Obviously the analogy I suggested yesterday for encouraging undergrads to use library resources instead of Google has problems. (It was, “Why eat at McDonalds when you can eat at a five star restaurant for free?”) Objections had to do with the fact that many students like McDonalds and want their info fast and in a … Read more or whatever
Here’s a quick analogy for undergrads who want to just use Google for their research papers: “Why eat at McDonalds when you can eat for free at the five star restaurant of your choice?”
The BCLA IFC blog has an interview with Toni Samek, who is a very progressive LIS professor at the University Alberta. Toni writes and teaches on topics in critical librarianship, and had a book published earlier this year from Chandos Press: Librarianship and Human Rights: A Twenty-First Century Guide. The interview at the BCLA IFC … Read more Interview with Toni Samek
Text from the ALA campaign for this legislation: Next week, to celebrate National Library Week, Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) plans to introduce the Librarian Act of 2007. The Librarian Act of 2007 amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide for Perkins student loan forgiveness to encourage individuals to become and remain librarians in … Read more The Librarian Act of 2007
Here is an excerpt from Jesse Shera’s 1936 article in The Bulletin of the American Library Association, “The College Library and its Future.” (Vol. 30, pp. 495-501.) A PROFESSIONAL CREDO Having seen that technologically librarianship has made significant progress, and that investigatory activities have already achieved impressive beginnings, we now turn our attention to a … Read more Jesse Shera on academic librarians’ professional values
Library Juice readers on most university campuses should be able to read this new one from EDUCAUSE Review: “If the Academic Library Ceased to Exist, Would We Have to Invent It?” It’s a brief think piece that demonstrates why academic libraries are necessary, answering the idea, apparently familiar to the EDUCAUSE crowd, that they are … Read more EDUCAUSE on libraries (with friends like these…)
Southern Methodist University is the front runner to be the site for the Bush Presidential Library, and is favored by President Bush because of his United Methodist religious affiliation. The administration at SMU has been pushing to win the project. Faculty at SMU are starting to protest, and United Methodist leaders are also questioning the … Read more Southern Methodist University faculty uneasy about a Bush Presidential Library
According to the Brussells Tribunal, an international group of artists, intellectuals and activists opposed to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the intellectual and academic community of Iraq is being destroyed: A little known aspect of the tragedy engulfing Iraq is the systematic liquidation of the country’s academics. Even according to conservative estimates, over 250 educators … Read more Liquidation of Iraqi academics
NYU historian Tony Judt is a strong critic of Israel and a proponent, along with Noam Chomsky and the late Edward Said, of a secular, binational state as the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Washington Post has a nice article, dated Oct. 9, about how a couple of his talks in New York City … Read more Historian Tony Judt’s talks in NYC cancelled due to ADL pressure
The Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (FRPAA), if passed, would mandate that research by Federal government agencies (publicly funded research) automatically go into publicly accessible open access repositories. The library community and most of the academic community is in favor of this bill as a way of protecting the information commons. Scholarly publishers … Read more American Anthropological Association opposition to Open Access: a letter from the AnthroSource Steering Committee on FRPAA
For academic librarians: We think that our undergrads go to Google because it’s easier to search than our databases, with their powerful syntaxes and fields, and we’re plowing ahead with federated searching to give our resources “Google appeal” based on this idea. But we’re mistaken. Our databases can be searched with keywords pretty easily, and … Read more The real reason students like Google better than our databases
A non-librarian friend recommended this story to me recently, and on reading it I felt surprised never to have seen it before. It’s an inspiring story about literacy and learning. It’s very Reader’s Digest-y (in fact it was actually published there) and corny, but nevertheless enjoyable and inspiring, and made me feel proud to be … Read more The Ballad of Old Man Peters
The new issue of Information for Social Change, issue 23, is now online. It is a bigger-than-usual issue with some provocative and interesting articles. Information for Social Change is a British organization of radical library workers. Here is the table of contents: Contents and Editorial * Contents * Editorial: Education for Social Change – by … Read more Information for Social Change #23
Free Exchange on Campus, a coalition of academic and public interest groups formed in response to David Horowitz’s “Academic Bill of Rights” initiative campaign, has just released a major report refuting Horowitz’s book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. The coalition’s researchers introduce the report… After conducting interviews with the professors in … Read more “Facts Count”: Examination of David Horowitz’s Dangerous Academics book
Christopher Phelps, a history professor at Ohio State University, Mansfield, asked me to post his letter to the Dispatch in response to their coverage of the situation involving the anti-gay book selection for the freshman “unifying reading experience” and the subsequent harrassment charge. Here it is: THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH “Newspaper off base in criticism of … Read more More on the Mansfield situation, from a Mansfield professor
At Ohio State, Mansfield there’s a controversial situation shaping up concerning the library. It isn’t being talked about on listservs much, probably because at first glance it might seem to involve a conflict between gay rights and intellectual freedom. At Ohio State they’re doing the “every reader, one book” idea for incoming freshmen, the idea … Read more Anti-gay book controversy at Ohio State, Mansfield