Gideon Burton's Blog

Creativity and New Media Mormonism

I presented a speech, "Creativity and New Media Mormonism" at the annual meeting of the Association for Mormon Letters on February 28, 2009 at Utah Valley University. Below find links both to the PDF version of the written speech and to a recording of it. In the audio version I excerpt a symphony composed by my father, Rulon T. Burton. The complete symphony is included as the last 9 minutes of the 30 minute recording. If you like the music, send a compliment to the composer (rulonburton AT gmail.com) or to the sound engineer, Perry (introspectiveafrika AT gmail.com).

Download Burton-AML2009 (PDF)

Download Creativity and New Media Mormonism (audio, 40mb)

Open Access on the map at Brigham Young University

The presentation on Open Access that Jeff Belliston and I had previously prepared was well received yesterday by the assembled deans, the Academic Vice President, and the President of BYU. I was impressed by our Academic Vice President's keen interest in the issues. And while this institution is still a long ways off from something like the Harvard Open Access mandate for our faculty, there is clearly interest and awareness at the top.

Association for Mormon Letters conference and presentation

This past weekend the annual meeting of the Association for Mormon Letters was held at Utah Valley State College. I presented on "Authentic Mormon Cinema" (download audio file here, or play it below), talking through key points of the paper I'm writing on this subject, specifically raising and discussing the various criteria to be considered in what constitutes Mormon Cinema.

Scholarship 2.0 Presentation

At the monthly meeting of the Harold B. Lee Library's faculty council I gave a presentation, "Scholarship 2.0" (download PowerPoint). This includes much of my Web 2.0 presentation from the library's town meeting, but focuses more on how scholarship is evolving from "Scholarship 1.0" to "Scholarship 2.0". As with the other presentation, I also showed Dr. Michael Wesch's impressive video about Web 2.0 (See my earlier post for links to that video).

Web 2.0 Presentation to BYU Library

Today I gave a presentation to the assembled library staff of the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University at their monthly "Town Meeting." Randy Olson (head librarian) invited me to present something on trends in Scholarly Communication along with some others. The result was this PowerPoint presentation, "Beyond the Digital Incunabular Period: Toward Web 2.0." If you're interested,