Progressive Librarians Guild Calls for Elsevier to End Corrupt Publishing Practices and for Library Associations to Take Advocacy Role on Behalf of Scientific Integrity http://libr.org/plg/elsevier.php Progressive Librarians Guild. May 12, 2009. Elsevier, which describes itself as the “world’s leading publisher of scientific and health information,” was partner to the efforts of Merck & Co. to … Read more PLG statement on Elsevier’s fake journals
John Buschman sent a link out this morning to this article by Chris Dede in the current EDUCAUSE Review, “A Seismic Shift in Epistemology. The article examines the deep changes in the meaning of knowledge in the academy and elsewhere that are being effected by new technologies, with a focus on Wikipedia and other Web … Read more A Seismic Shift in Epistemology
Peter Suber is covering the Elsevier scandal on his Open Access News blog, and reports that the STM publisher has now admitted to publishing six fake journals out of their Australia office, without the proper disclosures of advertising for drug companies, etc. I am curious to see whether library associations, which receive large donations from … Read more Elsevier admits to six fake journals
John Miedema, author of Slow Reading, is doing an Author Chat on LibraryThing. His chat there will be going until May 22nd. Hope you’ll add your thoughts….
For Goodreads users there is now a Goodreads Group for Library Juice Press and Litwin Books. If someone out there would be interested in helping make the group lively, let me know and we can cooperate. Cheers….
A co-worker of mine shared this video with me, done by somebody she knows at the library at Indiana University. I think it is great, creates such a sunny feeling about their library’s services, and gets the important things across. I am going to talk my co-worker into copying Carrie Donovan so that we can … Read more ASK video
This is really outrageous if true and ought to lead to some serious consequences for Elsevier. An online magazine called The Scientist has reported that Elsevier published a two-off fake journal with reprinted and summarized articles that presented data favorable to Merck products. And that’s all that was in these journals. They were made to … Read more Elsevier publishes fake journal promoting Merck drugs
MIT has posted podcasts from the five plenary sessions at Media in Transition 6, at the Comparative Media Studies program’s podcast page. The plenary sessions were on “Archives and History,” “New Media, Civic Media,” “Institutional Perspectives on Storage,” “The Future of Publishing,” and “Summary Perspectives.” I think these plenary sessions were the best part of … Read more Media in Transition 6 – Podcasts
New from Litwin Books Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist Author: Chaim Leib Weinberg Translator: Naomi Cohen Editor: Robert Helms Price: $28.00 Published: May 2009 ISBN: 978-0-9802004-3-0 Printed on acid-free paper This story, told by one colorful figure among the anarchists of Philadelphia, does not tell the entire story of … Read more Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist
The Jane Addams Peace Association has announced the winners of its Children’s Book Awards for this year. This award tends to get lost in the shuffle, I think. From the site: The Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards are given annually to the children’s books published the preceding year that effectively promote the cause of peace, … Read more Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards – 2009 Winners
Mark C. Taylor has an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times titled “End the University as We Know It,” which has been circulating rapidly on Facebook. I’m sharing it here because I think people ought to see it. I think Taylor’s insights about higher ed are on the money, for the most part.
I attended Media in Transition 6: Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission in Cambridge, MA, April 24-26. (Follow that link for a summary of what the conference was about.) Here are my thoughts about the conference after returning home. Of primary interest to me, coming from Duluth, MN, where it was below freezing yesterday, was … Read more Media in Transition 6… Reactions…
From today’s Inside Higher Ed, “Digital Archives That Disappear,” a brief article about Google’s shutdown of the historical newspaper archive Paper of Record, which it secretly purchased in 2006. This is a good example of what many people have feared about Google’s success – that turning over information resources from shared, public control in library-related … Read more The constraining effects of information privatization: Google’s purchase and shutdown of Paper of Record
“Exploring the Ethical Implications of Technological Change through the Thought of Walter Ong and Other Media Theorists” That’s the title of my paper for the conference coming up this weekend in Boston, Media in Transition 6: Stone and Papyrus, Storage and Transmission. The paper is not the greatest thing I’ve ever written, but it is … Read more Exploring the Ethical Implications of Media Technology Through the Thought of Walter Ong
This is a call for people to send me used pocket cards, you know, that your library may at one time have used to keep records of what books are checked out. I’m helping my designer design a cover for an upcoming book. If you send a card or cards to me, you’ll be acknowledged … Read more Help needed – used pocket cards
The following obituary for Franklin Rosemont was written by Séamas Cain, a writer I know here in the Duluth, Minnesota area. Franklin Rosemont, surrealist poet, artist, historian, street speaker, & labor activist, died of an aneurysm on Sunday, April 12th in Chicago, Illinois. He was 65 years old. With his partner & comrade, Penelope Rosemont, … Read more Franklin Rosemont has passed on
This is going to be my obnoxious post for the year, the kind of post I write periodically that leads to ugly Google results on my name. There are things that I sometimes need to say that I know a lot of people won’t like. Helps me maintain a sense of integrity, I guess. Like … Read more Library 2.0 talk enters backwardation
Judith Krug, head of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom since 1967, has died of stomach cancer at age 69. Library Journal has published an obituary rapidly; I am sure we will see something more extensive soon. From what I have been told by people who have been a part of librarianship and active in ALA … Read more Judith Krug has passed on
Library of Walls: The Library of Congress and the Contradictions of Information Society Author: Samuel Gerald Collins Price: $32.00 Published: April 2009 ISBN: 978-0-9802004-2-3 Printed on acid-free paper “The experience [of reading this book] was something akin to watching a reality show featuring Jorge Luis Borges, Marshall McLuhan, Michel Foucault, Lewis Mumford, and Paul Virilio … Read more New from Litwin Books: Library of Walls
In the most recent issue of ALA’s email newsletter, AL Direct, there is an item (“More authors turn to web publishing”) about the growing popularity of author services companies like Lulu.com and Author Solutions as mainstream publishers cut back on the numbers of titles that they take on during the economic downturn. That’s true as … Read more POD vs. author services publishing