天美影视传媒 Associate Professor will be the featured speaker at the university鈥檚 38^th annual New Student Convocation. Barrington has joint appointments in the Department of Child, Family, and Population Health Nursing in the School of Nursing and the departments of Epidemiology and of Health Systems and Population Health in the School of Public Health.

This year鈥檚 hybrid ceremony is scheduled to begin at 3 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 28, on Rainier Vista, just south of the Drumheller Fountain. Students registering for the Convocation selected one of a limited number of in-person tickets or requested a virtual ticket to watch the hour-long ceremony via .

Convocation welcomes the entering class and officially marks the beginning of the academic year, with classes starting Sept. 29. At the suggestion of health officials, this year鈥檚 ceremony has been moved from Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion to the Rainier Vista lawn. That鈥檚 where about 1,200 students will attend in person, while the event is also streamed online to welcome other students, families, friends and the entire campus community.

New Student听Convocation is one of only two occasions where university President Ana Mari Cauce, the Board of Regents, the deans of the 16 schools and colleges and the faculty gather for an academic ceremony focused on students. The other event is Commencement. Together, these two events are the seminal 鈥渂ookend鈥� events of a college career.

The Convocation will open with an academic procession led by University Marshal Joseph Janes, associate professor in the UW鈥檚 Information School, carrying the university mace. President Cauce, Provost Mark Richards, members of the Board of Regents, deans, vice presidents, vice provosts and student leaders will march in the procession.

Fast facts:

• Preliminary figures show the incoming听freshman class听is expected to be about听7,250听蝉迟耻诲别苍迟蝉
• 础谤辞耻苍诲听4,475 freshmen will be from Washington state
• An additional听1,500 transfer听students听are expected to arrive this fall, including about听1,300 transferring from Washington community colleges
• UW Bothell and UW Tacoma also welcome their incoming classes, with about 950 and 620 freshmen and about 700 and 850 transfer students听expected, respectively. is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 28, and is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 29.

Here鈥檚 a look at a few podcasts being produced 天美影视传媒 departments or people 鈥� and an appearance by a faculty member on the podcast “.”

“”

This podcast launched in January 2019 and is produced and hosted by with .

Connors is a lecturer, and N忙sby a visiting lecturer of Danish, both in the . With 13 completed episodes, “Crossing North” is about Nordic and Baltic society and culture, and features interviews with authors, performers and leaders from Scandinavia and the Baltic, plus faculty from Scandinavian Studies and the Baltic Studies Program.

include “,” “” and “,” which asks: What does it mean to be a folk musician in a country with no folk instruments?

UW Notebook asked a few questions to catch up with this podcast’s journey so far.

What got this podcast started?

Colin G. Connors: There are so many incredible stories coming out of the Nordic and Baltic countries that can help us to better understand the world abroad and here at home. We have some amazing faculty in the Department of Scandinavian Studies, and we wanted to be able to share their research and what inspires them directly with the public.

The department serves a lot of different communities: Our focus is of course on the students in our classrooms, but we also serve the public interest as well. The department sees a lot of artists, ambassadors, and business leaders visiting from Scandinavia, so we wanted to share that direct connection with the public, and especially those in the Pacific Northwest with an interest in Scandinavia.

The world is looking to the Scandinavian countries right now for inspiration on how to approach all sorts of issues, including climate change, affordable health care, effective education systems and gender equality in the workplace. We hope that the podcast is an entry point for a lot of people, and a place where listeners can hear what type of work is being done, right now, here and in Scandinavia.

How long does it take you to record and produce a single episode?听

C.C.: I probably spend between 40 and 50 hours per episode. Many people don鈥檛 realize all the skills and expertise required to make a quality podcast, but when you listen you know the difference. That’s why we put so much effort into research, editing, production value, and sound design.

We believe “Crossing North” is a reflection of the university, and we want it to reflect the world-class education one can receive in the Department of Scandinavian Studies.

Who is your audience? Is the podcast finding its audience?

C.C.: Honestly, the show is for anyone who enjoys learning. All the episodes touch on relevant issues in our world. There are lessons to be learned, both good and bad, from the Nordic and Baltic countries. Sometimes those lessons come from unexpected directions because of how distant those countries are from Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, but the podcast also digs into some surprisingly deep connections that reveal how close we really are.

Different audiences have found different ways of engaging with individual episodes. A good example a recent episode, #11, which was an interview with assistant professor of Western Kentucky University about sustainability, green colonialism and Indigenous ecologies. For a lot of our listeners, this episode was the first time they were exposed to the idea of treaty rights and Indigenous sovereignty, especially in the Nordic countries, but for the 厂谩尘颈-American community here in Seattle (the are the Indigenous people of Scandinavia), the episode was an affirmation of their identities and experiences.

