EDITOR FOR ‘SOCIAL EUROPE JOURNAL’ AND NEW BOOK OUT ENTITLED ‘GREED’
Stephen Barber, an academic colleague of mine at London South Bank University informed me recently that he is the reviews editor for the ejournal ‘Social Europe Journal’ – see http://www.social-europe.eu/. Leading on from this discussion, he said that he would get our friend Patrick Ainley and Martin Allen’s latest book, ‘The Lost Generation’ reviewed in it. If you are interested in writing a review for the journal yourself, do contact Stephen at barbers@lsbu.ac.uk.

Stephen also informed me about his latest book, ‘Greed’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), which he has co-edited with Alexis Brassey – see http://www.amazon.co.uk/Greed-Alexis-Brassey/dp/0230201482/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274776350&sr=8-1

15. ‘WHISKY BREATH CONFESSIONAL’ BY NEIL WHITEHEAD
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1356191
My second cousin, Neil Whitehead, who also designed our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website, has just (May 2010) self-published a book on photography, using the Blurb software. By strange coincidence this is the same software that Martin Hodges used to self-publish his little book, ‘Word of Eye’, which I referred to in a previous newsletter.

As it says in the publicity for Neil’s book:

“Whisky Breath Confessional is a visual narrative into the world of Neil Whitehead, an undergraduate to an art photography degree. He is a diligent and observant photographer that searches out intriguing insight into life in the cities of England. The book Whisky Breath Confessional-as the name suggests-shows a confession to an outlook of the artist. Showing a poetic and suspenseful series of photographs that take the viewer on a quiet tour of his environment.”

Furthermore, that Neil Whitehead:

“...is a photographer that pursues opportunities to express emotions, and raise questions and intrigue in all of his photos. His photographs pertain to a style and philosophy that is unique and is growing.”

37 pages of the book can be previewed online. There are some lovely scenes in it, with some very interesting and different views and perspectives.

Neil is currently studying at Southampton University for a degree in Photography.

I wish Neil all the very best with his book, and hope that it sells lots of copies. I shall, of course, be ordering and reviewing the book myself.

16. MERCANTILE MARINE BRONZE WORLD WAR ONE MEDAL AND POSSIBLE LINKS WITH MY GRANDFATHER, CLEMENT AUGUSTINE VICKERY
I received an interesting email from someone a while ago who informed me that one of his hobbies was collecting and researching World War One medals. As part of his research he told me that he had done a quick "Google" search on medals listed on the "Ebay" site and that my "Blog" came up in his search. My grandfather, Clement Augustine Vickery was in the Merchant Navy for those that having been reading my newsletter closely enough and remember! He also wrote two books on nautical matters.

This person then went on say that there is a Mercantile Marine bronze war medal which may have been awarded to my grandfather, Clement Augustine Vickery for his Merchant Navy Service during Word War 1. He said that service details for these medals are held at the National Archives at Kew.

He thought that other "collectors" on discovering that this medal was awarded to a ships Captain/Master may also find this to be of interest, and that the medal may sell for quite a lot more than its starting price. He suggested that I might want to get involved in the bidding, to secure the medal for the family. I was very busy at the time, so did not pursue that option, but perhaps it is something that can be thought through further on a future occasion.

He also made the point that it might be beneficial to make contact with the staff at Kew in regard to this. He did not know whether archives are available for the Merchant Service in WW1 (as he specialises in Army medals/research). But what he does know is that there are "Index Cards" for the Seamen which give brief service details and usually a copy photograph. Also, that as my grandfather was an officer he thought that there might well be many more records held. So, this is something that I might well pursue further at a future date.

I have been doing a little research into my family history over the last couple of years. I concluded that it would probably all make for a very interesting book, especially if I related it to the history of women’s education in the UK. So writing such a book is something that I might well do at a later date (but certainly not for some while though, given my busy schedule). Also, I think it would be more appropriate for me to write at some more distant time in the future.

