Simson Garfinkel has an article in the new issue of MIT’s Technology Review about Wikipedia, arguing that it is creating troubling implications for the way we view reality: Wikipedia and … Read more Wikipedia and what we mean by truth
Over time, Radical Reference moved from being simply an experimental virtual reference service for political radicals to being an activist organization sharing the same space as PLG and SRRT, but … Read more A question for Radical Reference
A book of interest: Mark Bauerlein’s The Dumbest Generation. What it says is that the under-30 generation is so removed from books and reading that it is shockingly ignorant, and … Read more Book: The Dumbest Generation
Thank you The Onion, for this: “Area Eccentric Reads Entire Book.”
Nicholas Carr writes in the Atlantic Monthly that “Google is Making Us Stupid,” focusing on the way a decade of web browsing has altered the way his mind works to … Read more Is Google Making Us Stupid?
I don’t read a lot of blogs. I won’t say why, as other people have said enough about what is wrong with blogs, but I want to give you a … Read more An example of a blog
On this May Day I want to link you to a book (online) that I’m putting out there as a symbol of Library Juice’s opposition within librarianship and the blogosphere: … Read more Crowds
I would like to propose that the current era in librarianship, which is normally characterized as a “period of rapid change,” is perhaps better described as a period of denial. … Read more Librarian: Accept Yourself
I rarely read Annoyed Librarian. When I do it’s usually because Word Press tells me that she’s linked to a Library Juice posting, and I go and see what she … Read more On Annoyed Librarian and anonymous posting
The March 20th issue of The New York Review of Books has a review of John Broughton‘s book, Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, by Nicholson Baker: The Charms of Wikipedia. Nicholson … Read more Nicholson Baker on Wikipedia
Google and Microsoft have both been working on new services to provide access to medical records. Pretty exciting huh? Microsoft’s thing is HealthVault and Google’s is Google Health. I’m sure … Read more Get your medical records online, courtesy of Google and Microsoft
Michael Zimmer is the guest editor for the just released special issue of the open access journal First Monday: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0. Here is the table of contents: … Read more First Monday Special Issue: Critical Perspectives on Web 2.0
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
We’re presently awash in talk about a great paradigm shift that puts the user at the center of our planning for services. This is sometimes referred to simply as user-centered … Read more Dueling Paradigm Shifts
Privacy in Peril: How We are Sacrificing a Fundamental Right in Exchange for Security and Convenience is an important new book by James B. Rule, who also wrote an influential … Read more Privacy in Peril: How We are Sacrificing a Fundamental Right in Exchange for Security and Convenience
The New York Times Book Review published a review last week of Lee Siegel’s Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob. The reviewer, John Lanchester, … Read more Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob
The price we pay for the growth in egalitarianism offered by the Internet is the decentralised access to unedited stories. In this medium, contributions by intellectuals lose their power to … Read more Habermas on Web 2.0
This was just covered in the Chronicle of Higher Education daily email, with a link to a post in Ars Technica, a blog about technology. Doris Lessing delivered her Nobel … Read more Doris Lessing critical of the influences of technology, in her Nobel Prize acceptance speech
Obviously the analogy I suggested yesterday for encouraging undergrads to use library resources instead of Google has problems. (It was, “Why eat at McDonalds when you can eat at a … Read more or whatever