That piece also spoke to larger conversations happening around the world and here in Washington about the rights of Indigenous peoples, so I know the episode was shared by different Indigenous advocacy groups as well. I think that’s the mark of a successful piece of work, that people are able to bring something to it and also take something new and meaningful away.

What is your favorite episode so far? Which might be the best for a newcomer to listen to first?听

C.C.: You can’t go wrong with starting at the beginning. Episode 1, “,” is about the power of music and explores how Latvia’s folk songs helped its people to end the Soviet occupation. The episode has some great music and folk stories.

People might also enjoy episode 10, “.'” I interviewed Marc Smith, Disney Animation’s director of story for “Frozen 2” and we talked about how their research trip to Finland, Norway, and Iceland inspired the film. The answer goes way beyond costume design, and our conversation was a once-in-a-lifetime peek behind the scenes at Disney Animation Studios.

How many downloads have you had so far?

C.C.: We have reached between 200 and 750 listeners with each episode. Listeners these days are more likely to binge a series than to tune in every month, so download numbers are less representative of overall appeal in podcasting than in traditional broadcasting.

With 13 episodes, “” is still in its infant stage right now, so we are less concerned with numbers than with continuing to produce quality content, because we know that the more episodes we publish, the more likely we are to get new listeners.

For more information, contact Connors at colingc@uw.edu.

* * *

Other ongoing UW podcasts:

““

Produced and hosted by , associate professor, Information School

Janes studies the cultural impact of documents and documentation and the future of libraries. The title phrase for his podcast came to him in 2012 and he has been producing occasional episodes ever since. In 2017, Janes published a book based on the series titled “Documents that Changed the Way We Live.” Topics across 54 episodes have included the Declaration of Independence’s deleted passage on slavery, Sen. Joseph McCarthy and his nonexistent “list” of communist conspirators in government, an early map of cholera contamination and more. A recent, all-too-timely episode was about the . Over 500,000 downloads. Read more at UW News. For more information, contact Janes at jwj@uw.edu.

* * *

College of Education podcasts on coronavirus, early learning, climate change and more

Dustin Wunderlich, marketing and communications director for the college, produces podcasts with faculty members and students to discuss their research or publications.

He has produced podcasts about college sports, disability studies, climate science education, culturally sustaining pedagogies and education priorities in the Washington state Legislature, and other topics. . The college also has published a list of its top .

A recent episode, released in mid-March, was an with UW assistant professor of education, about the coronavirus threatening to increase inequalities in early learning.

For more information, contact Wunderlich at dwunder@uw.edu.

***

Events and lectures as podcasts: Jackson School’s Ellison Center 听

Some UW units are recording events and lectures and making them available in podcast form.

Among these is the in the Jackson School of International Studies. Their most recent recording , is about “Russian Grassroots Activism for the Environment and Beyond.”

For more information, write to reecas@uw.edu.

***

‘Don’t disturb the soil’: UW’s David Montgomery discusses ‘regenerative farming’ on ‘Undark’

, UW professor of earth and space sciences, was part of a discussion of soil health and “regenerative farming” on the podcast “.” In each episode, the series explores a topic at the intersection of science and society. This episode was titled “.”

The discussion in January with podcast host Lydia Chain and Seattle-based journalist Eilis O’Neill focused on how regenerative farming practices can improve the health of soil on farms. Scientists, policymakers and manufacturers, they noted, not only disagree on what regenerative farming can accomplish, they even disagree on its exact meaning.

Montgomery defined it with three central rules. First, he said, “Stop tilling, stop plowing. 鈥hen you plow a field, it’s highly disruptive. Think, you know, if only of what it does to the worms in the soil to plow them up.”

Second, he suggested farmers should always be growing something, to keep a living root in the soil. Finally, they should plant diverse crops, either in rotation or all at once.

“That combination is the recipe for building up soil organic matter, building up life in the soil,” Montgomery said.

His last book, on the same subject, “,” was published in 2017.

For more information, contact Montgomery at bigdirt@uw.edu.

UW Notebook is a section of the UW News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 天美影视传媒. Read all posts here.

offers a quick chuckle, then gets to the business of exploring the 105-year history of IRS Form 1040 鈥� the most infamous of tax forms 鈥� in a new installment of his popular podcast series, “.”

Janes, an associate professor in the 天美影视传媒 , has been producing installments of the occasional series since 2012. In the podcasts, he explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents both famous and less known.

In this new podcast episode on what he calls “one of the American rites of spring,” Janes briefly reviews the history of American income taxation itself before turning to Form 1040, “the dullest and most mundane of documents 鈥� so deeply ingrained into the national psyche that the mere mention of its number evokes fear and dread.”

The first proposal for an income tax in America was made during the War of 1812, Janes writes, and the first successful implementation came during the Civil War. But Form 1040 didn’t debut until 1914, taking up all of page 3 of the New York Times with a full reproduction 鈥� complete with comma 鈥� as Form “1,040.”

