Some things I’ve worked on, or am still working on.
The Supreme Court Copyright Index (link)
(2021-01-07: This is pretty outdated at this point. You should go directly to the Wikipedia list for an up-to-date catalog of SCOTUS copyright jurisprudence.) Inspired by an attempt at prognosticating the Supreme Court’s vote on the Aereo copyright case based on the justices’ known opinions on copyright, I started compiling a list of every copyright related case the current justices of the United States Supreme Court have ruled on, including in their past capacities as district court and circuit court judges. This is an ongoing project, but in the meantime, I’ve started fleshing out Wikipedia’s List of United States Supreme Court copyright case law, building off the work begun by Laura Quilter.
WikiCU Research Guide and Resources for New Authors (link)
WikiCU is an unofficial wiki of information about Columbia University started in 2007. My own contributions to the wiki have primarily been historical in nature, as the wiki’s launch coincided with both my graduation and an explosion in the availability of archival material on the internet thanks to projects like Google Books and the Internet Archive. As more and more material became available, I realized it was important to catalog and explain the available sources, and the Research Guide was born. In addition to providing a primer on source material, I also included notes on basic tips and recommendations for using Google Books and Archive.org, leaving citations, etc. The Guide has grown to the point that it should be split between separate Research Tips and Introduction to Sources articles, but that’s a project for the future.
Columbia/Barnard College Quiz Bowl History (link)
In college I created a website detailing the history of Columbia University and Barnard College’s appearances on the College Quiz Bowl and G.E. College Bowl radio and television game show programs in the 1950s and 60s. As part of my research I visited the archives of both schools, reviewed the archives of the Barnard Bulletin and Columbia Daily Spectator (which was only available on microfilm at the time), and contacted collectors and College Bowl enthusiasts to gather material for my project. The website was hosted on my university server-space until my account expired in 2010. I recently migrated the project to WikiCU, an unofficial wiki of Columbia related information. As part of the migration I also tracked down additional media, and took advantage of the recently launched Spectator online archives to include direct links to relevant articles.
This Website
Several years ago I decided to teach myself a bit more about the web and software by setting up a personal site from “scratch.” So I acquired a domain name. And signed up for a virtual server. And then found myself staring at a command line of my own personal (virtual) FreeBSD server with no idea of what to do next. With some help from a very bemused friend, and Google, I fumbled around and managed to get Apache, MySQL, PHP, and ultimately WordPress installed. It was educational, if painful, and I hope to keep learning, little by little.
