A new source for book reviews: SRRT Reviews, book reviews from the Social Responsibilities Round Table Newsletter. Our titles are reviewed there periodically, along with many others. Bookmark it for collection development.
I recently encountered some interesting data on the academic book market, in an article in the most recent issue of the Journal of Scholarly Publishing, by Albert N. Greco, Robert, M. Wharton, and Falguni Sen, titled, “The Price of University Press Books: 2009-2011.” According to data from YBP, in 2011, the total number of books … Read more Academic book pricing – Where Library Juice Press stacks up
I just listened to the latest episode of Steve Thomas’s podcast, “Circulating Ideas,” with academic librarians Lauren Pressley and Lynda Kellam. Towards the end of the show, they discussed how they’re teaching their students to evaluate information but questioned how they’re doing with the “finding things” part. “Are they [the students] making the connection that … Read more Lifelong Learning, Even for Undergraduates
I won’t comment much on this except to speculate that this may be an example of a state of affairs in journalism where reporters are making sloppy mistakes because the pace of the newsroom, like the pace of everything else in the internet era, is too quick for us to keep tabs on everything as … Read more Sloppy reporting on Saudi “City for Women”
In a Library Juice blog post some time ago, Rory Litwin recommended an essay by Karl Mannheim entitled “Conservative Thought.” In the essay, Mannheim argues that political groupings can be distinguished by specific “styles of thought” (though a style of thought will not be limited to politics). Styles of thought characterize more than just the … Read more Political Identities
Have you ever noticed that some people close their email messages with a mysterious capital J? It is not a secret code. Chris Jean has this most welcome explanation.
Phil Davis writes in The Scholarly Kitchen about “The Secret Life of Retracted Articles.” Scientific papers are frequently retracted, officially, by the journal’s publishers and editors if it is found that data was faked or for other reasons that invalidate the article’s conclusions. The problem is that the articles stay around, in libraries, on websites, … Read more The Secret Life of Retracted Articles
Emily Ford does a great job with this overview of library philosophy in In the Library With a Lead Pipe: What We Do and Why We Do It, published this morning. Much of it is a review of the literature in this important thread of LIS scholarship, covering a span that runs from 1934 up … Read more Emily Ford on Library Philosophy
Journalism students at the University of Missouri have published a very important report on book censorship in Missouri. It makes for chilling, but necessary reading. Take a look here.
Barbara Fister expresses a welcome dissenting view regarding the death of libraries and reading in the current Inside Higher Ed: “The End of the Twilight of Doom.” I agree with what she says, especially regarding the problem of high level administrators believing the hype about the death of reading, and the danger that it poses … Read more Barbara Fister on the “End of the Twilight of Doom”