Category: Reading

Friday night link round-up

I’m having a relatively quiet evening here watching some TV and surfing the ‘net, so I thought I’d post a few links of stuff I’ve come across:

“The Library Web Site of the Future” and the Espresso Book Machine

I am basking in the semi-warm glow of being vaguely caught up with my teaching for the first time in two weeks. Not that it means that much; I still need to get back in gear with research and writing, we need to get ready around here for our an annual function for this weekend, and we still haven’t quite figured out what we’re going to be doing when we go to D.C. next week. But none of this has stopped me from posting something that might actually be useful to the ol’ blog. Besides posts about bacon, of course.

First, there’s this Inside Higher Ed article, “The Library Web Site of the Future” by Steven J. Bell. I can imagine this being handy for English 516 for the electronic library angle on things, but I can also imagine it being interesting for English 444 too. Most of the article is about how academic-types find most university library web sites/portals are not user-friendly and/or useful. I don’t know if I agree with that or not when it comes to EMU’s Halle Library web site, to be honest. I have always found it pretty easy to find journals and such through it– though oddly, there seems to be some glitches in the book catalog. Of course, part of my comfort-level with the library’s web site comes from the librarians: when I have questions, I ask; when I take students to the library for orientations about doing research in the library, I inevitably learn something myself. So maybe part of the “usability” part being left out of Bell’s article is the fact that most academics– certainly faculty but also students– don’t interact exclusively with the university library web site. Most of us manage to get over to the building once in a while to talk with actual librarians and occasionally touch actual books.

I did think this passage was kind of interesting though:

Several years ago academic institutions shifted control of their Web sites from technology wizards to marketing gurus. At the time there was backlash. The change in outlook was perceived as a corporate sellout, a philosophical transformation of the university Web site from candid campus snapshot to soulless advertiser of campus wares to those who would buy into the brand. I observed that academic librarians feared what the marketers wrought, and would resist efforts to let any advertising consultant or marketing vice-president take control of the library Web site. They might just make it more about marketing than connecting people to information.

I was one of the resisters. Now I think the marketing people got it right. The first thing librarians must do after ending the pretense that the library Web site succeeds in connecting people to content is understand how and why the institutional homepage has improved and what we can learn from it. Doing so will allow academic libraries to discover answers to that first question; how to create user community awareness about the electronic resources in which the institution heavily invests.

Of course, instead of just talking to the marketing people, the library-types could talk to people in academic programs interested in usability and web design… just sayin’….

The other thing I heard earlier today that I thought might be good to bring up in 516 at some point was a story on Michigan Public Radio about the Espresso Book Machine. It was actually on the “Environment Report” because the angle was on how these machines can save paper. The story also took the angle of how these machines would replace browsing for paperbacks in Borders or something, but that strikes me as unlikely. No, the real value of this sort of “on demand publishing” machine is clearly in academic publishing where the press runs are already pitifully small and expensive.

Quite frankly, I’m surprised there aren’t any academic publishers now using this technology; or am I wrong about that?

New Kindle thoughts lawsuits, pirates, and PDF wishes

Amazon has released Kindle 2— or rather, they’ve released the opportunity to buy one (I’m not sure when they are actually going to be available). There was a NYTimes article about this last week.

Among other issues/controversies, it would seem the Authors Guild sees the new Kindle’s potential/ability to read text aloud is some kind of copyright violation. I like this response from Neil Gaiman about this via boing-boing. I also thought this article was interesting: “Why aren’t ebooks taking off? Not enough pirates,” which I found via Stephen’s Web. Very smart article, pointing out the differences between the music industry and the book industry when it comes to pirating and sharing of files. Besides the fact that it is a ton easier to “share” and/or pirate music than it is to do the same with a book, there are places right now “for sharing this information that’s wholly supported by the industry (you might know them as libraries).”

My friend Troy has a Kindle and absolutely loves it. In fact, I toyed with the idea of buying one myself back in November/December. I might try to get EMU to buy me one (it wouldn’t be easy to do though) because it really is something I’d like to have to demo in the classes I teach. Or who knows? Maybe a bunch of money and/or a Kindle will just fall on me from the sky.

At this stage, I’ll probably wait for a while. For one thing, since me and the Mrs. just got iPhones, I’m a little tapped-out right now gadget-wise. But the other thing that I want that I don’t think is quite there yet for the Kindle is the ability to handle PDFs well. Quite frankly, I don’t read that many of the kinds of books that are readily available for the Kindle. I do read a lot of academic stuff, particularly journal articles that are increasingly available in PDF format, or things for my teaching that I make available as a PDF and post on eReserves. So what would be very useful is if this thing would handle PDFs as well as Apple’s Preview does– allowing for highlighting, notes, etc. It’d be very nice to have all of these articles and chapters in PDF format for my teaching right there on one device instead of the mountain of paper I forget to file.

Oh, and maybe they should put a phone in this thing.

Any book review suggestions?

