barbara fister

A roundup of data visualization tools for making pretty (and meaningful) pictures with data. - barbara fister

A refreshingly frank and open discussion of what being a bestselling author means in dollars and cents. If there were more openness about this matter, fewer people would dream of being rich and famous and might just focus on their writing instead. - barbara fister

an essay on what we stand to lose if the lights go out. "the message could not be clearer: Don’t let books die. It’s understandable that librarians spend much effort trying to keep up with the digital revolution in information storage and retrieval: their main duty is to serve their community as it is, not a community that existed decades ago or one that may exist decades hence. Yet the thought that they may be making the materials they are trying to preserve ever more vulnerable to loss should be cause for pause. There is a task that needs doing: the conservation of essential cultural knowledge in non-digital form. This task will require the sorting and evaluation of information for its usefulness to cultural survival—triage, if you will—as well as its preservation. It may be unrealistic to expect librarians to take on this responsibility, given their existing mandate and lack of resources—but who else will do it? - barbara fister

"The case presents a tangle of issues: how to create new markets for old books without shortchanging authors; how to nurture new technology without stifling competition; and how to preserve all that when one company — in this case, Google — is pioneering the revolution and could profit handsomely. One commentator, who supports the original settlement, has called it 'the World Series of antitrust.'" - barbara fister

Interesting essay on why we need our monsters by Stephe T. Asma. - barbara fister

An exploration of new reading platforms, an argument that libraries are for readers, and a "Bill of Rights for the Digital Era" - the reader should be able to read on a devise of his or her choice, including availability of text-to-speech; able to control the presentation (design and spelling conventions e.g. Brit vs US); right to create derivatives (he calls them "embellishments") and share them; have the right to move a book from one device to another during the time of the "ownership agreement" which may be 24 hours or for ever and ever (I wish this were better explained); and lease rather than buy a text. Hmmm.... have to mull this over. - barbara fister

Excerpt: "Jessica Mann, an award-winning author who reviews crime fiction for the Literary Review, has said that an increasing proportion of the books she is sent to review feature male perpetrators and female victims in situations of "sadistic misogyny". "Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit, as young women are imprisoned, bound, gagged, strung up or tied down, raped, sliced, burned, blinded, beaten, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled or buried alive," she said. "Authors must be free to write and publishers to publish. But critics must be free to say they have had enough." We were just talking about this at Bouchercon. Interesting in view of the Shriver Report. - barbara fister

library design shaped by different ideas of purpose over time. "Our obligation is now to create a new paradigm for the academic library.22 Fundamentally, the choice before us is that between viewing the library as an information repository on the one hand and as a learning enterprise on the other. We may continue to see the library as a source of information; treat readers as information consumers; and cast library staff as people who support learning by facilitating the use of information resources. Alternatively, we may choose to treat students as intentional learners rather than as consumers; view the library building as one of the chief places on campus where students take responsibility for and control over their own learning; and employ library staff to enact the learning mission of the university through being educators. Making this second choice is to make the choice for learning in library design. Making this choice is to launch a design practice centered on learning." - barbara fister

Yikes! - barbara fister

This is fascinating presentation suggesting that libraries are in some ways like sacred spaces and that we could borrow research from the psychology of religion to get at the intangible benefits of being in libraries apart from the usual customer satisfaction and use data. Yes! But one flaw in the metadata - no indication at Youtube of who this brilliant speaker is!! arghhh. - barbara fister

An article I bookmark in the vain hope that I will read it carefully one day. "This article explores the implications of a shift from public to private provision of information through focusing on the relationship between Google and public libraries. This relationship has sparked controversy, with concerns expressed about the integrity of search results, the Google Book project, and Google the company. In this paper, these concerns are treated as symptoms of a deeper divide, the fundamentally different conceptions of information that underpin the stated aim of Google and libraries to provide access to information. The paper concludes with some principles necessary for the survival of public libraries and their contribution to a robust democracy in a rapidly expanding Googleverse." - barbara fister

Apparently the DOJ thinks the action represents a class too big to be properly represented by the parties who brought it. Class dismissed? No, not yet. - barbara fister

pointed out by Tim Spalding of LibraryThing after a call for volunteers to link LT info to IndieBound, accomplished within a matter of hours. I'm pondering how to link this idea of "love" to scholarly communication - how mutual curiosity drives scholarship rather than direct financial reward - in preparation for Open Access Week. - barbara fister

this probably has some interesting information literacy applications.... - barbara fister

Good essay on how to turn around a class discussion gone wrong. - barbara fister

The inequality of work distribution is often based on those who are principled and selfless and those who have decided to go with the label "inept" when convenient. Unfortunately, that ineptness does not attach itself to the academic reward system, but the time saved while being inept by choice does. - barbara fister

on the Reg. - barbara fister

on the Regenstein use study - barbara fister

Five universities agree to pay reasonable charges for their faculty publishing in open access journals, taking a stand. Some argue that supporting a system that charges scholars to publish is just shifting the costs from one end to the other and still allowing room for unscrupulous publishers to rake it in. - barbara fister