Humanities Librarian

Library Journal - Taiga Forum Holds Inaugural Meeting in Chicago

2006-06-07T10:35:00.000-04:00

Library Journal - Taiga Forum Holds Inaugural Meeting in Chicago: "Paul Duguid, coauthor of The Social Life of Information, discussed the trade-off between openness of information (�la Wikipedia) and quality of information. Using three examples from the open source world, he demonstrated how variations in user-contributed data affect accuracy and accessibility. For instance, in the music database Gracenote, multiple user entries for composer (e.g., Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) force users to make their own authority control decisions. In digitizing the novel Tristram Shandy, Project Gutenberg contributors deferred making choices about how to show intentional blank and black pages and footnotes. And, finally, in an entertaining look at Wikipedia, Duguid revealed the edit wars over the biographical entry on Daniel Defoe, with writers adding and deleting his role as a spy. These examples highlighted how the library's traditional role as an arbiter of quality is being challenged by Google and open source content projects."

New College of California "On the Silk Road to Iran"

2006-06-03T06:11:00.000-04:00

New College of California "On the Silk Road to Iran": "The purpose of this trip is to follow in the footsteps of those who throughout the centuries have traveled to Iran in order to broaden their world perspectives. The itinerary will include the classical centers of Persian culture such as Shiraz and Isfahan, but will also explore the cultures of the Caspian provinces of Gilan and Mazandaran. With the trekking across the deserts of the Silk Road of the Iranian Plateau, the crossing of stunning mountain ranges to the exploration of the lush green subtropical Caspian littoral plain, the spectacular diversity of Iran will be experienced.

The trip is organized in such a way that complements the students' study of interdisciplinary humanities by developing insights into Islamic art and architecture, Islamic mysticism, ancient Persian civilization, environmental activism, Persian poetry, Iranian handicrafts, Islamic revolutionary theory and practice, as well as the Iranian response to globalization."

ArchiveGrid -- Open the door to history

2006-03-06T12:39:00.000-04:00

ArchiveGrid -- Open the door to history: "ArchiveGrid is an important destination for searching through historical documents, personal papers, and family histories held in archives around the world.

Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies."

Elevating the Graphic Novel

2006-03-06T11:41:00.000-04:00

Gale - Articles - 2006 - 03 - Elevating the Graphic Novel: "The biggest phenomenon in publishing over the last several years hasn’t been Oprah’s Book Club, a new fad diet, or even Dan Brown’s “The DaVinci Code”. In fact, a good argument could be made that the hottest publishing trend in the 2000s involves the careful combination of pictures and words in a form that strives to break free from its discredited past: the graphic novel."

Juilliard Receives Music Manuscript Collection - New York Times

2006-03-06T10:55:00.000-04:00

Juilliard Receives Music Manuscript Collection - New York Times

WSJ.com - Portals Exchange

2006-03-06T07:32:00.000-04:00

WSJ.com - Portals Exchange

Sir Peter Strawson - Comment - Times Online

2006-02-15T16:09:00.000-04:00

Sir Peter Strawson - Comment - Times Online: "However, his next book, Individuals (1959), a study of substance concepts, is one of the masterpieces of analytic philosophy. Building on insights from Aristotle, Strawson was able to discern, behind the surface variegation of natural languages, certain comparatively (and explicably) firm and permanent features of our natural “conceptual scheme”. He was then able to describe what he had discerned in prose whose rhythms respond perfectly to the camber of his argument, and whose balanced periods attain a Mozartian grace."

Guardian Unlimited | Obituaries | Sir Peter Strawson

2006-02-15T15:52:00.000-04:00

Guardian Unlimited | Obituaries | Sir Peter Strawson: "Oxford was the world capital of philosophy between 1950 and 1970, and American academics flocked there, rather than the traffic going the other way. That golden age had no greater philosopher than Sir Peter Strawson, who has died aged 86."

P.F. Strawson 1919-2006

2006-02-15T15:46:00.000-04:00

Telegraph | News: "Sir Peter Strawson, who died on Monday aged 86, was a leading light amongst the philosophers concentrated at Oxford during the 1950s and 1960s;"

One former pupil, Bryan Magee, said: "No sooner would I have completed an assertion to him, however small or light, than I would find myself backed up against a wall and the bullets would be smacking about my head."

