About

I’m Anne-Marie Deitering, the Franklin McEdward Professor for Undergraduate Learning Initiatives at Oregon State University Libraries. I’ve been feeling the need for a space to get some pre-writing done – to write about things that occur to me, connections that I want to explore, and ideas that are in their early stages.

Given that I spend a lot of my time talking and writing about the emerging web, it seems a little strange that I haven’t tried this before. Basically, I’ve always been skeptical about my ability to keep a blog up consistently. And given that I spend a lot of my time talking and writing about the emerging web, I know that there’s nothing worse than a blog with four entries that just dies on the vine. So, that’s my fear. Hopefully writing it out will make it not happen.

I have a fantastically smart and funny husband and a fantastically smart and funny daughter. We live with our three puppies in Corvallis, Oregon.

Shaun named the blog. The name is taken from Brian Wood’s Channel Zero comic.

About comments –

Update (January 8, 2009).  I have never needed a comment policy before because the readers of this blog are a small group, engaged in the same work I am.  I know many of them in real as well as virtual life, and expect that that is one reason they have always treated each other with respect.  Recent events have brought a lot of new people to the circle, and while most of them are engaging in the same kind of thoughtful discourse I was hoping would land here – a few are not.

(Spam is another thing – I talked about it a while ago.  Most of it is caught by the filter – a unfortunate side effect of that is that if you put a bunch of links in a comment it might get tagged for moderation.  That just means there will be a delay before you see it.)

So – as many others have said in similar situations – this is my blog.  I think of this space like I would any real-world discussion space I inhabit.  Please engage with ideas.  Disagreement is fine.  Personal attacks aren’t welcome.   And any comment advocating actual harm to anyone will be deleted.