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IT and STS
Philip Doty and R. E. Wyllys
Assignment Title: Science and Technology Studies Article Evaluation.
Participation: Individual.
Format: Formal 750-1000 word essay in APA final manuscript format,
modified to adapt your paper for submission as a Webpage. This means that
quotations, citations, and references should adhere to the APA guidelines,
since these can be easily handled within HTML. On the other hand, since
Webpages do not correspond to printed pages, you should use simply a title,
instead of a title-page. In similar fashion, because HTML makes it unduly
difficult to do otherwise: instead of double-spacing within paragraphs
you should use single-spacing, but leave a 1-line space between paragraphs;
you need not, and preferably should not, indent the first lines of paragraphs;
you should not try to impose 1-inch margins at left and right in normal
text; and you should not use hanging indents in the section containing
your references.
Submission Method: Published as a Webpage in your account at GSLIS.
Maximum points: 5
Introduction: Information technology (IT) has had a large impact
on our culture and the way we conduct business. Through research, science
and technology studies (STS) address this impact and provide us insights
into the benefits and problems technology brings with it. Library and
information science (LIS) professionals are not only a part of the society
that feels that impact, but they are also often IT drivers who can either
help or hinder the application of IT. One IT tool that is available to
LIS professionals is the World-Wide Web. Experience with the use of that
tool through online Webpage publication is important to LIS professionals.
This assignment combines a professional evaluation of an article addressing
STS concerning IT with the experience of publishing a Webpage on a Unix
server.
(Note: In LIS 386.13 we use "STS" to abbreviate "science
and technology studies." "ST" should not be used to abbreviate
"science and technology," for which the usual abbreviation is"S&T.")
Goals: The goals of this assignment are to:
- Help you to become acquainted with scholarly sources in the cultural
study of information technologies.
- Increase your understanding of cultural critiques of information technologies
with your existing knowledge of IT.
- Gain experience in writing an informed reaction to and assessment
of a chosen article.
- Gain experience publishing on the World-Wide Web using a Unix-based
server.
Tasks:
- Choose one article related to information technology published since
1985 in the following paper journals:
Daedalus (available electronically from Expanded Academic
ASAP and from Dow-Jones Interactive)
Information, Communication, and Society
Science, Technology, & Human Values (available electronically
from Expanded Academic ASAP and from Dow-Jones Interactive)
Social Problems (available electronically from Expanded Academic
ASAP and from Dow-Jones Interactive)
Social Studies of Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Technology and Culture (available electronically from Project
Muse)
Note: If you live where access to a library holding at
least one of these seven journals is difficult for geographical reasons,
you may wish to use the UT-Austin General Libraries service of providing
the full texts of selected journals online. (The journals for this
assignment that are available electronically are noted above.) Go
to the General Libraries Journals
Webpage, and click on "Search for a full text Journal."
(If you have not already installed in your browser a proxy-server
connection to allow you to use certain services of the General Libraries
that are restricted to current UT-Austin students and staff, you will
need to set up such a connection. To do so, go to How
Do I ... ? Access Library Resources from Off-campus (proxy server)
and, once you have it in your browser and have read it, click on "Browser
Setup Instructions" and follow the instructions to which you
will be led.)
-
Write a 750-1000 word essay evaluating the article and answering
the following questions:
a. In the light of the background class material on
STS and IT, and the material you have read for other class assignments,
what do you consider to be the author's major theoretical orientation?
Your answer should be about two (2) paragraphs long.
b. In your opinion, what is the single strongest part of the paper?
What is its single weakest part? Your answer should be about two to
three (2 -3) paragraphs long
c. What particular insight, observation, perspective, or approach
in the paper is of benefit to understanding IT in the context of Library
and Information Studies? Why? Your answer should be explicit and specific,
and you should explain your answer in the remaining space in your
essay.
-
Publish your paper on the World-Wide Web using your account on the
GSLIS Unix server as follows:
a. The filename must be "sts.html" (without, of course,
the quotation marks). (Using this name is important for reasons that
are too technical to be worth detailing here.) You need to be aware
that in order to assign this name to the file containing your paper,
you may have to override certain default choices of the program in
which you prepare the file.
b. The paper must include either: (1) an image from the article (an
illustration, an important section, etc.) or (2) if for some reason
you are not able to make an image from the article, an image of the
copyright page of the journal. The image is to be embedded in the
text and should use either GIF or JPEG format. If the journal is intended
to be used only in the library, you might want make a copy of the
page and scan it to produce the image for your paper. If the journal
is found online as well as in print, you may make a copy of the image
or copyright page and put it into your paper. Be sure to provide citations
for the image and in your reference list.