'The great divide' by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad | Prospect Magazine February 2006 issue 119

2006-02-02T17:04:00.000-04:00

Cover story: 'The great divide' by Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad | Prospect Magazine February 2006 issue 119: "Cinema, literature and other aspects of western culture are increasingly open to Asian influence. Not so western philosophy, which remains almost entirely sealed off from eastern traditions. Why? Institutionalised parochialism on the part of western philosophers and a loss of nerve among Asian thinkers"

>-- The Garden of Forking Paths --<: Frankfurt on Bullshit

2006-02-02T15:36:00.000-04:00

Frankfurt on Bullshit

Philosopher, 65, Lectures Not About 'What Am I?' but 'What Is I?' - New York Times

2006-02-02T13:21:00.000-04:00

Philosopher, 65, Lectures Not About 'What Am I?' but 'What Is I?' - New York Times: "Mr. Kripke looks the way a philosopher ought to look: pink-faced, white-bearded, rumpled, squinty. He carries his books and papers in a plastic shopping bag from Filene's Basement."

A Hundred Books in Your Pocket

2006-01-22T07:27:00.000-04:00

Hmm.

WSJ.com - A Hundred Books in Your Pocket: "The e-book is back. So are the technophobes who swear it'll never catch on. They were right last time, and they might be right this time, too. Sooner or later, though, they'll be wrong -- and when they are, your life will change."

Bush Proposes Broader Language Training - New York Times

2006-01-12T15:23:00.000-04:00

Bush Proposes Broader Language Training - New York Times
Ready to buy books in Chinese and Arabic?

Article on Teaching Web Evaluation in History

2005-12-19T12:38:00.000-04:00

An article on teaching web evaluation in history.
JAHC: Journal of the Association for History and Computing

Notable thefts of rare books and documents

2005-12-12T07:43:00.000-04:00

Lexington Herald-Leader | 12/11/2005 | Notable thefts of rare books and documents: Notable thefts of rare books and documents

Narnia Frenzy

2005-12-12T07:42:00.000-04:00

QCTimes.com - The Quad-City Times Newspaper: "C.S. Lewis scholarship has long been viewed as kind of fuddy-duddy-retro in academe, populated mostly by enthusiasts toiling away at religious colleges who often come to the massive Lewis output with an appreciation for its Christian message. “There is the feeling that it would be relegated to a corner,” says Christine Mather, a Lewis scholar and a lecturer in gender studies at Vanderbilt University, “that it would be a lesser area of study for a lesser scholar.”

Not now. Narnia Studies, with a minor in Harry Potter, are hot. “My goodness,” says Christopher Mitchell, director of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, which houses the most comprehensive collection of Lewis material in the world. “There is a ton of stuff coming out right now. It’s a publishing frenzy. Everyone is trying to capitalize on the movie.”"

Princeton Islamic Documents

2005-12-12T07:41:00.000-04:00

The Bryan-College Station Eagle > Faith & Values: "Numbering more than 10,000 texts, Princeton University's collection of handwritten Islamic documents, books and letters is the largest in North America. They date from the eighth and ninth centuries - soon after the faith was founded - to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s; most have gone unseen outside New Jersey for nearly a century."

Amazon.com: The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection: More than 1000 of the Greatest Classics: Books

2005-11-11T11:59:00.000-04:00

I was looking up a title in Amazon and noticed you can buy the complete Penguin Classics Library for $8,000.
Amazon.com: The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection: More than 1000 of the Greatest Classics: Books

ACRLog � Blog Archive � Evolving Discourse Communities

2005-10-13T16:17:00.000-04:00

ACRLog � Blog Archive � Evolving Discourse Communities: "An article that has been discussed recently on the ILI-L discussion list (sponsored by the Instruction Section of ACRL) is well worth reading."

New Books on Atheism

2005-10-03T17:00:00.000-04:00

I'm selecting a few of these for our collection, probably Wolfe, Baggini and Wielenberg, maybe Harbour.

BOOKFORUM | Oct/Nov 2005: "Taken collectively, the writing of the new atheists offers a set of promising ideas. Harris, for all his negative energy, provides a potentially rich idea about mysticism, as cultivated in Eastern religions, as a 'rational enterprise.' In Buddhism, he argues, reaching beyond the self has been carefully and closely described and need not be left to faith but may be empirically studied. Baggini's rejection of dogma and militancy on all sides is not only refreshing but intellectually important; Wielenberg talks about the possible contribution of neuroscience to a future secular ethics. But by far the most important idea contained in these books is Harbour's effort to cast the discussion as a matter of worldviews."

