Back to School
John Oliver’s guide to the upcoming year for students.
The Evolution of Language: When is a Phone not a Phone?
What does the word “phone” mean in this day and age?
Celebrating Pluto with Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson
Stephen Colbert discusses Pluto with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
The Changing Nature of Scale in STM and Scholarly Publishing
Smaller independent and society publishers are finding it increasingly difficult to compete with the economies of scale around production, technology, and (most important) institutional sales that can be brought to bear by a large publisher. If you are a society that has been self-publishing for many decades, such effects may appear as only a recent headwind in a long publishing tradition. This headwind, however, is most likely not a temporary zephyr but rather a permanent fixture of the STM and scholarly publishing landscape, and one that will only increase in intensity. To understand why, it is helpful to look at the two vectors on which scale operates in STM and scholarly publishing: horizontal and vertical. While horizontal scale has long been the province of commercial publishers, society publishers are typically organized to take advantage of vertical scale. The headwinds are presently blowing along the horizontal plane, from the perspective of the society publisher.
The "Hipster" of the 1880s: Evolution of the Word "Dude"
A short film showing the evolution of one of our more useful words.
Putting Publishers’ Views of Libraries into Context
A presentation delivered to the International Coalition of Library Consortia, the thesis of which is that libraries and consortia have adopted policies that inadvertently marginalize smaller publishers, to the advantage of the largest publishers.
5 Million Public Domain Ebooks in HathiTrust: What Does This Mean?
The HathiTrust archive now contains 5 million digitized books that are in the public domain and are freely available to all. Do we recognize how significant that is?
Guest Post: Karin Wulf on Open Access and Historical Scholarship
As we consider the future of scholarly publishing generally and of open access in particular, we need to keep in mind the deep differences between the humanities and the applied sciences when it comes to both the production and the consumption of scholarship–and the implications of those differences for new dissemination models.
The Art of Letterpress
A short video on the joys of Letterpress printing.
Neil Gaiman Salutes Douglas Adams: Why Books Are Sharks
Author Neil Gaiman pays tribute to the late, great Douglas Adams, and in his lecture, explains why books endure.
Woman’s Place: In the Kitchen?
Gender equality is about more than just evening up the numbers. It’s about ensuring everyone has the confidence or the courage to take opportunities.
The Flatscreen Install — Moving Collaboration from Print to Digital
Would adding a big flatscreen TV to my office might make a difference? Yes, in big and important ways.
Small Fly, Big Impact: A History of Drosophila Research (and Why It Matters)
A charming short film about the history and importance of the fruit fly Drosophila as a model organism in biomedical research.
The New Cluetrain — A Barometer for What Has Changed in the Last 15 Years
Fifteen years later, the authors of the “Cluetrain Manifesto” attempt a relevant update, with 112 new “clues.” Yet, they miss the biggest clue of all — the Internet is no longer sacred and its users know it.
My Name Is Ozymandias, King of Kings
There’s no such thing as “too big to fail,” and this applies to libraries as much as it does to car makers, steel companies, and search engines. My guess is that Ozymandias never saw it coming.