Anyway, in conclusion, the person that contacted me said that he was happy for this information to be included on my blog (and so I have been able to include this as a news item, and I thank him for this) but that he did not want to be named in person. So, hopefully, this information will be of interest to my family, and is something that we can in time explore further. I certainly appreciate the time, effort and trouble that the person took in making contact with me and informing me about it all and I would like to publicly thank him for that.

17. WILL ROBERTS ‘DAYSTAR’ VIDEO
Will Roberts, a band member of ‘Cold Hands & Quarter Moon’ and a friend of our son Victor Rikowski recently composed a song, entitled ‘Daystar’, and made a video of it. This is now up on YouTube. We thought it was very good, so wanted to share it with you. The URL for it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6f_pA5XUPk

Will Roberts, like Victor, is studying Music and Creative Writing at Bangor University.

18. ‘COLD HANDS & QUARTER MOON’ – TWO OTHER SONGS NOW UP ON CH&QM’s MYSPACE PAGE AND NOW c 6,800 PROFILE VIEWS IN TOTAL
http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic
There are 2 other songs now up on the band ‘Cold Hands & Quarter Moon’s’ MySpace page - ‘Stagnant’ and ‘Slave and Masters’. ‘Slaves and Masters’ is a new, quite complex, song, composed by Victor Rikowski, and this is the first time that it has been made available on the internet. Interest in the band continues to grow, and there have now been around some 6,800 profile views of the band on their MySpace page.

Best wishes,

Ruth

N.B. Many thanks to Jeremy Gilbert (in regard to Middlesex University), Helen Whitehead, Dinesh Gupta, Stephen Barber and Neil Whitehead for providing information for items 8, 11, 12, 14 and 15 respectively.

28th May 2010

Ruth Rikowski's 38th News Update

2010-04-08T02:23:00.000-07:00

I hope you all had a good Easter. This newsletter includes (amongst other things) news about ASLIB been acquired by Emerald Group Publishing; some information in regard to Sense Publishers; details about my latest blog entries on my ‘Serendipitous Moments’ blog (all best-selling novels this time); and a few details about Redbridge and Newham public libraries.

1. ASLIB (THE ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION MANAGEMENT) AND ASLIB’S MAGAZINE ‘MANAGING INFORMATION’ HAS BEEN ACQUIRED BY MCB GROUP, THE HOLDING COMPANY FOR EMERALD GROUP PUBLISHING LTD

http://info.emeraldinsight.com/about/news/story.htm?id=2257

ASLIB, which was established in 1924, and its magazine, Managing Information, have been acquired by Emerald Group Publishing. ASLIB has been encountering difficulties for a number of years now and I have sadly witnessed it slowly declining since I worked for them in 2002. ASLIB first sold its journals to Emerald, and then its book publishing business to Taylor and Francis in 2002. It then went into voluntary liquidation in 2004. The library was also lost, and there were redundancies.

ASLIB will now be run independently within the Emerald Group, but will draw on services from Emerald as well as from other publishers. They also plan to “revamp and improve the ASLIB Managing Information (MI) magazine.” Let us hope that in one way or another ASLIB and MI can continue and thrive.

2. PAULA ALLMAN’S BOOK, ‘CRITICAL EDUCATION AGAINST GLOBAL CAPITALISM’ SHORTLY TO BE PUBLISHED IN PAPERBACK WITH SENSE PUBLISHERS
Paula Allman’s excellent book ‘Critical Education Against Global Capitalism’, published with Bergin & Garvey, Westport, USA and London, 2001, which up to now has only been available in hardback, is shortly to be published in paperback with Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Paula Allman, who is a writing friend of Glenn Rikowski’s is obviously very delighted about this. It will hopefully mean that lots more copies of her very important book will be sold and read. Bergin and Garvey had promised her that they would publish it in paperback, but it never happened. This paperback book is now part of a new Sense series, entitled ‘International Perspectives on Adult Education’ that is edited by Peter Mayo. We wish Paula all the very best with the publication of this paperback edition of her very important book.