Academia and Asperger's

2005-09-13T11:18:00.000-04:00

The Chronicle: 9/16/2005: Nutty Professors: "academe appeals particularly to introspective, narcissistic, obsessive characters who occasionally suffer from mood disorders or other psychological problems."

Academic librarians often have to deal with people of various levels of personality quirks, both as patrons and as colleagues. This article raises interesting ethical questions about Asperger's syndrome in academia.

What Happens To Librarians On Weekends

2005-09-11T11:20:00.000-04:00

Pre Ride
Originally uploaded by Marc Meola.

Unraveling the Narrative

2005-09-07T05:25:00.000-04:00

The Chronicle: 9/9/2005: Unraveling the Narrative: "In his forthcoming book, Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man (University of Georgia Press, October), Mr. Carretta lays out his controversial evidence as part of a detailed examination of Equiano's successive identities. Though the professor offers a caveat that absolute proof of Equiano's origins might never be found, his argument has already persuaded some."

Chronicle Profiles Philosopher Joshua Knobe

2005-08-31T04:38:00.000-04:00

This is interesting. I'm not sure I fully understand why the people in the experiments say what they say or what it really means about intention and morality. I'd like to read the full paper. (And how the heck did he come up with this experiment?)

The Chronicle: 9/2/2005: Lessons From the Park: "He approached people in New York City's Washington Square Park, asking them to read two short paragraphs about a profit-hungry corporate leader who wants to pursue a certain business strategy. In the first example, the businessman is told that a side effect of the strategy is that it will harm the environment. But the businessman says he doesn't care, and sure enough, when he pursues the strategy, the environment is harmed.

In the second example, the businessman is told that a side effect of his strategy is that the environment will be helped. He says he doesn't care, and sure enough, when he pursues the strategy the environment is helped.

After each scenario, Mr. Knobe asked people: Did the corporate leader intentionally harm the environment? Did he intentionally help it?

Philosophers have reasoned that questions of whether someone did something intentionally are entirely about the actor's state of mind. When asked these hypothetical questions, conventional wisdom says most people would agree the corporate leader did not intentionally help or harm the environment.

But Mr. Knobe found that people's views of intentions depend on the outcome. People in the park said that the businessman did not intentionally help the environment, but that he did intentionally harm it.

'Groundbreaking' Work

'Joshua went out and did these experiments, showing that at least one common-sense psychological concept -- doing something intentionally -- isn't really a descriptive concept, it's a moral concept,' says Mr. Stich. 'Part of people's judgments about whether you act intentionally is what they take to be the moral status of what you've done.'"

View From Reference Desk

2005-08-30T13:50:00.000-04:00

View From Reference Desk
Originally uploaded by Marc Meola.

Yesterday we opened to the public and today was my first day at the reference desk. My first question was about a catalog message--"check at reference desk for availability." Subsequent questions were mostly directional, with "where can I print" being a popular one. I saw a few faculty with big smiles on their faces.

Moving In!

2005-08-24T10:02:00.000-04:00

IMG_1717
Originally uploaded by Marc Meola.

Yesterday was our first day back at work in the new library! Today I'm still unpacking boxes and getting oriented.

Posner on Blogs

2005-08-03T06:03:00.000-04:00

A wide ranging article by Richard Posner on media and blogs. I hope ALA President and blog basher Michael Gorman reads this. (Although I'm not sure about that keeping tabs on the troublemakers part.)

Bad News - New York Times: "Some critics worry that ''unfiltered'' media like blogs exacerbate social tensions by handing a powerful electronic platform to extremists at no charge. Bad people find one another in cyberspace and so gain confidence in their crazy ideas. The conventional media filter out extreme views to avoid offending readers, viewers and advertisers; most bloggers have no such inhibition.

The argument for filtering is an argument for censorship. (That it is made by liberals is evidence that everyone secretly favors censorship of the opinions he fears.) But probably there is little harm and some good in unfiltered media. They enable unorthodox views to get a hearing. They get 12 million people to write rather than just stare passively at a screen. In an age of specialization and professionalism, they give amateurs a platform. They allow people to blow off steam who might otherwise adopt more dangerous forms of self-expression. They even enable the authorities to keep tabs on potential troublemakers; intelligence and law enforcement agencies devote substantial resources to monitoring blogs and Internet chat rooms."