Along the way, Janes briefly explores the history and meaning of what a “form” is, as well as why we use the terms “return” and “file” in our tax preparations.

All of the Documents the Changes the World podcasts are available on the school’s as well as on 鈥� where the series has attracted 460,000 downloads in all. In 2017, Janes turned the series into a book, called “,” published by Rowman & Littlefield.

###

For more about this or any of the Documents that Changed the World podcasts, contact Janes at jwj@uw.edu.

Today, the same body leads the UW faculty in shared governance, advocating for faculty and academic freedom, as well as for how the university makes good as a public good.

It wasn鈥檛 always that way.

鈥淓ighty years ago we didn鈥檛 actually have the clear mandate for these important missions鈥� said , professor of landscape architecture and chair of the Faculty Senate. 鈥淎nd 80 years isn鈥檛 that long.鈥�

On May 18, 1938, UW President called the first meeting of the Faculty Senate to order. In the two decades that followed, the Faculty Senate rapidly evolved and, in 1947, the university president was replaced as chair with an elected faculty member.

In 1956, the Faculty Senate emerged with a 鈥渃onstitution鈥� in the form of the Faculty Code, the framework for shared governance that remains in effect to this day. The accord听affirmed the ideals of shared governance at the UW and was instrumental in cementing trust between the university faculty and the administration.

鈥淎 university is a community of scholars contributing, each according to his own talents and interests, to the transmission and advancement of knowledge,鈥� the Faculty Code says. 鈥淎 university administration must seek wisely and diligently to advance the common effort, and the strength of a university is greatest when its faculty and administration join for the advancement of common objectives.鈥�

During the past 80 years, the Faculty Senate has solidified academic freedom as a core value, Way said.

Today, the Faculty Senate does much more than oversee the curriculum. It contributes to leading the university on many fronts, Way said. The chair joins the Provost and the President in decision making that impacts the wellbeing of the university as a whole.

鈥淯W鈥檚 Faculty Senate is part of that leadership group,鈥� Way said. 鈥淭he Faculty Senate here said, 鈥榊es, we鈥檙e in charge of curriculum, we鈥檙e in charge of our discipline, we are the ones who pursue academics,鈥� but if we鈥檙e not also part of the discussion around finances of the institution as a whole, around our relationship with the state and the legislature, all of this, we can鈥檛 really do what we do as teachers and scholars.鈥�

The UW Faculty Senate is a great example of the role faculty should 鈥� and can 鈥� play in shared governance, said Provost .

鈥淭he Faculty Senate is thoughtful, analytical and devoted to the institution 鈥� and willing to work with administration in identifying, pursuing and achieving important UW goals,鈥� Baldasty said. 鈥淎s provost, I鈥檝e found the Faculty Senate to be an important partner in this work.鈥�

The Faculty Senate is a democratic institution with 143 elected members and a chair who serves a one-year term. Way鈥檚 term ends on July 31, 2018. She鈥檒l be replaced by Dr. , a professor of radiation oncology who served as vice chair for the 2017-18 academic year. , a professor at the Information School, has been elected to replace Sandison as vice chair.

鈥淥ne of the remarkable things about our system of shared governance is its breadth and comprehensiveness. Faculty from all three campuses are represented in the Faculty Senate and serve on our university faculty councils,鈥� said , an associate professor at UW Tacoma and former chair of the Faculty Senate. 鈥淢ost important, just as we have federal, state and local government, faculty at the UW benefit from the opportunity to help govern the affairs of their own academic units, their school, college or campus, and the university as a whole.鈥�

Faculty enjoy certain rights and privileges, but also have collective responsibility for the stewardship of the institution in collaboration with the administration, at all levels, in our departments, in all schools and colleges and across each distinctive campus, Barsness said.

鈥淲e鈥檙e a big, complex institution. If academics are going to be our mission, then the faculty 鈥� the academics 鈥� need to play a role in shared governance,鈥� Way said. 鈥淲e need to have a voice and we need to have a strong contributing role.鈥�

Still, the institution isn鈥檛 static. The senate鈥檚 focus and work has evolved in many ways and continues to change to meet the needs of today鈥檚 students and faculty, Way said.

For example, the senate recently voted to require the tenure and promotion committee to recognize faculty who incorporate diversity into their scholarship. As a result, tenure panels will consider such scholarship when it is submitted in the evaluation of their peers.

鈥淲hat we can鈥檛 say is how you consider it or what the metrics are because that鈥檚 up to the disciplines,鈥� Way said. 鈥淲hat diversity scholarship looks like in the College of Education is going to be different than what it looks like in the School of Law.鈥�

And, like diversity, community-engaged scholarship is increasingly important at the UW, Way said. Shared governance also has catalyzed opportunities for both President to call on the faculty to be more engaged and for disciplines to develop relevant standards. In the middle is the Faculty Senate, which will establish guidelines, similar to diversity, for how faculty should be measured.

