Halloween Over, Still Scary Times — Please Vote!
Halloween has concluded, but things are still looking scary in the US for public health.
Guest Post: This Open Access Week Theme Has a Distinguished History
Some thoughts on this year’s Open Access Week theme, “community over commercialization.”
Ahoy! Why is English Awash in Nautical Terms?
Why is the English language so filled with nautical terms?
A Musical Tour of the History of Scholarly Communications
Congratulations to Heather Staines and her cast for converting ALPSP delegates to the grand tradition of the conference skit.
Revisiting: Libraries and the Contested Terrain of “Neutrality”
Revisiting Rick Anderson’s 2022 post which asks, are libraries “neutral”? That question is way too simplistic to serve as anything other than a political football.
Digital Archiving: Andy Warhol’s Lost Amiga Art Found
The floppy discs behind a long lost digital piece of art are recovered.
Guest Post — Learning from the Archives to Build the Future at the APS Press
Jon Repetti reflects on the lessons being learned from the American Philosophical Society’s re-entrance into the fray of the scholarly publishing marketplace.
Marketing and the Origins of Food Names
Where do common food names come from, and how does changing the name of a food reflect marketing and sales?
The Genetic Drift of Baby Names
Why do some names fall out of fashion, and how is the study of names like the study of genetics?
Why Are English Language Spellings So Weird?
Why are English spellings so inconsistent and weird?
Jane Austen’s Free Indirect Speech
A short explanation of one way that Jane Austen changed literature.
The Evolution of Pronunciation
Which words do you mispronounce? Or rather, which words that you mispronounce today will eventually be “correct”?
The Stories Behind English Letters
If you’re reading this, odds are you know the 26 letters in the English alphabet. But do you know how they came to their current forms?
“Mrs. Foster Has Sworn A Rape”; or, What Do We Owe? Generosity, Attribution, and the Perilous Invisibility of Research Infrastructure
Attribution has many virtues, but among them it can make visible the vast infrastructure of research for a public largely unaware or unconcerned with how much hard-won knowledge, including creative endeavor, that research has facilitated.
When Contractions Don’t Work
Why do some contractions work and others don’t?