Library Move Update

2005-08-02T13:40:00.000-04:00

The latest as of today:

We are into our 3rd week of moving. The Ps are gone to the new library, the music scores and music reference, as well as music LPs, are gone also. The movers are working on Qs, interfiling as they go with titles from the science reference and old reference locations. They currently are moving QCs and the books on music (ML-MTs). A plan for today is to continue with Qs, and to start moving the art books (LC class N), time permitting. The mover is bringing additional crew tomorrow, so moving and interfiling the bound periodicals will resume, while the existing crew continues with moving the other LC classes of materials..
To summarize:
LC class J, K, L, P, R, S, T, U and V are already in the new library, and unavailable to the public (see an update message from Taras)
LC class M is being moved, as we speak.
LC class N will start later today
LC class Q is being moved, as we speak..
Bound periodicals are due to resume tomorrow.

For July pics:
http://www.tcnj.edu/~library/construction/gallery/july05/index.htm

The Chronicle: Colloquy Live Transcript

2005-07-26T16:24:00.000-04:00

I'm finding a lot of interesting stuff while I'm cleaning out my office. Here's a colloquy on scholarly publishing from 2003.

The Chronicle: Colloquy Live Transcript: "Can scholarly publishing, the bulwark of academic research in the humanities and social sciences, be stabilized? Are any of the solutions being discussed realistic?"

PALINET Library Consortium Supports SEP

2005-07-26T15:46:00.000-04:00

Thanks PALINET.

Philadelphia, PA, July 18, 2005 — PALINET is pleased to support ongoing, free access to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) on behalf of PALINET Members.

PALINET recently joined the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy International Association (SEPIA) for all of its member institutions. All dues for membership will be used to match the NEH Challenge Grant, with all funds placed into an endowment exclusively for the SEP.

By choosing to endorse this worthy endeavor — i.e. contributing the maximum recommended amount over a three-year period to SEPIA — PALINET supports the open-access publishing initiative that ensures all its members can benefit from the continued availability of this unique philosophy resource.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu) is an authoritative, comprehensive Web-based reference work about philosophy, useful to scholars of all levels as well as the general public. Published through Stanford University’s Center for the Study of Language and Information, the Encyclopedia’s refereed entries are created and maintained by hundreds of experts from the international philosophy community.

MLAIB Integrated into Literature Online

2005-07-13T16:41:00.000-04:00

Now you can go to one place and get results from both ABELL (Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature) and MLAIB (Modern Language Association International Bibliography)! This is almost as big as golf pencils at the Reference Desk! For a demo
and more information go here:
http://lion.chadwyck.com/infoCentre/contents.jsp

Literature Online - Quick Search: List of Results:

MLAIB Armstrong, Philip: ''Leviathan Is a Skein of Networks': Translations of Nature and Culture in Moby-Dick' ELH, (71:4), 2004 Winter, 1039-63. (2004)

ABELL Boyle, Nicholas.: 'Sacred and secular scriptures: a Catholic approach to literature.'
London: Darton, Longman & Todd; Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame UP in assn with Field Day, 2004. pp. 299. (2004)

Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry from Manuscript Sources

2005-07-11T09:42:00.000-04:00

Early Stuart Libels

The Chronicle: 7/8/2005: The Uses of Libel: "In that, it may be on the leading edge of a new, electronic approach to studying and disseminating source material. 'This edition seeks in many ways to be a pathbreaking endeavor,' the editors note in their introduction. 'The electronic medium ... provides a superb opportunity to offer scholarly editions of works otherwise largely inaccessible or unknown to both the academic community and the layperson alike.'

There is no charge to access Early Stuart Libels, which can be either browsed online or downloaded. Users can search for poems by first line, by proper name cited, or by manuscript source, or they can browse through sections devoted to specific incidents or episodes, such as Cecil's death and the so-called Addled Parliament of June 1614. Annotations accompany each poem to help the nonspecialist navigate period references.

Anthony Grafton, a professor of history at Princeton University, says the online work may help expand the definition of what counts as a scholarly publication. For one thing, he says, it is more fully annotated than many publishers can afford to make print editions. Those notes help make Early Stuart Libels 'a very useful set of texts,' he says. 'These were things that were not all that accessible.'

The collection also reflects a growing sympathy over the past two decades between historians and literary critics. In the wake of work by Stephen Greenblatt and the New Historicists, who argued that literary works are better understood in their historical context, the two disciplines have been paying closer attention to one other."