Today, the Faculty Senate works to strengthen the university鈥檚 role as a public good, as part of a belief that higher education serves the broader community as does the scholarship and knowledge produced.

鈥淥ur code and culture is going to have to better articulate our role as a public good and our role as having a real impact on our communities,鈥� Way said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 going to change how we do things.鈥�

Way believes the future for academics will be less governed by departmental rules and more focused on what problem the faculty member is trying to solve, be it an equation, social issue or disease. The same holds for students. For students, college will be less about choosing a major, and more about what big issue they鈥檙e trying to address, she said.

That shift brings new challenges to the Faculty Senate as it manages faculty, since they still teach in traditionally structured departments but are engaged in interdisciplinary endeavors to solve broader challenges like population health, homelessness and other complex problems.

鈥淪hared governance is going to be part of figuring out what the university of the future looks like,鈥� Way said.

Faculty governance is evidence that the UW has been changing the way scholarship is passed along from one generation to the next. Looking back at 80 years of shared investment in the UW鈥檚 mission is similar to looking back at careers of faculty and thinking about how it鈥檚 very different to be a faculty today than it was in 1952, Way said.

鈥淚t will continue to change,鈥� Way said. 鈥淥ur careers are changing. The way we do things is changing. Faculty governance is changing.鈥�

###

A novelist’s thoughts on storytelling, a geologist’s soil restoration strategy, an environmentalist’s memoir, a celebration of Latino music influences, a poet’s meditations on her changing city 鈥�

Yes, and a best-selling author’s latest work, a podcast reborn as a book, a collaboration of world-class violists and even tales of brave Icelandic seawomen 鈥� at this festive time of year, 天美影视传媒 faculty creations can make great gifts for the Dawg on your shopping list.

Here鈥檚 a quick look at some gift-worthy books and music created by UW talents in the last year or so 鈥� and a reminder of some perennial favorites.

Charles Johnson, “.” Johnson, National Book Award-winning author of “” and longtime professor of English, discusses his art in a book stemming from a year of interviews. “There is winning sanity here,” the New York Times wrote: “Johnson wants his students to be ‘raconteurs always ready to tell an engaging tale,’ not self-preoccupied neurotics.” Published by .

Marisol Berr铆os-Miranda, Shannon Dudley and Michelle Habell-Pall谩n, ““ An extraordinary exhibit at the Smithsonian and Seattle’s Experience Music Project (now Museum of Pop Culture) comes to life as a book, detailing Latino influence on American popular music from salsa to punk, Chicano rock to the Miami sound. Berrios-Miranda is an affiliate associate professor of ethnomusicology, Dudley an associate professor of music and Habell-Pall谩n an associate professor in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. It’s a dual-language volume 鈥� English on the right side, Spanish on the left. And as a bonus the authors have created an American Sabor on iTunes and Spotify; the book flags specific songs with a playlist icon. Published by 天美影视传媒 Press.

David R. Montgomery, “.” Montgomery, a professor of Earth and space sciences, won praise for his popular 2007 book “.” Several books later he returned in 2017 with this view of environmental restoration based on three ideas 鈥� “ditch the plow, cover up, grow diversity.” said Montgomery’s well-expressed views “will convince readers that soil health should not remain an under-the-radar issue and that we all benefit from embracing a new philosophy of farming.” Published by .

Margaret Willson, Willson is an affiliate associate professor of anthropology and the Canadian Studies Arctic Program. In her years working as a deckhand she came across historic accounts of a woman sea captain known for reading the weather, hauling in large catches and never losing a crew member in 60 years of fishing. “And yet people in Iceland told me there had been few seawomen in their past, and few in their present,” she said. “I found this strange in a country of such purported gender equality. This curiosity led to the research and all that came from it.” Published by .

Estella Leopold, “.” Leopold is professor emeritus of biology and the youngest daughter of , who wrote the 1949 classic of early environmentalism, “.” She returns to scenes of her Wisconsin childhood in this follow-up, describing her life on the land where her father practiced his revolutionary conservation philosophy. Published by .

David Shields, “.” Shields is a professor of English and the best-selling author of many books, starting with his 1984 novel “.” In 2017 he brought out this collection of essays that the New York Times called “a triumphantly humane book” and him “our elusive, humorous ironist, something like a 21^st century Socrates.” The paper’s praise continued: “He is a master stylist 鈥� and has been for a long time, on the evidence of these pieces from throughout his career. . . All good writers make us feel less alone. But Shields makes us feel better.” Published by .

Joseph Janes, “.” The year 2017 saw Janes’ popular podcast “” become a book under a slightly different title. Janes is an associate professor in the Information School who writes here about the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less known. Some of his favorite “documents” are Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s fictional list of communists, the Fannie Farmer Cookbook and the backstory to what’s called the Rosie the Riveter poster. Published by .