3. GARY BELL OBTAINING A BOOK CONTRACT WITH SENSE PUBLISHERS
I am delighted to say that I have been able to secure a book contract for Gary Bell, an academic colleague of mine at London South Bank University, with Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The proposed title of the book is ‘Higher Education Management and Operational Research: Demonstrating New Practices and Metaphors. The book will bring together a collection of papers on this topic and will be edited by Dr Gary Bell, Professor Peter Galbraith and Professor Jon Warwick. It will examine, explain and promote various methodologies and techniques linked with Operational Research to different Higher Education management issues, relating it all to both theory and cost. The book will critically offer a ‘tool box’ of OR approaches and metaphors for HE management.

4. 6 NEW ITEMS UP ON MY ‘SERENDIPITOUS MOMENTS’ BLOG – ALL ON BEST SELLING NOVELS
The latest entries on my ‘Serendipitious Moments’ blog are all about some best-selling novels (such as the Sunday Times Top Ten Bestsellers) that I have been reading and very much enjoying recently. These are: ‘In Time for Christmas’ by Katie Flynn; ‘Mother of Pearl’ by Maureen Lee; ‘Flora’s Lot’ by Katie Fforde; ‘Forgotten Dreams’ by Katie Flynn; ‘Wedding Season’ by Katie Fforde and ‘Going Dutch’ by Katie Fforde. I am certainly enjoying this new and different approach to novel reading that I have been exploring over the last few months.

5. MARTIN HODGES SELF-PUBLISHED BOOK ‘WORD OF EYE’
Martin Hodges, who used to be one of my book reviewers for Managing Information has just self-published a little book entitled ‘Word of Eye’ with the help of Blurb creative publishing service. The book opens with these words:

“Sometimes we are privileged to see beyond the landscape and physical forms around us. In those moments, connections are made, and the world reveals itself, bathed in the new light of unknown dimensions.”

There are many different, beautiful coloured photographs in it of various country scenes – and all produced effectively on high quality paper!

For more of the author’s thoughts and observations, visit Martin Hodges Square Sunshine blog – http://square-sunshine.blogspot.com/.

6. ‘THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE DOWNLOADED’, EDITED BY TARA BRABAZON, CHANDOS PUBLISHING, OXFORD, 2008 – REVIEWED BY RALPH ADAMS http://www.woodheadpublishing.com/en/book.aspx?bookID=1853&ChandosTitle=1
Ralph Adams recently wrote an interesting and positive review of the book ‘The revolution will not be downloaded: dissent in the digital age’ for CILIP Update The book is edited by Tara Brabazon and published by Chandos Publishing: Oxford, 2008, ISBN 978 1 84334 459 9 (pbk). The collection is by writers from the Popular Culture Collection, and Ralph Adams says that the book is “...strikingly well-edited: it reads like a monograph...” Furthermore, that Brabazon “...shows how blogs, podcasts, wikkis, Google Maps, Facebook and so on can lead to improved collaboration and information sharing, so that web sites become platforms for connecting applications with users, rather than mere information holders.” The book also demonstrates how much disabled people, the elderly and other minority groups can contribute to this digital age, and looks at innovative concepts and models for improving access to digitally-excluded groups of people.

7. ‘MARXIST OUTLOOK’: TERRY BUTTON’S WEBSITE
http://www.marxistoutlook.com/
We were interested to receive an email from Terry Button, sent to our ‘Flow of Ideas’ website a while ago, informing us about his website which is entitled ‘Marxist Outlook’. As stated on his website, Terry Button’s view is that Marxism should “...be regarded in general as a world scientific outlook, and in particular as the theory of world social revolution.” There are a number of pieces on the website, including ‘The Art of Science and the Science of Art’ and ‘From Kant to Hegel and from Hegel to Marx – the Great Leap’.

8. LONDON BOROUGH OF REDBRIDGE AND NEWHAM LIBRARIES
My nearest public libraries are in the London Boroughs of Redbridge and Newham. It is quite interesting to compare the two. Over 20 ex-colleagues of mine were made redundant from Newham Library Service about one year ago. So, the libraries there now have fewer staff, less experienced and qualified staff and more casualisation of staff. At the same time, there is a depleted book stock and libraries are now run alongside Community Local Service Centres. See for example http://www.newham.gov.uk/EntertainmentandLeisure/Libraries/LibraryDetails/LibraryandLocalServiceCentreTheGate.htm

Whilst libraries in Redbridge are faring comparatively well and I certainly prefer to use Redbridge libraries these days. In fact, I do not really use Newham libraries much at all anymore. I find that the Redbridge libraries have a good and wide range of stock, helpful staff; also good music and DVD collections. I very much enjoy borrowing music CDs on a regular basis these days. Ilford Central Library also has very good reference and local studies libraries. This is also indicative of the local population of course, with Redbridge having a larger middle class population.