MLA International Bibiography - Search: Standard

2005-07-06T16:47:00.000-04:00

Our MLAIB search interface has changed. We now should be able to perform integrated searches of MLAIB and Literature Online.
MLA International Bibiography - Search: Standard

Literature Online

TCNJ Library Catalog Enhancements

2005-07-06T13:05:00.000-04:00

Firefox browser search plugins are available here. These allow you to search the TCNJ Library Catalog from a drop-down menu in the upper right hand corner of the Firefox web browser. Still using Internet Explorer as your browser? Download Mozilla Firefox immediately!

A New Books Search Tab has been added. This allows you to see books the library has recently acquired.

A More Like This Tab has been added between the Long View tab and the Table of Contents tab. Click on it and check it out!

A Music Score Quick Limit has been added to limit searches to scores.

Survival Strategies for Academic Publishing

2005-07-06T13:03:00.000-04:00

This article lays out the crisis in scholarly monograph publishing and the picture is pretty bleak. The author's suggested solutions aren't going to go down well: raise prices, produce less books, give the library and university presses more money. How about addressing one of the root causes, containing journal price inflation through open access peer-reviewed journals?

The Chronicle: 6/17/2005: Survival Strategies for Academic Publishing (Login required)

The field of scholarly book publishing has been shaped by two powerful dynamics that have trapped academic publishers -- and especially American university presses -- in a pincer movement. On the one hand, the kind of book that has been the standard fare of scholarly publishers -- the monograph -- has undergone a process of continuous decline since the 1970s. Experiences vary from publisher to publisher, but the overall pattern is indisputable. In the 1970s, scholarly publishers in both the United States and Britain would commonly print between 2,000 and 3,000 hardback copies of a monograph and expect to sell a substantial proportion (if not all) of them. Scholarly publishing was a relatively straightforward business: For the most part, presses could take the market for granted and concentrate their energies on deciding which books merited publication. But by the 1990s, that comfortable position had been radically transformed. Today most scholarly publishers find that the total sales of hardback-only monographs are often as low as 400 to 500 copies worldwide. As unit sales have fallen to a quarter or less of what they were in the 1970s, what was once a fairly straightforward and profitable kind of publishing has become extremely difficult in financial terms.

Why have monograph sales declined so sharply? Is it because readers are turning to other sources of information like the Internet, as many observers have speculated? The main explanation almost certainly lies elsewhere. Research libraries constitute a principal market for scholarly monographs, and in the course of the 1980s and 1990s they were subjected to intense pressures of their own: the steep rise in the prices of scientific journals and the increasing costs of information technology. Library budgets were limited, and something had to give. In the period from 1986 to 1998-99, the number of monographs purchased annually by research libraries in the United States declined by more than 25 percent. Since academic publishers were also producing more monographs each year, that meant that an ever-increasing range of available titles was competing for a dwindling pool of resources.

At the same time, many American university presses were coming under pressure from another source: their host institutions. In the 1970s and 1980s, some began to find themselves faced with growing pressure to reduce their dependence on direct or indirect subsidies and become more autonomous financially -- "self-supporting" was the term often used. Universities faced their own fiscal constraints, and university presses, with their somewhat ambiguous status (were they academic units or business units?), were obvious targets for financial scrutiny.

WSJ.com - The Hot Major For Undergrads Is Economics

2005-07-05T10:03:00.000-04:00

WSJ.com - The Hot Major For Undergrads Is Economics: "And as its focus broadens, there are even some signs that economics is becoming cool.

In addition to probing the mechanics of inflation and exchange rates, academics now use statistics and an economist's view of how people respond to incentives to study issues such as AIDS, obesity and even terrorism. The surprise best-seller of the spring was 'Freakonomics,' a book co-authored by a University of Chicago economist, Steven Levitt, which examines issues ranging from corruption among real estate agents to sumo wrestling."

Peter Jasco trashes Google Scholar

2005-06-15T05:12:00.000-04:00

Peter Jasco has published a critical review of Google Scholar. He criticizes the citedness scores, the lack of information about the scope, and the mixing of different types of publications.

Gale - Free Resources - Reference Reviews - Peter's Digital Reference Shelf - June: "There are certainly many journals of many publishers covered to keep casual users, high-school and undergrad students, TV talking heads and shallow journalists happy, but for scholarly research the breadth of coverage is not sufficient, the implementation is sloppy and the software options are inferior."

New Scientist 11 steps to a better brain - Features

2005-06-13T10:54:00.000-04:00

I need all the help I can get.
New Scientist 11 steps to a better brain - Features

Advice to future business leaders: study philosophy?