Frances McCue, Well-known Seattle poet, teacher and self-described “arts instigator,” McCue is a senior lecturer in English. She was a co-founder of Hugo House, a place for writers, and served as its director for 10 years. Those experiences fuel this book of poems about the changing nature of the city. “This is Seattle. A place to love whatever’s left,” she writes. Published by .

Scott L. Montgomery, “.” Scientific research that doesn鈥檛 get communicated effectively to the public may as well not have happened at all, says geoscientist Montgomery in this second volume of a popular 2001 book. A prolific writer, Montgomery is a lecturer in the Jackson School of International Studies. “Communicating is the doing of science,” he adds. “Publication and public speaking are how scientific work gains a presence, a shared reality in the world.鈥澨� Published by .

Odai Johnson, “.” The true cultural tipping point in the run-up to the American Revolution, writes Johnson, a professor in the School of Drama, might not have been the Boston Tea Party or even the First Continental Congress. Rather, he suggests, it was Congress’ 1774 decision to close the British American theaters 鈥� a small act but “a hard shot across the bow of British culture.” Published by .

Here are some recordings from 2017 involving faculty in the UW School of Music:

Melia Watras, “.” Music professor Watras offers a collaboration from of world-class violists performing and sharing their own compositions with each other. Her own playing has been described in the press as “staggeringly virtuosic.” Richard Karpen, School of Music director, is among several guests. The title comes from the number of strings on the instruments used: two violas, one violin, and the 14-string viola d’amore. .

Cuong Vu 4-Tet, “.” A live collaboration between Vu, UW Jazz Studies chair, and renowned jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, who is an affiliate professor with the School of Music. Recorded in 2016 at Meany Theater, Vu and Frisell were joined by artists in residence Ted Poor on drums and Luke Bergman on bass. Released on .

Craig Sheppard, “.” Sheppard, longtime professor of music and a world-class pianist, plays sonatas and mazurkas by Frederic Chopin recorded live at Meany Theater in February 2017. The Seattle Times said of an earlier Chopin concert of Sheppard’s that his playing featured “exquisite details 鈥� it was playing that revealed layer after layer of music in each piece, as if one were faceting a gemstone. Released on .

Here are some other notable recent UW-authored books:

• Research on poverty and the American suburbs in “,” by Scott Allard, professor in the Evan School of Public Policy & Governance.
• Literature meets science to contemplate the geologic epoch of humans in “,” co-edited by Jesse Oak Taylor, associate professor of English.
• A popular science exploration of machine learning and the algorithms that help run our lives in “,” by Pedro Domingos, professor of computer science and engineering.
• A close look at four of America’s electoral adventures in “” by Margaret O’Mara, professor of history.
• A fully revised second edition of Earth and space sciences professor Darrel Cowan’s popular 1984 book, “.” This 378-page paperback is filled with details about Washington state geology.
• The story of a city’s transition from the Ottoman Empire to Greece in “” by Devin Naar, professor of history and Jewish studies.
• A city that “thinks like a planet” is one both resilient to and ready for the future that the changing Earth will bring, says Marina Alberti, professor in the College of Built Environments in “.
• Todd London, professor and director of the School of Drama, follows the professional theater experiences of 15 actors from the 1995 class of Harvard’s American Repertory Theater in “.”
• Dr. Stephen Helgerson, a UW School of Public Health alumnus and physician in preventive medicine for four decades, uses the novella form to tell of the influenza epidemic’s arrival in his state in “.”
• On the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, an exploration of faith that results in the common good in 鈥�,鈥� co-authored by Steve Pfaff, professor of sociology.
• Calm down from holiday 鈥� and tech-induced stresses 鈥� by thinking mindfully with “” by communication professor David Levy.

Finally, still-popular and pertinent books from a few years back include the second edition of “” by Jeffrey Ochsner, professor of architecture; “” by Randlett with Frances McCue; “” by Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences; and the ever-popular “” by Bill Holm, professor emeritus of art history. All of these were published by , which has many other great titles.

Forty years ago this month, Planet Earth said hello to the cosmos with the launch of the two probes that used gravity to swing from world to world on a grand tour of the solar system. Each bore a two-sided, 12-inch, gold-plated copper “Golden Record” of sights and sounds from Earth and its people 鈥� and a stylus to help play the record.

About 20 billion kilometers (about 12 陆 billion miles) from home now, Voyager I has since become the most distant human-made object in space. Voyager 2, in clear second place, is now about 17.2 billion kilometers away.

You could call the Golden Record a sort of intergalactic greeting card, love letter, map or time capsule 鈥� even humankind’s most epic mixtape.

“It may also be the last surviving human artifact and thus perhaps an ark,” says UW Information School associate professor in a new episode to his ongoing noting the Voyager anniversary.

