Jaron Lanier has a new book, You Are Not a Gadget (NY Times review), which I have to add to my reading list and bump up a few notches. There is an excerpt from it in the February issue of Harper’s: “The Serfdom of Crowds.” He’s writing along the lines of some of what I … Read more Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget
Slides to go along with my talk at the University of Alberta in Edmonton this morning…
Phil Agre, the UCLA LIS professor who went missing last year, has been found, though I suppose that from his perspective he was never lost. UCLA police department’s missing person’s bulletin update states, “Philip Agre was located by LA County Sheriff’s Department on January 16, 2010 and is in good health and is self sufficient.” … Read more Phil Agre found
The Amelia Bloomer List is for the “best feminist books for young readers” published each year. This year’s list has just been announced.
We’ve put up a page linking to all of the Prefaces, Forewords, Introductions, and Chapters that we have made freely available from our books here at Library Juice Press. The goal of course is to inspire people to buy our books, but these items are good reads in themselves, too. So check out our free … Read more Introductions, Prefaces, Forewords, and Chapters online at the LJP site
We have posted the Introduction to Mark Abendroth’s Rebel Literacy: Cuba’s National Literacy Campaign and Critical Global Citizenship to the web. It’s a good read, a little lengthy for the web. Of interest to anyone who follows Cuba-related issues or radical pedagogy.
My friend Ramona Islam shared with me an interesting blog post by chemist Jean-Claude Bradley, discussing the reliability (or non-reliability) of scientific reference sources that are considered trusted within the discipline. I find it especially interesting in terms of implications for projects like Wolfram Alpha and other attempts to build automated reasoning systems around inconsistently-defined … Read more A chemist on “trusted sources”
Colonel Morris Davis was fired from his job at the Congressional Research Service for opinion pieces he wrote about the military commissions system (he is the former chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo military commissions). The ACLU is suing the Library of Congress on his behalf in this free-speech case. This is the second time recently … Read more ACLU sues Library of Congress in workplace speech case
At Litwin Books and Library Juice Press we are in need of some helpers to do book layout. We will provide instruction. Pay is negotiable, but we regard it primarily as an internship. Please contact rory at litwinbooks.com if you’re interested. Thanks!
This is an interesting tidbit coming from Vancouver, BC, site of history’s largest librarian’s strike in 2007. Library management has sent branches a list of “do’s and don’t’s” concerning the upcoming Olympics. Branches must not allow Olympic-related library events to be sponsored by sponsors other than those with official relations with VANOC (Vancouver Olympic Committee). … Read more Vancouver Public Library to enforce brand loyalty in sponsorships
San Francisco Public Library has added a professional social worker to the staff to manage issues relating to library users who are homeless or in poverty. They’re paying her a lot more than they pay the librarians, which is annoying. However, it looks to me like they are addressing the needs of poor people in … Read more SFPL adds a social worker to the staff
For those of you who in the Edmonton, Alberta area, I will be giving the keynote speech at the Forum for Information Professionals at the University of Alberta’s School of Library and Information Studies next month. I will be speaking in the morning on Friday, February 5th.
The Preface and Introduction to André Cossette’s Humanism and Libraries: An Essay on the Philosophy of Librarianship are now online. The Preface is my explanation of why I chose to publish the book and what makes it valuable, and the Introduction is by the author.
“Final edition: Twilight of the American newspaper,” By Richard Rodriguez, in the November issue of Harper’s Magazine. This article is a beautiful explanation of the role that newspapers have had in defining and uniting cities. In this case it’s mostly about San Francisco, but it’s also about newspapers in general, their fate, and what it … Read more Rodriguez on the Twilight of the Newspaper
Byron Anderson’s Bibliographic and Web Tools for Alternative Media has just been updated. This is a good collection development resource for librarians and others who want tools for going beyond the usual lists and collection development resources, especially for finding books on the political fringes or otherwise outside of the usual academic or corporate channels.
For fun on a Friday, a couple of recent New Yorker “Shouts and Murmurs” columns related to our world: Live Your Life and Subject: Our Marketing Plan
Just released: SRRT Newsletter – Issue 169, December 2009. This issue has messages from the editor and the SRRT AC Coordinator; articles about Banned Books Week and Operation Teen Book Drop; speeches from the 40th Anniversary Celebration; Task Force News, a proposed change to the Bylaws, and book reviews.
I have posted the first chapter of Juris Dilevko’s The Politics of Professionalism: A Retro-Progressive Proposal for Librarianship to the Library Juice Press website: Chapter One: Fateful Choices. It is the introductory chapter and provides a good feel for the book as a whole.
Adorno and Horkheimer might have something to say about this, too. I thought I had noticed this beginning to happen and was actually planning to post something about it soon, but Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land has the full story: “Google’s Personalized Results: The “New Normal” That Deserves Extraordinary Attention.” Read through this and … Read more Google splits apart the search