I was just reading a bit of Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and came across a section that I think applies to the bibliometric obsessions with impact factors, h- and g-indexes, … Read more Kierkegaard on impact factors
From Philippe Breton’s The Culture of the Internet and the Internet as Cult: Social Fears and Religious Fantasies, forthcoming from Litwin Books: One may distinguish three positions grosso modo: first … Read more Three attitudes toward the Internet
Two recent articles in the mainstream press are telling us that paper books and physical libraries are dead (Boston Globe and CNN.com). One of the easiest things to forget about … Read more Death of a thousand paper cuts
Yes, I know I’m supposed to be user-centered and all that, but I think the great wave of populism we’re seeing now is going to lead to bad things. Some … Read more “Most People”
The following is the list of authors in the Author Index to Speaking of Information: The Library Juice Quotation Book. (Note that some authors listed, like me, are there because … Read more List of authors in Speaking of Information: the Library Juice Quotation Book
Speaking of Information: The Library Juice Quotation Book Foreword by Michael Gorman Books of quotations serve many functions. They can entertain, enrich, inform, infuriate, define (by inclusion and exclusion), and/or … Read more Michael Gorman’s Foreword to Speaking of Information
Speaking of Information: The Library Juice Quotation Book Compiler: Rory Litwin Editor: Martin Wallace Foreword: Michael Gorman Price: $15.00 ISBN: 978-0-9802004-1-6 5.06″ by 7.81″ 172 Pages Published: May 2009 Speaking … Read more Speaking of Information: The Library Juice Quotation Book
ALA’s Office for Information Technology Policy had its annual retreat this month. Barbara Fister, frequent poster to the ACRL blog and a librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, presented … Read more Barbara Fister on Google and OA
From Lara Moore’s Restoring Order: The Ecole des Chartes and the Organization of Archives and Libraries in France, 1820-1870 (pages 208-209): It … appears that the late Empire had strong … Read more Napoleon III and public libraries
The current issue of LRC: Literary Review of Canada has a light essay by an acquaintance of Marshall McLuhan, discussing what the man was like and assessing his influence: In … Read more Bob Rodgers remembers Marshall McLuhan
Kurt Vonnegut died last night, at the age of 84. At one point he wrote, “Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just … Read more Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007)
Here is an excerpt from Jesse Shera’s 1936 article in The Bulletin of the American Library Association, “The College Library and its Future.” (Vol. 30, pp. 495-501.) A PROFESSIONAL CREDO … Read more Jesse Shera on academic librarians’ professional values
Library Juice Concentrate Edited by Rory Litwin Preface by Kathleen de la Peña McCook Price: $25.00 ISBN-10: 0-9778617-3-2 ISBN-13: 978-0-9778617-3-6 6″ by 9″ Published: December 2006 Library Juice Concentrate is … Read more New from LJP: Library Juice Concentrate
“Critical thinkers can be parodied either as disgruntled and bitter subversives, or as elitist mockers of others’ well-meant efforts. The pejorative associations surrounding the word critical have meant that advocating … Read more CRITICAL THINKING