“It’s all these things and more,” Janes adds. “Though for me the best metaphor is a message in a bottle 鈥� likely the ultimate message in a bottle.”

In the podcast series 鈥� 鈥� Janes explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents both famous and less-known.

In this new, Voyager-inspired episode, Janes discusses the planning and creation of the Golden Record, which was the brainchild of , the world-famous Cornell University physicist who led the group that built two records and decided what information they should carry, to represent Earth to the universe.

Janes is a longtime fan of Sagan and his work: “I saw Cosmos on PBS in 1980 and was hooked, both on the mysteries of the universe and our presence in it,” he says, discussing the podcast episode. “And on the whole idea of public intellectualism 鈥� that it’s OK to be smart and articulate and thoughtful and forceful, in not only educating but advocating for science and reason.”

Sagan’s group, he says, decided early on that the language of science would be the best common means of communication, and so included on the records images to reflect basic scientific concepts and symbols “to establish mathematical and physical bases, then images of the sun and solar system.

“The first image, meant to help in the decoding process, is a circle, which I don鈥檛 think the designers ever fully appreciated for its beauty, simplicity and unity,” Janes says.

Music and sounds sent include Bach, gamelan music, Senegalese percussion, a Pygmy girl’s initiation song, Australian Aboriginal songs, and more. Rock and roll was represented by Chuck Berry’s guitar-fueled classic, “.”

The organizers were nearly all Western, Caucasian men.

“The choices they made are imperfect, as they would be in any case,” Janes says. “But they also bear the stamp of a small group of people who genuinely wanted to do well in encapsulating the human experience for anybody who might care to listen, beyond the stars or here at home.”

Even Sagan may never have dreamed that the records would really find aliens. But we can hope. And as Janes says in the podcast, “Bound up in the attempt is one of the most basic of human desires 鈥� to be remembered and understood.”

The Voyager spacecraft, not aimed at anything in particular now, continue to speed away from Earth at about 40,000 miles per hour.

And so the Golden Records take their place among Janes’ Documents that Changed the World.

Will they go on to become documents that change other worlds?

Only time 鈥� “billions and billions of years,” as Sagan might have said 鈥� will tell.

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For more information about Janes or his work, contact him at jwj@uw.edu.

• .
• .
• Learn about the PBS documentary ““

A popular podcast by of the 天美影视传媒 Information School is now a book. “” is being published this month by Rowman & Littlefield.

Since 2012 Janes, an associate professor, has written and produced episodes of a podcast about the origin and often evolving meaning of documents. The podcast, “Documents that Changed the World,” has prompted about 350,000 iTunes .

In the podcasts, Janes explored documents as disparate as the , the , Florida’s , Webster’s , Alfred Nobel’s and President Barack Obama’s only . His inquiries go back to 2300 BCE and are as recent as Pope Benedict XVI’s , in 2013.

“What will you learn here?” Janes asks in his introduction. “Who can say, though I can tell you what you’ll find.” Readers will discover, as Janes did in his research:

• Why we use Roman numerals for Super Bowls, royalty and Olympiads
• Why every kitchen store sells measuring cups and spoons
• Why an attempt to help people vote more easily in one community may have altered the entire history of a nation
• Why about 5 percent of all the research projects you hear about aren’t what they seem to be.

“There is evil here, too,” he adds, “lurking forever in the shadows of the ‘ and of communists in U.S. government” 鈥� the latter being an example of a life-changing document that never actually existed.

Janes is clear that he approaches his topics as an educator, librarian and information scientist 鈥� but not as a trained historian or journalist.

“I know about documents. I swim in them daily,” Janes writes in the introduction. “I look at the world through information-colored glasses.

“So while most people would see the Rosetta Stone as a monumental object that has survived the centuries to represent its culture, I want to know what it says, how it got written and what happened to it.”

A main motivation for the book, he writes, is “to help people understand the breadth and reach of what documents are and can be and are becoming, and the power they have in our lives individually and as communities and societies.”

Janes answered a few questions about the book, its origins and mission.

How did Documents that Changed the World, the podcast series on which this is based, come about?

This is a great example of an idea that was probably swimming around in my head for a couple of decades before it finally emerged whole a few years ago. I鈥檝e long had an interest in the forms and genres of information, how they change, evolve, emerge and fade away, and the podcast (an intriguing documentary form in and of itself) seemed a great medium for telling those stories in an engaging and accessible way.

You expand the definitions of a “document” here, to include such items as the famous 1963 Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination or even the 1987 AIDS Quilt. Why do you see these, too, as documents?

As someone trained both as a professional librarian and as an information scientist, I鈥檓 used to thinking very broadly about what a “document” is, or can be, but not everybody does.听 Say “document” to most people and they’ll think something grandiose like the Bill of Rights or Magna Carta, or something everyday like a memo or contract. All of which is true, but there are lots of things that “document” something, either intentionally or unintentionally, and those all form part of the record of us individually and collectively.