2005-06-13T10:47:00.000-04:00

Articles like this one promoting a liberal arts education for those who want to succeed in business appear every now and then. Do liberal arts courses really develop the habits of mind needed by CEOs and other leaders, or do people who become CEOs have these habits, inclinations, and values already and therefore are more likely to be interested in and take liberal arts courses? Sounds like a job for freakonomics.

CareerJournal | Senior Executives -- Salary Data and Hiring Trends: "'I advise students all the time, 'You've got to have something you can do for a company now. That's what gets you in the door. But if you want to succeed long term, you've got to have a broader range of skills and problem-solving abilities,'' says Robert Kelley, an adjunct management professor at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

'Companies are going to start to look at the fundamental value set of an individual and their basic education. Did they study philosophy and culture and history rather than just accounting, finance and engineering? Fast-forward 20 or 30 years, we're going to find [business leaders] who maybe majored in philosophy rather than business.'"

Silence in the Stacks

2005-06-10T06:27:00.000-04:00

Scott McLemee looks for good, meaty academic librarian blogs with a kind of public intellectual feel and can't find any. He has a point. His proposed solution is an academic librarian group blog. Interesting idea, anyone interested?. Public librarians seem to have gotten out ahead of academic librarians on blogging.

Inside Higher Ed :: Silence in the Stacks: "What seems to be lacking, however, are blogs by academic librarians about the issues specific to their work AS academic librarians. As I tried to indicate in the piece, such a discussion might well have implications of interest to a larger public."

The Hot College in New Jersey These Days - New York Times

2005-06-06T16:02:00.000-04:00

The Hot College in New Jersey These Days - New York Times: "THE brick Georgian-style buildings are surrounded by a sea of neatly manicured lawns. Inside, the small classes are filled with some of the best students New Jersey's high schools have to offer. The college has won a top ranking for northern schools from U.S. News & World Report, and Barron's has rated it 'most competitive.'"

Googling to the Max

2005-05-26T11:43:00.000-04:00

UC Berkeley handouts for Googling to the Max. Class Handouts for teaching web searching

The Chronicle: 5/27/2005: Database Will Hold the Mirror Up to 'Hamlet,' With All Commentary on the Play

2005-05-24T13:45:00.000-04:00

The Chronicle: 5/27/2005: Database Will Hold the Mirror Up to 'Hamlet,' With All Commentary on the Play: "About half of the group's work is available on a free Web site (http://www.hamletworks.org). But readers won't find commentary for most of the play's most famous lines yet, because notes for the first half of the script have not yet been uploaded. The scholars hope to have notes for all 3,474 lines up in the next few months, at which point visitors can better discover the meaning of 'To be, or not to be,' among other passages.

The database is a high-tech advance in what literary scholars call a variorum, an edition with multiple versions and notes by editors and scholars about the work. 'The idea was you could collect everything that's ever been said' about a work, says Mr. Rasmussen. A printed variorum of Hamlet published in 1773 spanned 10 volumes, he says; by 1821 it had reached 21 volumes."

WSJ.com - Scholarly Journals' Premier Status Is Diluted by Web

2005-05-23T10:53:00.000-04:00

WSJ.com - Scholarly Journals' Premier Status Is Diluted by Web May 23, 2005. Subscription required.

Nivi : Greasemonkey will blow up business models (as well as your mind)

2005-05-17T20:55:00.000-04:00

Wow! Nivi : Greasemonkey will blow up business models (as well as your mind): "Greasemonkey can integrate links to your local library’s card catalog right into Amazon."

Anonymity, free speech, and truth

2005-05-13T11:13:00.000-04:00

Does anonymity aid the process of bringing truths to light or does it get in the way? Should people have a right to be anonymous?
Should Blogs be Anonymous?

More questions about anonymity.
How a Web site purporting to uncover fraud shook up the world of poetry contests
Newsweek Flap Spurs Debate over Sources

Google Help : Cheat Sheet

2005-05-13T10:42:00.000-04:00

Thought Google was a "simple" search engine with little functionality? Think again. Homework: memorize the cheat sheet.
Google Help : Cheat Sheet

Film Literature Index >> Home

2005-05-11T06:40:00.000-04:00

Oh mamma! FLI from 1976-2001 is free online. (No, there's no full text you ingrates.) "The FLI Online contains citations from 1976 to 2001. As of now, there are no plans to update this online resource. The FLI Online is currently available free-of-charge." (Hat tip Priscilla Finley UNLV)Film Literature Index >> Home

Wikipedia: See 'Information,' 'Amazing,' 'Anarchy'

2005-05-11T06:20:00.000-04:00

Philosopher Crispin Sartwell on Wikipedia.Wikipedia: See 'Information,' 'Amazing,' 'Anarchy'

CiteULike: A free online service to organise your academic papers

2005-05-11T05:48:00.000-04:00

CiteULike: A free online service to organise your academic papers: "CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there's no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There's no need to install any special software."