(Note: Do not supply the entire paper in image form. You are
to provide a text document in HTML format that contains at least one
image embedded in the text.)
c. You will need to create a new directory, named "public_html"
(without the quotes), in your account on the GSLIS server. To do this,
you will need to log in to your GSLIS directory and set up the new
directory. You may want to review Introduction
to the Unix Environment for help. The image is to be embedded
in the paper, so that it can be viewed next to the text of the paper;
however, because of the way HTML works, you will have to upload both
the document file, sts.html, and the image file to your public_html
directory.
d. When you have completed publishing your paper on the Web, send
an email message to the course
emailbox, informing the instructor and TAs of that fact. Please
include the URL of your paper in your message.
Hints:
Using a Webpage-Preparation Program (recommended)
A good, but not the only, way of getting your Digital Résumé
paper into HTML format is to use Dreamweaver (this excellent Webpage-preparation
program is available in the GSLIS Information Technology Laboratory; see
also the very helpful IT Lab tutorial
on Deamweaver). You may acquire a copy of Dreamweaver at an educational-discount
price from the Campus Computer
Store. There are also other Webpage-preparation programs: e.g., Microsoft
FrontPage (which many of you may already have, since it is part of the
Microsoft Office Suite), or a freeware program such as PageBuilder, which
is available from Yahoo!.
Note: IT Lab staff members may be able to provide only very limited help
with Webpage-preparation programs other than Dreamweaver.
Using Microsoft Word (it can do the job in its own Microsoft-centric
fashion, but is not recommended)
There is an alternative to using a Webpage-preparation program. This alternative
is somewhat more complicated, and we do not recommend it, though we recognize
that it can produce the desired results. The alternative is to prepare
your Digital Résumé in Microsoft Word and save it from Word
as a Webpage, i.e., in HTML format. If you do this, you should check the
appearance of the resultant Webpage in Internet Explorer or Netscape;
if you need to make changes, you may want to view the HTML source, which
both Internet Explorer and Netscape allow you to do, in order to see how
your Webpage is set up.
Furthermore, whenever MS Word embeds an image in a document and then
saves the document in HTML format, Word insists on storing the image file(s)
in a subdirectory that it creates under the directory where the document
itself is stored; Word gives this subdirectory a name based on the name
of the document without an extension (i.e., without ".doc" or
"html"). For example, when you insert an image in your paper
and then save the paper as a Webpage named "mypaper.html", Word
will store the image in a subdirectory named "mypaper_files".
(Word also arbitrarily renames the images in an HTML document in sequence
as "image001.jpg" [or image001.gif, etc.], "image002.jpg",
etc.)
If you have used MS Word to prepare file "mypaper.html", then
when you upload this file to your public_html directory, you will also
have to create a subdirectory under the public_html directory and name
it "mypaper_files" (without, of course, the quotation marks).
Because Unix is case-sensitive, in naming this subdirectory you will need
to be careful to use uppercase and lowercase exactly as they appear in
the subdirectory on your computer. Finally, you will have to upload the
image files from the subdirectory named mypaper_files on your computer
to the subdirectory named mypaper_files under your public_html directory
on the GSLIS server.
Using Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage also has Microsoft-oriented eccentricities, and we
do not recommend it, although we recognize that it can produce the desired
results. If you choose to use FrontPage, we suggest that you pay careful
attention to ensuring that the HTML-format files you place in your public_html
directory use the 4-letter extension ".html" rather than the
3-letter extension ".htm" that FrontPage uses as its default
extension. We recommend this on the basis of its being a preferred practice
on the Web. It is easy to change the default extensions into ".html";
you just have to remember to do it.
Tutorials Available
The Tutorial Junction of the GSLIS IT Lab provides tutorials on Dreamweaver
and HTML. Also useful and concise is A
Basic Set of HTML Tags.
Uploading Your Webpage
For uploading your file(s) to your public_html directory, you can use
Dreamweaver's upload capabilities (or the comparable capabilities of other
Webpage-preparation programs.)
If you are not using a Webpage-preparation program (e.g., if you chose
to use MS Word to prepare your résumé), then for uploading
we recommend that you use a Secure Shell program. If you are using Windows,
we recommend SSH Secure Shell 3.1.0, which is available from BevoWare.
If you are using a Macintosh, we recommend MacSSH, also available from
BevoWare. The BevoWare Website notes that: "Current UT students can
download BevoWare components, updates and upgrades online for free. The
CD version of BevoWare is also available to current students as an optional
$5 purchase from the Campus Computer
Store."
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