So yes, the Zapruder film and the AIDS quilt, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the sketch of the Space Needle that everybody knows about but nobody seems to have, or even Joseph McCarthy’s “list” 鈥� that never existed 鈥� of communists in the State Department; they’re all part of the document story.

How far do you think the definition of a “document” reaches 鈥� or may reach 鈥� here in the digital age?

The idea of what a document is or can be continues to change with technology, as we moved from clay to papyrus to print to film and vinyl and magnetic media and now progressively digital. So many of the documentary forms I cover in the book began as analog (the X-ray, the scholarly journal, the dictionary, maps, letters, telegrams, checks and so on) and most if not all of those now have digital versions which are superior and increasingly frequently used.

And yet many things persist in print.听 Alfred Nobel’s will, Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Catherine Brewer’s diploma, are all physical objects, and it’s difficult, so far, to comfortably think of those kinds of things being digital-only, for reasons legal, sentimental, and otherwise.

Of all the episodes that became chapters in your book, what are some favorites, and why?

Who can pick a favorite? Well, hard as it is, there are some I鈥檓 particularly proud of.听 The not-real “letters of transit” from “Casablanca,” not only because I’m a classic film fan, but also the rich history of travel documents I got to dig into. The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, for her surprising backstory, and because I used my grandmother鈥檚 1906 second edition as inspiration. The “We Can Do It!” poster, universally assumed to be Rosie the Riveter, but she isn’t 鈥� except she now is.听 And perhaps the one that stays with me more than others is the very first, the oldest one: the , a 4300-year-old Sumerian hymn composed by the high priestess Enheduanna, who is widely considered the first known author; a breathtaking concept.

What has been the listener reaction to the podcast since you started in 2012?

Very positive; I love hearing from people who discover these and then start binge-listening.听 I鈥檓 struck by the ones that have become the most popular, “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the Book of Mormon, and also by the one which freshmen students voted for in two different seminars as the one they most wanted to dive into:听 the 18 陆-minute gap from the Watergate tapes.听 Maybe they were onto something.

What do you know now that you didn’t know before you started this project five years ago?

Besides how to record and edit a sound file, and compose digital music, and make something I do in my office at home sound terrific? After exploring several dozen of these documents and forms, some patterns emerged:听 the importance of individual people (who gave us Robert’s Rules and the Richter scale and the 1854 cholera map and the year 2000 “butterfly” ballot) for their persistence and vision and occasional mistakes which profoundly changed so many parts of our lives.

Each of these documents is created or used for some reason, to fulfill some social role, to exert some kind of power, and that shoots through all of human history in ways large and small, every minute of every day.

What would you hope readers will take away from this book?

I hope people come away feeling that they learned something important and valuable 鈥� and enjoyed themselves. I鈥檝e been trying to achieve that in my teaching for over 30 years, and this project feels like yet another way to do that.

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For more information about “Documents that Changed the Way We Live,” contact Janes at jwj@uw.edu.

Timing is everything, they say. In the latest episode of his podcast series, of the UW Information School explores how an overload of critical information helped trigger the stock market crash of 1929, and thus the Great Depression.

“This is a story about fortunes lost, lives ruined, a world plunged into a decade of depression, the end of an era,” Janes says in the podcast. “And, a story of infrastructure. And like any infrastructure, nobody pays any attention 鈥� until it goes wrong.”

In the podcasts, Janes, an iSchool associate professor, explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents both famous and less known. UW Today presents these occasionally, and all of the podcasts are available online at the iSchool .

Janes focuses here on the information itself, as provided by the stock market ticker tape. Introduced in 1867, the ticker tape was just a specialty telegraph printer for stock transactions. Its use skyrocketed, and by 1887, fully 87 percent of Western Union’s total revenue came from stock traders and, in a suitable pairing, racetrack gamblers. With the ticker providing near-real-time updates on transactions, Janes says, “financial information was now in the hands of the many.”

By the late 1920s, however, it was becoming apparent that this technology, moving at 300 characters a second, could not keep up with dramatically increasing trading volume, which reached into the millions daily. People knew that the ticker was suffering delays and unable to keep up 鈥� but with profits pouring in, it was hard to care.

“On October 21, things started to turn,” Janes says.

“When it started to fall, and the ticker fell behind, and then when it became clear that things were getting worse fast, it was the not knowing 鈥� and moreover not knowing what you didn’t know 鈥� that helped to fuel the panic,” Janes says in the podcast.

The stock ticker ran 152 minutes late on Oct. 29, 1929, the day most associated with the crash. The crisis deepened over the months until a share of U.S. Steel bought at $262 in the high times of summer 1929 was worth all of $22 by the summer of 1932.

