Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Our Story: Hamiltunes and the Burden of Founding Histories
The musical “Hamilton” raises questions about history and historical practice that reflects what scholars are and aren’t doing.
The Dissertation Mess: Balancing Rights and Responsibilities
The broad online availability of theses and dissertations creates difficult tensions between the individual rights of authors, the rights of educational institutions, and the responsibilities that both have to global scholarship and the collective good. How can we resolve those tensions?
Happy 100th Birthday to Relativity–More or Less, Depending on Where You're Reading This
Celebrating Einstein’s theory of General Relativity with a well-known time traveler.
The Death of the Collection and the Necessity of Library-Publisher Collaboration: Young Librarians on the Future of Libraries
Applicants for a recent conference scholarship wrote essays that tended strongly to depict the traditional collection as dead and collaboration between librarians and publishers as essential to the library’s future. Do they herald a generational shift in mindset among librarians?
Guest Post: Richard Fisher on The Monograph: Keep On Keepin’ On*, Part One
Richard Fisher looks at the past, the present and the future of monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences.
Ask The Chefs: What Is Your Favorite Yogi Berra Quote And Why?
In honor of the wisdom and humor of Yogi Berra, this month we asked the Chefs: What is your favorite Yogi Berra quote and why?
Another Big Win for Google Books (and for Researchers)
Google wins in court (again) as the Second Circuit of Appeals rules that its mass book digitization program qualifies as fair use. But Google is a commercial entity! And their files might get hacked! And their library partners are even more susceptible to copyright pirates than Google is! Yes, said the court, but. . .
Restoring a Masterwork
How do you restore a damaged painting? The Metropolitan Museum of Art shows the way.
Guest Post: HighWire’s John Sack on Online Indexing of Scholarly Publications: Part 1, What We All Have Accomplished
HighWire’s John Sack looks at the changes that search engine indexing has driven for discovery of research publications. Part 1 of a two part series covering Anurag Acharya’s recent ALPSP keynote address.
Arion Press and the Magic of Bookmaking
Anthony Bourdain visits San Francisco’s Arion Press to learn about the magic of making a book.
Libraries and Consortia in the Context of a Publisher’s Strategy
Professional societies are facing growing resistance to place their publications in libraries. This results in these societies seeking arrangements with the largest commercial publishers, whose sway with libraries and especially library consortia is significant. Libraries have demonstrated a clear preference to work with the larger publishers over the smaller ones. This leads to increasing concentration and market power in the academic publishing industry.
The IgNobel Prize Celebrates an Anniversary
The 25th Annual IgNobel Prize Ceremony captured on video.
The Jetset Lifestyle
A look back to the days when air travel meant something other than a colossal headache.
Revisiting: The Editor — A Vital Role We Barely Talk About Anymore
Revisiting Kent Anderson’s 2014 post on the importance of editors–how much of what we see as a failure of “peer review” is really a failure of editorial oversight?
Library Publishing Redux: An Unprecedented Example of a Scholar/Library/Publisher Partnership
A collaborative venture between Oxford University Press and the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library exemplifies a new approach to library publishing, one that could be replicated elsewhere with relative ease and that offers potentially huge benefits to scholarship.