Chefs’ Selections: The Best Books Read During 2014 Part 2
The beginning of the holiday season means it’s time for our annual list of our favorite books read during the year. Today brings Part 2 of the list.
Chefs’ Selections: The Best Books Read During 2014 Part 1
The beginning of the holiday season means it’s time for our annual list of our favorite books read during the year. Part 1 today, Part 2 tomorrow.
Amazon Won the dot-book Top-level Internet Domain: Should Publishers Care?
Last week, Amazon won an auction for the .book Top Level Domain on the internet, paying $10 million for the new real estate. Was it worth it? And should publishers be worried about what this means for them?
Researching Amazon and Libraries
Announcing a research project to study how many academic books Amazon sells to libraries.
Strategy 1, 3, 5, and 10
Organizations need to encompass multiple perspectives on where a business is headed. It’s usually the case that the staff is not in agreement on that direction, but that could be a very good thing.
Feeding the Goose: Thoughts on Fair Use and the GSU Decision
With the appellate court’s rejection of the district court’s decision in the Georgia State University fair-use case, we have yet another twist in this six-year-long saga of copyright litigation. It’s clearly a setback for GSU–but what about for fair use?
Book Review: "What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions" by Randall Munroe
A new book by the creator of xkcd takes crazy questions about science and tackles them with verve, humor, great illustrations, and great examples of how to break down even the strangest problems.
Quality and Relevance: A Matrix Model for Thinking about Scholarly Books and Libraries
Libraries do not have the luxury (or the mission) of selecting books solely based on their intrinsic quality. In order to do their work, the students and scholars served by the library need access to books that are highly relevant to their interests. How do the variables of quality and relevance interact with each other when it comes to library book purchasing?
Guest Post: Elisabeth Jones on Monograph Costs and Urban Legends–What's Wrong with This Picture?
Guest Chef Elisabeth Jones offers a critical analysis of a widely-distributed statistical chart that seems to show a doubling in the unit cost of monographs since 1985.
Coping With New Technology: Medieval Help Desk
Struggling to come to grips with the new Apple Watch or the latest Kindles? You’re not alone, and in fact, there’s a historical precedent.
Meet the New Economy of Letters, Same As the Old Economy of Letters
Last fall in the New Yorker, Jill Lapore bemoaned the current relationship between intellectuals and the general public, which she feels is “more vexed than ever” — in part because of a system that rewards academics for outrageousness and for lousy writing. Does she have a point?
D2C Marketing Report Now Available
A research report on direct-to-consumer marketing is provided here. The study was first announced on the Scholarly Kitchen. The report includes a survey of current university press practices and recommendations for steps to take to improve performance.
Ikea Offers the Latest Breakthrough in Reading Technology
A startling new breakthrough in reading technology from an unlikely source.
Going to the Beach with a Public Intellectual
This year’s beach reading will be spent with books by public intellectuals. Unfortunately, writing for the general public is not valued within the academy, to the detriment of public education.
The Virtue of Rumor and Groundless Speculation
There is a rumor, based on no or scant evidence, that Google is preparing to launch a platform for scholarly communications, which could threaten established STM publishers. A publisher should react to this by reviewing its own internal operations and value proposition. In particular, the role in certification should be strengthened.