Digital Library Center Blog | UF

Computational Culture: a Journal of Software Studies is a new journal with the first issue expected this fall. I’m late in announcing this, but it’s an important journal and worth repeating earlier announcements on it.

From the homepage of Computational Culture:

Computational Culture is an online open-access peer-reviewed journal of inter-disciplinary enquiry into the nature of the culture of computational objects, practices, processes and structures.

The journal’s primary aim is to examine the ways in which software undergirds and formulates contemporary life. Computational processes and systems not only enable contemporary forms of work and play and the management of emotional life but also drive the unfolding of new events that constitute political, social and ontological domains. In order to understand digital objects such as corporate software, search engines, medical databases or to enquire into the use of mobile phones, social networks, dating, games, financial systems or political crises, a detailed analysis of software cannot be avoided.

A developing form of literacy is required that matches an understanding of computational processes with those traditionally bound within the arts, humanities, and social sciences but also in more informal or practical modes of knowledge such as hacking and art.

The journal welcomes contributions that address such topics and many others that may derive and mix methodologies from cultural studies, science and technology studies, philosophy of computing, metamathematics, computer science, critical theory, media art, human computer interaction, media theory, design, philosophy.

Computational Culture publishes peer-reviewed articles, special projects, interviews, and reviews of books, projects, events and software. The journal is also involved in developing a series of events and projects to generate special issues.

http://www.computationalculture.net

At the end of April, arXiv posted an update on their sustainability initiative. This and all arXiv sustainability work should be mandatory reading for all who are working on large, collaborative digital initiatives. Recent updates include the 2011 projected budget and the full support documentation are also available.

UF is a partner in the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC), so I was excited to see that the book Caribbean Libraries in the 21st Century: Changes, Challenges, and Choices edited by Shamin Renwick and Cheryl Peltier-Davis is available. The table of contents with all twenty-five chapter titles and authors is listed on the Library of Congress website and gives an useful sense of the full book, and I hope to grab the UF Library copy tomorrow and I’ll post a review as soon as I’ve read it. It looks really interesting for my more pragmatic purposes and for all interested in library collaborations and in the evolution of libraries.