Books reveal themselves. Whether they exist as print or pixels, they can be read and examined and made to spill their secrets. Readers are far more elusive. They leave traces--a note in the margin, a stain on the binding--but those hints of human handling tell us only so much. The experience of reading vanishes with the reader.But it's not necessarily gone for good. Projects like the Reading Experience Database, based at the Open University in the U.K., and scholars like Leah Price, a professor of English at Harvard University, have set out to recover what people did with their books." Read More at The Chronicle Review »
Writing
“Missing Ears” (on “Stylish Academic Writing” by Helen Sword)
A review of Helen Sword's Stylish Academic Writing. Read More at TLS »
“With ‘Social Reading,’ Books Become Places to Meet”
New projects, including a open edition of Thomas More's "Utopia," invite readers to gather around texts online and share annotations and comments. The approach seems to play well in the classroom. Will it catch on with general readers? How social do we want our books to be? Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education »
“Flat World Knowledge to Drop Free Access to Textbooks”
...taking advocates of OER (open educational resources) by surprise. Sometimes free is just too expensive. Read More at Wired Campus (CHE) »
“Storm Damage at NYU Library Offers Lessons for Disaster Planning in the Stacks”
A 14-foot storm surge from the East River flooded the lower levels of NYU's medical center and drowned much of the library there. How librarians and curators responded, and what other libraries might learn from NYU's experience. Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) »
