Interesting post at Stay Free! commenting on a New York Times story about kids using YouTube as their primary search engine for information about topics assigned for homework. Carrie McLaren gets into some of the differences between text and video as information media…
March is Small Press Month. From the site: Small Press Month is a nationwide celebration highlighting the valuable work produced by independent publishers. Held annually in March, Small Press Month raises awareness about the need for broader venues of literary expression. From March 1st-31st, independent, literary events will take place from coast-to-coast, showcasing some of … Read more March is Small Press Month
Richard J. Cox‘s new book is Personal Archives and a New Archival Calling: Readings, Reflections and Ruminations, just out from Litwin Books this January. I searched around and found a fairly recent article by Dr. Cox that gets into some of the issues that he develops further in the book. If you’d like to get … Read more Machines in the Archives
…[T]he question isn’t whether one is neutral, but whether one is independent from control and allowed to pursue free and open inquiry. In a healthy society, professionals would be given that independence–not just in theory but in practice–and out of the many choices that varied professionals would make, we could expect a rich cultural conversation … Read more Robert Jensen on library neutrality
Winning entry in the 2008-09 UMD Library Student Video Contest, by Jacob Strassman and Matt Moline…
I missed this when it came out a month ago in the New York Times Book Review: Caleb Crain has a review of Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children’s Literature. I have often wondered about Left Children’s Lit, so I find this book interesting. Crain finds too much amusement in the topic … Read more Left Children’s Lit
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Are you an LIS student interested in activism and the struggle for social justice? Do you stay awake at night thinking about how your politics might inform your professional practice? The MIRIAM BRAVERMAN MEMORIAL PRIZE, a presentation of the Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG), is awarded each year for the best paper about … Read more Braverman Prize – Call for Papers
When you start a business, your thinking starts to change, and sometimes you start to have thoughts you wouldn’t have had before, such as…. So, from now until the end of the month, I am offering a 25% discount on purchases of three or more books from Library Juice Press or Litwin Books. Just download … Read more 25% off on three or more books ’till March 1st
Gathering at the Waters: Embracing Our Spirits, Telling Our Stories Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color (JCLC) October 11-15, 2006, Dallas, Texas Edited by Gladys Smiley Bell I made a bid to publish this in book form, but the preference was to do it online, and they have obviously done … Read more JCLC Conference Proceedings
When I started Library Juice Press, I was aware of some librarian-publishers who came before me, whose presses are still around. There may be others. I like to think that despite changes in publishing that make it easier to dive in I am more in line with this tradition of librarian-publishers than I am with … Read more Some other librarian-publishers
I found these three items in Arts & Letters Daily…. In the New Yorker, a look back into the distant history of newspapers, “The Day the Newspaper Died,” by Jill Lepore. She puts the present newspaper crisis in perspective. In City Journal, Brendan Boyle reviews A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and … Read more Three from Arts & Letters Daily
Since the second half of last year I’ve been reading a lot of financial news, where the major theme of the financial crisis is the “crisis of trust” – banks not wanting to take the risk of extending credit to counterparties. But we’ve been living through a worsening crisis of trust in another sense for … Read more The Other Crisis of Trust (and a question about what it means for Info Lit)
As I’ve started getting the hang of Twitter I’ve realized I need separate accounts for business stuff (publishing) and personal stuff. So, the one I announced earlier, @rorylitwin, will be for personal stuff (you’re welcome to follow), and I’m starting a new one, @litwinbooks, for updates concerning Litwin Books and Library Juice Press.
From Polders to Postmodernism: A Concise History of Archival Theory Author: John Ridener Price: $22.00 Published: February 2009 ISBN: 978-0-9802004-5-4 Printed on acid-free paper From Polders to Postmodernism is a broad ranging history of the conception and development of the theories that have guided archivists in their work from the late 19th through the early … Read more From Polders to Postmodernism: A Concise History of Archival Theory
The services of electricity to libraries, however, are by no means exhausted by the electric light. It is capable of rendering aid even more important, and the more so in proportion to the extent of the library. The need for rapid communication throughout large buildings has been in some measure met by the telephone, whose … Read more Library Tech, circa 1899
The Fair Copyright Act is to fair copyright what the Patriot Act was to patriotism. It would repeal the OA policy at the NIH and prevent similar OA policies at any federal agency. The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where Conyers is Chairman, and where he has consolidated his power since … Read more The Conyers Bill is Back (copyright)
Kathleen de la Peña McCook has linked to a review of David Denby’s new book, Snark, published in Salon recently, aiming her post at a particularly snarky and nasty blogger who likes to attack her personally. Kathleen is right on the money in bringing this book to the attention of the blogosphere. Snark: …snide, undermining … Read more Snark
Intellectual Freedom is a right that has a range of threats to it. Most obviously, governments have banned books and censored the internet. But there are other dimensions to the threats to intellectual freedom. Publishers have refused to publish books for fear of controversy. Criticism of corporations is squelched by pulling out of advertising contracts; … Read more Age Appropriateness and IF
You may have seen this already, but I have to share it: Bound to the Word: Guardians of truth and knowledge, librarians must be thanked for their role as champions of privacy, literacy, independent thinking, and most of all reading. “President -Elect Barack Obama keynoted the opening general session at the ALA Annual Conference in … Read more Barack Obama on libraries
I am a big Netflix user. Netflix has a library of about 100,000 movies that users can watch. Because of the size of the library, much of their business comes from customers who have a strong interest in film and want to see movies that they’ve read about in books and are not otherwise easy … Read more The Netflix Prize – not what’s needed