A Call to Arms

This month I’m using my column to issue a call to arms. No, it isn’t a call to arms for war, though it is going to be battle. It is a call to professional librarians who are interested in their jobs lasting more than a few more years. That sounds a bit hysterical but I don’t mean for it to. Yet is it hyperbolic? I don’t think so. We need to rethink, recast, redefine, and refresh our professional métier. I think the last twenty-four months make it imperative that we do so now

But a Whimper

In my last rustication, I opined the details of the 300-page Google Book Deal settlement made in late 2008 between Google and authors and publishers vis-à-vis Google’s massive digitization scheme (those cases, viz., Authors Guild et al v. Google and McGraw-Hill et al v. Google).

Living on the Fringe

Just when you thought the news could not get any worse for libraries, a new twist emerges on an old theme. When I saw the headline, I couldn't help clicking: “Books Are Becoming the Fringe Media.”

Golden Apples of Deceit

Do you recall the myth about the Golden Apples of Deceit? It seems instructive to me during these trying, tense technological times. Atalanta had been warned by the god Apollo that she would lose herself if ever she married so she determined not to.

YouIdiot.com

While researching something else, I ran across an item in a business journal my eye ran across another item. In research this is called serendipity, something we do not hear so much about any more these days.

Peer Review

The perils of peer review come home to roost in academe.

PASCAL

PASCAL is not about the famous French philosopher, but is a pensee of which he would approve

Vestiges

Can intelligent design be found?

A PASCAL Primer

PASCAL is the Palmetto State's new academic consortium. But can it survive in a state committed to exiguous state funding for higher ed?

Reading at Risk

Reading may be in jeopardy as we advance along the information superhighway. Is literacy to be technology's first roadkill?

Librarians Are the New Polymaths

Belle Greene may have been small in stature but her legacy is great.

Libraries in the Cyberage

Carol Clancy, Senior Council for the National Center for Children and Families, makes a scholarly plea for libraries to filter pornography.

Libraries in the Cyberage--Part I

First Amendment issues heat up with the advent of the digital age and its ability to bring pornography to every library, free of charge.

The Future of the Book: Does It Have One?

While the book has been with us for two millennia, digital artifact threaten its permanence. Now we being to wonder if it has a future at all.

Filter-tipped Libraries

Is it possible to say something positive about Internet filtering in libraries and not have everyone, including your mother, call you a wild-eyed, hidebound, neo-Nazi bashi-bazouk? No, of course not, but I'm going to try to anyway.