Furthermore, the Redbridge ‘Book and Media Festival’ is about to start (it runs from 8th April – 17th May 2010). See:
http://www.redbridge.gov.uk/cms/news_and_events/latest_news/2010/march_2010/events_unveiled_for_this_year.aspx These events are held yearly and include a wide variety of interesting talks, several of which I went to last year. Interestingly, Newham Book Shop also helps with the organisation of these events. A talk recently by the author Simon Brett provided an early introduction to this event. This was held at Fulwell Cross Library on World Book Day, 4th March 2010. I went along to the talk and it proved to be an interesting and enjoyable event. Simon Brett is the author of many books, lots of which have been performed on the radio. I heard him talk last year at the Essex Book Festival; and his talk this year at Redbridge was quite similar. I found it particularly interesting to discover that Simon Brett has only ever had 3 paid jobs; for the rest of his life he has been a free-lance writer. It is so good to know that it is possible to make a good living out of one’s writing – even though, of course, this is only possible for a select few. Simon Brett obtaining a First Class Honours from Oxford University must have helped considerably in this regard of course; it certainly presented him with many networking opportunities! Still, all credit to him as well and it is wonderful that books and novelists are still rated so highly these days; and enjoyed so much. Long may all this continue!

9. LONDON REVIEW BOOKSHOP EVENT: A TALK BY PETER CAMPBELL AND JULIAN BELL
http://www.redbridge.gov.uk/cms/news_and_events/latest_news/2010/march_2010/events_unveiled_for_this_year.aspx
The London Review Bookshop, London, WC1, holds interesting talks and events on a regular basis and I went along to one of these recently (on 24th March 2010). The talk was given by Peter Campbell and Julian Bell, both of whom have worked as painters and writers, about art. Julian Bell’s most recent book is Mirror of the World (published by Thames and Hudson) and Peter Campbell’s is At (published by Hyphen Press). The latter is a collection of Peter Campbell’s contributions to the London Review of Books magazine. Peter has worked on and contributed to the London Review of Books magazine since it was first founded in 1979. Peter and Julian spoke as well as asked each other questions; they then took questions from the floor (the room was packed). They talked about what painters can and cannot do and about the relationship painters have to old art. Also, about the limitations and opportunities offered to artists today, with its varying technologies and institutions. Furthermore, they looked at the tradition of painters that can write and writers that can paint and noted the fact that many students have difficulty with writing. All in all, it was an interesting experience and certainly a very different experience to other book talks that I have been to; with a very different environment and selection of people. Although it has to be said that the topic was not one that I was very familiar with at all! I might well go to more such book events in the future.

10. SINGING AND DANCING
I have been enjoying a bout of singing and dancing recently. This has included Salsa dancing, ballroom dancing and all-body movement dancing with the Chantraine School of Dance (http://www.londondance.com/content.asp?CategoryID=1025). Also, singing with the ‘Forest Voices’ choir that I joined recently, at the Mayor’s Festival of Choirs that was held at the Old Town Hall, Stratford. Some dozen choirs sang altogether, and the winner, ‘Young and Gifted’ will be going on to sing at the Royal Festival Hall.

11. COLD HANDS & QUARTER MOON’S MYSPACE PAGE
http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic
Our son Victor Rikowski's band 'Cold Hands & Quarter Moon' have set up a MySpace profile for the band. Better quality sound recordings of their songs will be loaded on to it. So far, ‘Human Herbs’ and ‘Simon Says Get Out’ have been loaded up. It already has nearly 1275 profile views.

Best wishes

Ruth

8th April 2010