(Un)read in the ledger
Weekly reading list: Monday 1–Sunday 7 April 2024
4 min readApr 7, 2024
Things I have been reading, stuff I have come back to for a re-read and things that I want to read but haven’t got to yet.
I have been a bit busy this week so the reading list is a bit shorter than usual.
Read
What I’ve been reading the week:
- Australia’s arts are still failing when it comes to diversity. But Lena Nahlous says there are other ways to look at it.
It is disheartening but not surprising to hear from Diversity Arts Australia say that “Australia’s arts sector, including its major arts, screen and cultural organisations, is still flailing woefully when it comes to representation of [culturally and linguistically diverse] CALD workers.” This is especially so in relation to arts leadership.
Elfy Scott — Wednesday 27 March 2024
Missing Perspectives
- Support for school libraries needed to improve student literacy
The Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) together with the Australian Coalition for School Libraries (ACSL) are calling for urgent investment in Australia’s school libraries. The call comes off the back of new research showing a link between library borrowing and reading comprehension. To address the issue ALIA and ACSL are calling on Federal, State and Territory governments to commit to all students having access to a well-resourced school library run by appropriately qualified staff.
Wednesday 3 April 2024
ALIA
- Welcome to the AI gadget era
While there are a lot of AI gadgets gearing up to hit the market I am not as convinced as David Pierce that people will adopt them. That said, the point I found most interesting in the article was how these devices offer an alternative to the smartphone. The point is that, while smartphones are useful they are not very efficient because they try to do everything. “… [A]fter so many years of using our phones, we’ve forgotten how much friction they actually contain … they’re not actually particularly efficient tools.” It will be interesting to see if AI devices can create a compelling pitch to consumers. It may even diversify the technology market a little too.
David Pierce — Wednesday 3 April 2024
The Verge
- Why I wrote an AI transparency statement for my book, and think other authors should too
Kester Brewin, who recently authored a book on AI, writes about her decision to include an AI transparency statement at the beginning of it. Not finding any examples they wrote one themself that identifies whether the text was generated, improved, suggested or corrected using AI. It’s a interesting idea and one I support. On this blog I disclose the use of AI in relation to the text and any images I created to accompany them.
Kester Brewin — Thursday 4 April 2024
The Guardian
Re-reads
Things I have circled back to:
- We need to talk about money in the arts
I published something yesterday about why the arts should not shy away from using LinkedIn and as part of preparing it I was reminded of this piece on ArtsHub about the myths we tell about the arts. It does a really good job of identifying them, unpacking them and, ultimately, advocating for why we need to stop telling them.
Rochelle Siemienowicz — Sunday 27 August 2023
ArtsHub
Of course, there’s lots of other stuff I have been reading that doesn’t make it into the weekly round up. (If you have a Google Account you can even share links with me.)
Credits
Image: A pile of books with green, pink and blue covers. Derived from AI output generated by Elliott Bledsoe using Text to Vector Graphic (Beta) in Adobe Illustrator (using Adobe Firefly). Prompt: ‘pile of books uneven hand-drawn’.