Janes said the episode was inspired by his reading of 听John Kenneth Galbraith’s book “,” where he learned of the ticker tape delays
“and how that helped to feed the growing sense of panic.” The book served as a starting point for his research.

In preparing the podcast, Janes said, he was surprised how even in 1929 there was such a focus on “immediacy and timeliness of information in the market.” An effort was underway to speed up the transmission of information, he adds, but it didn’t get there in time.

All of which makes this, as he says in the podcast, “an unusual example of a document that is likely simultaneously the record and cause of events.”

So, this is a story of infrastructure, but also, Janes says, “a business story, a technology story, even a psychology story. To me, though, the critical aspect here is the information itself, the numbers and symbols tumbling out on the little strip of tape spelling doom for a way of life for so many.”

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To learn more about this or any of the Documents that Changed the World podcasts, contact Janes at jwj@uw.edu.

The subject of latest is close to the heart of many academic researchers: the threshold for “statistical significance” 鈥� and the man who, in a “surprisingly offhand manner,” set that mark for ages afterward at 5 percent, no more no less.

The man in question is English statistician and world-class evolutionary biologist , and the document is his 1925 book, “Statistical Methods for Research Workers.” It embraces the question: How certain of something do you have to be in order to say it is likely so; or as Janes writes, “How much likelihood, what probability of a result being wrong, we should be willing to live with.”

Modern researchers, he said, would refer to the threshold as “as a p level of .05, a 5 percent probability that a research result doesn鈥檛 indicate a real effect but rather comes from some random source.”

In the podcast series, Janes, an associate professor in the UW , explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less known. All the podcasts are available online through the iSchool , and on , where the series has more than 250,000 downloads.

Janes, who has taught statistics and quantitative methods courses for many years, said he knows the topic so well he found the episode challenging to craft without overwhelming the listener or skipping “what I thought were important details.”

Still, even he found more to know about Fisher: “I didn’t know all the fine details and particularly the rather offhand nature of how his musings wound up becoming hard and fast strictures in the emerging field of statistical analysis,” Janes said.

Crucially, Janes notes that “when you have a hard and fast rule, it’s hard and fast, so a study result that just makes it across the line, winding up with a p value of .0499, gets to be called ‘statistically significant,’ and one that falls just short, with .0501, doesn’t.” Though he quickly adds that studies in the medical and pharmaceutical fields often have much more stringent thresholds, at 1 percent or even a tenth of a percent, because they involve the health and safety of the public.

Listen to the podcast to learn more about the man, as Janes writes, “whose work and ideas you’ve probably never heard of but who has had an effect on nearly every statistical study 鈥� and the way we understand the way we understand the world 鈥� for nearly a century.”

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To learn more about this or any of the Documents that Changed the World podcasts, contact Janes at jwj@uw.edu.

It’s twilight time for printed dictionaries, whose word-filled bulk weighed down desks, held open doors and by turns inspired and intimidated writers searching for the perfect word.

Lexicography 鈥� the making of dictionaries 鈥� has gone digital. Though a few are still published, the dictionary’s time as printed, bound documents is almost up.

In this meantime, turns the attention of his podcast series to the man as firmly identified with dictionaries as Hershey is with chocolate, , and the 70,000-word “American Dictionary of the English language” he published in 1828. It was one of the last dictionaries to be compiled by a single person.

In the podcasts, Janes, an associate professor in the UW , explores the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less known. All the podcasts are available online through the iSchool , and on , where the series has more than 250,000 downloads.

Webster, who lived from 1758 to 1843, was at times a failed farmer, an uninspired teacher, a state representative, a co-founder of Amherst College, a copyright advocate and a friend of George Washington once dubbed by biographer as a “forgotten founding father.” He was also a Federalist and dedicated revolutionary who deeply loved his country.

Though the first English dictionary dates back to 1604, it was Webster and his 1828 volume that was credited with capturing the language of the new nation. Janes said, “This dictionary was the first serious articulation of American English as it was growing increasingly distinct from the British variety.”

And that was clearly Webster’s intention, as stated in the dictionary’s preface: “Language is the expression of ideas; and if the people of one country cannot preserve an identity of ideas, they cannot retain an identity of language.”

Webster was also enthusiastic about spelling reform, Janes notes. “He had more luck there than most; we have him to thank for Americanized spellings of ‘favor,’ and ‘theater’ and ‘defense'” as well as the word “Americanize” itself,” Janes says. “But he didn’t get away with ‘tung,’ ‘ake’ or dropping the final ‘e’ from words like ‘doctrine.'”

Words define languages, Janes says, and in turn languages help to define cultures and societies.

“And people define words, as the last man who tried to define them all himself knew 鈥� in the process trying also to define and distinguish his developing nation.”

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For more about this or any of the Documents that Changed the World podcasts, contact Janes at jwj@uw.edu.

Previous installments of the 鈥淒ocuments that Changed the World鈥� series