February 2008 Archives
February 29, 2008
Posted at 11:14 AM in Net Life
My latest story for the Chronicle looks at lessons learned from Gutenberg-e, the high-profile digital-history monograph series created by Columbia University Press and the Columbia Libraries in collaboration with the American Historical Association. It has quietly added an open-access option. It has also switched its subscription model from in-house to the Humanities E-Book project run by the American Council of Learned Societies.
The bottom line? Well--surprise--digital publishing isn't necessarily cheaper than the old-fashioned kind. What you save in printing and binding and warehousing, at least with a project as sophisticated as Gutenberg-e, you may lose in extra labor-and-tech costs. "We discovered that online is not cheaper," one person close to the project told me.
And open access? Many welcome it, for obvious reasons. But publishers struggle with the worry that--to borrow a phrase I heard recently--it will make them "audience rich and cash poor."
Cathy Davidson wrestles with all these questions over at her HASTAC blog Cat in the Stack. You can read the AHA's take on the evolving Gutenberg-e experiment here, and a research librarian's reaction here.
February 22, 2008
Posted at 11:37 AM in Reading and Writing
I've been getting questions about the new, reading-heavy recommendations for undergraduate creative-writing instruction that I wrote about not long ago for the Chronicle (subscription required). The guidelines, put together by the AWP (The Association of Writers and Writing Programs), have now been posted on the group's website as part of the 2008 AWP Director's Handbook. More thoughts on this later.
February 19, 2008
Posted at 9:17 PM in Lit Crit
I have been accused, from time to time, of being a mixer. My husband likes to remind me of the time that I posted a perfectly innocent question--about the pros and cons of circumcision--to a parenting listserv. Before long, the pro- and anti- camps were hurling accusations of genital mutilation and cultural imperialism at each other. Let's just say it was an eye-opener.
Another question of mine, this one about what "post-avant" really means, had a similar match-meets-powder-keg effect not long ago. You can read the question here (scroll to the bottom) on the Chronicle's Footnoted blog, the answer here ("Who You Callin' Post Avant?"), and reaction here. As one commenter wrote, "Damn, y'all. It's like Knots Landing in here. Somebody, call Wallace Stevens!"
February 15, 2008
Posted at 11:19 AM in Net Life
Librarians get their own web series, "Erik the Librarian," courtesy of "The Office" scribe Brent Forrester. Speak Quietly has the skinny and a clip. Worth the three minutes and 25 seconds of your life that you will spend watching it.
(Link via LIS News.)
February 13, 2008
Posted at 12:30 PM in Net Life
Over at Print Is Dead, Jeffrey Gomez has posted a report from this week's O'Reilly Tools of Change confab NYC. Depending on how devoted you are to the idea of the solitary writer/reader, you will find it either bracing or alarming.
According to Gomez, one panelist, Stephen Abram, talked about how Wiki-style creation (context, in other words) has displaced the idea of content. Another, Douglas Rushkoff, took it a step further:
Rushkoff's idea is that the main point of content is to offer people the opportunity to socialize. And it's that socializing, or socialization, that's the real point; it's the contact that's important, not the content in and of itself. He summed up his point by saying that "Content is an excuse for people to interact."
Wow. So why do I feel so wonderfully alone when I write? Isn't that necessary, at least to a certain kind of (grad-jive alert here) "literary production"? If I just wanted to socialize, I'd throw a dinner party. Then again, unless you're Emily Dickinson (and maybe not even then), a writer wants some answer back from the vasty deep (or the frozen expanse of cyberspace).
February 11, 2008
Posted at 12:53 PM in Lit Crit
If you're reading one of the Bard's plays, you can now join the global crowd--online--via Shakespeare's Global Globe, the brainchild of an English professor at Carnegie Mellon. (Love the orbis-mundi URL.) The Chronicle's Wired Campus blog has some background.
As of 12:59 p.m. EST, 108 people are reading Shakespeare. Well, 108 people have logged on to report that they're reading Shakespeare.
February 9, 2008
Posted at 8:05 PM in Lit Crit
If you find yourself reviewing James Wood's new book, please don't invoke Edmund Wilson in your lead. Trust me. It's been done.
Thanks.
(More Woodiana here, if you must.)
February 8, 2008
Posted at 10:23 PM in Net Life
Is it? Is it "almost like ESP," Wired?
February 7, 2008
Posted at 2:15 PM in History Matters
Library of Congress blogger Matt Raymond reports the sad news that Harry Landis, one of the last two known American vets of World War I, died on Monday at the very respectable age of 108:
That leaves 107-year-old Frank Buckles of Charles Town, W. Va., as the sole surviving American veteran of the "Great War" that began more than 90 years ago. I was aware that their ranks were dwindling, but I didn't realize that the numbers were so low.
The bright spot? You can hear the voices of Mr. Buckles and 278 other U.S. Great War vets at the Library:
I was curious as to whether we had the oral history of the last remaining WWI veteran. As it turns out, the Library of Congress and its Veterans History Project are indeed the repository of the Frank Buckles collection....
According to the VHP Web site, Buckles himself explained why he told his story: "It's best for anyone who's been in the military service if he's had some disagreeable experiences...to talk about it and get it out of his system and then forget it."
Hang in there, Frank.
February 5, 2008
Posted at 10:40 AM in Lit Crit
Please stop profiling and otherwise making a fuss over James Wood. I hear he's good. I hear he has a new book out ("an Olympian critic points out where major-league talents are getting it wrong," the Independent says). I understand he likes to spend time with his children. Enough said.
February 4, 2008
Posted at 10:17 AM in Future Imperfect
John Crowley (Little, Big) has noticed that, in SF movies, the future's been looking more and more like the past:
"Brazil," set 'somewhere in the 20th Century', isn't really the future; like some of the Superman and Batman movies it's set in a some alternative sorta-retro past or alternative present or generalized urban somewhen....I think it's interesting that the rise of these generalized and often hauntingly beautiful cityscapes of dream have nearly supplanted the city-of-the-future of Things to Come or Buck Rogers or a thousand others. Of course what they do is to incorporate OLD cities-of-the-future into their vision. SF futures are becoming visions of the past, including past futures. What does the future look like? A lot like what 1947 thought the future would look like -- or a lot like 1947 tout suite.
February 1, 2008
Posted at 10:35 PM in Anglophilia
Britain has done away with a thousand of its zebra crossings (picture John, Paul, George, and Ringo on the cover of "Abbey Road"). The London Times columnist Janice Turner waxes nostalgic :
And, while our towns are now besmirched with vile signage, clashing coloured lanes and ugly railings to imprison pedestrians, zebra crossing have a quaint charm. Belisha beacons, with their 1950s Toytown, Tufty Club associations, rank with pillar boxes and red phone booths as rare examples of elegant native street furniture.
Moreover, zebra crossings represent the British libertarian spirit, an upholding of ancient rights of way, the freedom to jaywalk, the freedom even not to have a word in our native argot for jaywalk or a statute in our legal system prohibiting it.
I don't quite see how you can jaywalk in a crosswalk, but whatever. Save the zebra!
Posted at 10:04 AM
Got a book coming out? Make a video.