European Leaders Propose Digital Library to Counter Google Version

2005-05-11T05:18:00.000-04:00

Europe says: "Google is evil! (But we'll leave the door open on collaboration of course.)" The fear that intellectual content must be digitized and available through google or else face invisibility may be good in that it motivates making more cultural products available through the web. European Leaders Propose Digital Library to Counter Google Version (latimes registration required

Visualize This

2005-05-11T05:06:00.000-04:00

Library Journal - Visualize This: "Visualization tools provide a compact, browsable overview of the search results in the form of topical clusters, graphs, maps, or other devices that convey themes by how they group the results. Instead of scanning a list of results sequentially based on their importance as ranked by the search engine, we can now see what topics are represented in our results and select one or more topical subsets to further explore."

Terry Eagleton on The artists' Wittgenstein

2005-05-05T11:57:00.000-04:00

The artists' Wittgenstein: "Logical positivism was one response to the flatulence of Vienna. "

Aristotle is a hamburger

2005-05-02T15:15:00.000-04:00

I was doing a search on the poet Rumi recently and came across this item in our catalog:

Principal Author: Rumi, Jallaludin
Title: Aristotle is a hamburger
Primary Material: Book

LOCATION: Reserve Desk - 3 Hour Loan
Call Number: 01
Status: Not Checked Out

TCNJ Celebration of Student Achievement

2005-04-28T10:18:00.000-04:00

I went to a few poster sessions and talks at our
Celebration of Student Achievement yesterday. One student linked Shakespeare's Pericles with the Coen bros' Big Lebowski by claiming both Pericles and the Dude were passive heroes--characters who are most efficacious when they are least active. I thought it was interesting how he claimed that the Dude avoided what is sometimes called traditional or hegemonic masculinity while still "keeping his johnson" and maintaining a different sense of manhood. The Dude abides.

Easy Kung-Fu!

2005-04-28T10:01:00.000-04:00

Kung-Fu librarian humorously karate chops students for the errors they make in their MA and PhD theses. Very attractive design for a librarian blog. Here's a nice piece of advice that could be applied to many kinds of academic writing:

4. But I already have friends...
This is an often overlooked problem: your research is based upon a pool of authors/scholars in the exact same field who all refer to one another. It's called incestuous research and involves the "comfort zone" of people whose writings in some way support your own theory inasmuch as they support each others'. You must go beyond the required and/or suggested readings that your professor gives you. Additionally, it's a good idea if you can identify, confront, explain, and logically be able to refute dissenting opinions.

The Kung-Fu Librarian: Nice to meet you slkwerli

The Becker-Posner Blog: Plagiarism--Posner Post

2005-04-27T05:42:00.000-04:00

This analysis of plagiarism by Richard Posner claims that plagiarism by professors is not as serious as plagiarism by students.
The Becker-Posner Blog: Plagiarism--Posner Post

Vaidhyanathanpronounce.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)

2005-04-25T06:21:00.000-04:00

How do you pronounce Siva Vaidyanathan?
Vaidhyanathanpronounce.mp3 (audio/mpeg Object)

ALA Chicago 2005 Main Page - ALA Chicago Wiki

2005-04-25T06:15:00.000-04:00

There's an "unofficial wiki" for ALA Annual in Chicago. ALA Chicago 2005 Main Page - ALA Chicago Wiki

The iPod Goes Collegiate

2005-04-22T06:35:00.000-04:00

The iPod in classes phenomena kind of points to the old idea of students being able to build and even carry around their own personal "library." (Microfiche was once promoted by saying students could have the Library of Congress in a shoebox.) Also raised in this article is the issue of copyright. Not mentioned is that you don't need an iPod to make use of iTunes, freely downloadable software that you can put on your computer to organize your music. You can make your files available over the campus network, which allows other people on campus to listen to your music, but not download it. I have done this, and it's kind of neat listening to other people's music.