I’ve been spending my first day of the year kind of doing stuff around the house, running errands, doing laundry, watching Iowa pound the crap out of South Carolina in the Outback Bowl, and working on the materials for my grad class, English 516: Computers and Writing, Theory and Practice. It is a work in progress, though it is much more together than the rather blank schedule page on the site might suggest.

In any event, one of the assignments I have for the class is for students to do a book review of a recently published book that has something to do with the subject matter of the class. My current list of book options is up and running here; anybody out there in the comp/rhet world have any other ideas for possible readings?

The only two qualifications/requirements are it has to be some kind of book that has to do in some way with “computers and writing” (and that obviously could include a lot of different things), and it has to be a book that has come out recently (certainly nothing before 2004).

The Agrippa archive

This is very cool: The Agrippa Archive is UC-Santa Barbara project about and reproducing (sort of) William Gibson’s experimental work Agrippa, which was a book/poem/story that was on a diskette which would, upon being put into a computer, start to scroll by. You had to read it then and there because it would vanish after one reading. That’s a really simple explanation– I’ve got to get out my office and disappear onto other things myself. But this has always been a project I’ve thought was very cool in that artsy-fartsy way, and it might yet find its way back into something like English 516 or 444.

Publishing and/or perishing once again

This is another one of those posts for 516, a kind of two-fer: Clay Shirky has a very smart post on boing-boing about a recent NYTimes piece by James Gleick, “How to Publish Without Perishing.” As Shirky puts it, “until recently, book lovers have been the most passionate readers. Now they are mostly just the oldest readers.” In brief, it isn’t so much the container (the book, the bottle) but the stuff being contained (the words/text, the wine) that is really the issue.

Shirky and Gleick are correct of course, but they aren’t really that original. This is kind of an old argument, one that I first recall being academically articulated by Richard Lanham in a 1989 essay, “The Electronic Word: Literary Study and the Digital Revolution” and collected in his excellent book The Electronic Word. In any event, I did a unit on books/publishing last year in 516, so maybe I will include these new things with the now “old” things.

Incidentally, my on-again/off-again kindle desires are currently on hold, this time thanks to both Amazon and to various rumors I have heard. I just about ordered one a couple weeks ago, but when Amazon told me that it was 3-4 weeks for delivery, I decided I needed to hold off until I knew I was going to be here and not traveling over the holidays. Then, when I checked the amazon site on this the other day, I was told that all I could do is order a “place in line.” I don’t know what the deal is with this, but when I combine this news with rumors about Kindle 2.0 (not to mention the crappy economy encouraging everyone to save their pennies), it would appear that now would be the time to wait. A good friend of mine who has a Kindle himself tells me that he has heard Kindle 2.0 will be announced in the first quarter. This is perhaps what Amazon wants folks now to “get in line” for, but I think I’ll wait to know what I’m getting to put out my money.

Fire: The next sharp stick?

I don’t mean to be on a John Hodgman kick as of late (though I am thinking I need to go and buy a book of his soon), but while looking for something else, I came across this old Hodgman piece at McSweeney’s, “Fire: The Next Sharp Stick?” For English 505 next year, I think I’m going to include all or some of Foucault’s lecture “The Discourse on Language” because this is where he talks about how before Mendel’s breakthroughs in plant genetics, to speak of traits being passed down from plant to plant was crazy; after Mendel, it was crazy to do any different. Or something to that effect.

In any event, Hodgman’s “Fire: The Next Sharp Stick?” could be an interesting and amusing counter-balance to that more complex work that oddly says about the same thing.

Another example of the fine line defining plagiarism

This is being talked about on WPA-L right now, but the thing that makes it most interesting to me is that it might fit into a discussion of plagiarism in English 516 next winter: “In the Words of My Speechwriter…” by David McGrath in the Washington Post. I think that McGrath’s purpose here is to criticize politicians– especially the most recent batch, and most especially the speech that Sarah Palin gave at the Republican convention. Here’s a passage:

All those years ago, Harvard’s lawyer referred to the implicit understanding between teachers and students. Isn’t it even more important that there be a contract of honesty between candidates for high office and voters?

(and skipping ahead a paragraph)

Can voters this year be sure they learned something about the real Sarah Palin from her GOP vice presidential nomination acceptance speech last night, considering news that it was originally written by speechwriter Matthew Scully over a week ago for an unknown male nominee? The commissioned draft was subsequently customized by Palin and a team of McCain staffers in the 48 hours leading up to its presentation.

Now, I think McGrath is interested in a kind of authenticity that I don’t think is necessarily possible, at least not through writing alone. But what is a better question to me is the flip-side of this: do politicians (or much of anyone else) absolutely have to claim each and every word in a text in order to claim some form of “authorship?” I’m reminded of this post I had about a Friday afternoon about plagiarism at U of M and Chris Anson’s example of an often repeated phrase on braking. Is that plagiarism?

I don’t know. But my point/hope is to get people to contemplate that a bit and to recognize that plagiarism is anything but clear. And that would be the point of having something like this in 516.