The Kept-Up Academic Librarian: The iPod Goes Collegiate

For more on "personal repositories" see the April 19th Emerging Technologies post from Library Web Chic:

First, it raises the question of what is the role of libraries as repositories if each user can create their own personal repository. Second, libraries need to recognize that their role is increasing becoming one of assisting users with personal information collections (a role we already play) and management. We need to be prepared to help users sort through the information that users have collect in their “personal digital library” search it, compare it, evaluate it, manage it, and add to it. We also need to recognize that there is a vast variety of formats of information which users are struggling to manage: photos, audio files, video files, text-based files, and many more. Users use all these different types of information today and we need to be able to provide assistant in finding all of types of information not just text-based information.

What you can do to promote open access

2005-04-21T13:18:00.000-04:00

I found this great guide to promoting open access through Peter Scott's Library Blog.

H-Net Discussion Networks - "The Democratization of Cultural Criticism" - An H-Ideas Virtual Symposium

2005-04-21T10:43:00.000-04:00

H-Net Discussion Networks - "The Democratization of Cultural Criticism" - An H-Ideas Virtual Symposium: "April 28-29, 2005 Have cultural barbarians vanquished the life of the mind?"

Even though I prefer to be all hip and progressive instead of stuffy and grouchy, I often find myself in moods where I honestly have to answer this question in the affirmative. Perhaps Cotkin can persuade me otherwise.

Chastity Group uses Anscombe's Name

2005-04-20T09:50:00.000-04:00

Is this the same Elizabeth Anscombe who was a student of Wittgenstein? Looks like yes.

"The group is named after Elizabeth Anscombe, the Cambridge University Anglo-Catholic whose 1977 essay "Contraception and Chastity" is famous among conservative Roman Catholics for setting out a philosophical defense of the papacy's strictures on sexual behavior. She died in 2001."

The New York Times > Education > A Group at Princeton Where 'No' Means 'Entirely No'

Anscombe Society

Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project

2005-04-19T08:38:00.000-04:00

Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project

Papyrus fragments discovered in historic dumps outside the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus

2005-04-18T06:20:00.000-04:00

News: "'The Oxyrhynchus collection is of unparalleled importance - especially now that it can be read fully and relatively quickly,' said the Oxford academic directing the research, Dr Dirk Obbink. 'The material will shed light on virtually every aspect of life in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt, and, by extension, in the classical world as a whole.'" Academics have hailed it as a development which could lead to a 20 per cent increase in the number of great Greek and Roman works in existence. Some are even predicting a "second Renaissance".

Books for Understanding: The Catholic Pope

2005-04-16T16:56:00.000-04:00

The folks who write It's all good were whining recently (April 3 Being Relevant) about how after the pope died libraries weren't as good as Amazon at whipping up instant bibliographies. Here's a bibliography of scholarly books on things pope from Books for Understanding.
Books for Understanding: The Catholic Pope

Information Ethics Roundtable

2005-04-16T10:46:00.000-04:00

I'm commenting on a paper at the Information Ethics Roundtable on April 29th. To prepare, I've started philosopher Alvin Goldman's book Pathways to Knowledge. Goldman is an academic philosopher in the analytic tradition. His work has a lot to teach librarians interested in the evaluation of information. Look at the interesting questions he raises:

No single person can possibly attain all the relevant forms of expertise; each of us must rely on others. But on whom, exactly, should we rely? Which experts, or alleged experts, should be trusted? Unfortunately, so-called experts often disagree, and when they do, they cannot all be right. Which one should the novice or layperson trust? Upon hearing two rival experts offer conflicting viewpoints, can the novice justifiably trust either one? How can such justified belief be attained? After all, novices often struggle to get even a bare comprehension of what experts are saying. When they do understand them, how can they appraise the relative merits of their esoteric arguments? This is, I believe, a fundamental problem in social epistemology. Preface, p x.

Muslim shrines in Tajikistan

2005-04-14T16:22:00.000-04:00

Today I went to a talk on Muslim shrines in Tajikistan by a professor in our history department. Not much is known about these shrines compared to other shrines in the Muslim world. Most are from the 14th century and are the burial places of Sufi religious leaders. Tajikistan has Turkish and Persian cultural roots.

Google: Friend or Foe?

2005-04-12T10:19:00.000-04:00

Richard Sweeney vs. Steve Bell on Google. Both sides make good points, the question is what does it mean for academic libraries? I tend toward a bit toward the Sweeney/Luther view. Inside Higher Ed :: Google: Friend or Foe?

Can you stand the excitement?

2005-04-08T11:32:00.000-04:00

Today I'm preparing for the NJLA Annual Conference, taking a tour of our new library scheduled to open in Fall of 05, and sitting at the Reference Desk from 2-5.