Writing

The Australian Research Council has been testing out a framework called the Excellence in Research for Australia, or ERA, as way to measure the quality of research in all disciplines. ERA includes journal rankings, assigning each journal a rank of A*, A, B, or C. Some scholars and journal editors in the social sciences and humanities say the rankings don't reflect the quality of their work, and worry that the rankings are being misused as a way to measure individual scholars' output. Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) »

Imagine a library that is not only bookless but is not necessarily tied to a building, one that takes its personnel and services to patrons rather than expecting them to come to it. I explore two experiments in what the library of the near future will look like: a learning terrace for undergraduates, and an informationist" program at a medical library." Read More at "The Digital Campus" (CHE, subscription) »

At the annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies, scholars shared war stories about the humanities under threat at their campuses and worried about the diminishing regard for the liberal arts at home even as it's being touted as a sought-after American export. Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) »

HarperCollins rankled librarians earlier this year by announcing a library usage limit of 26 on new ebook titles. My latest Hot Type column looks at how the issues raised by the #hcod debate are playing out in the world of academic libraries and publishers. Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) »

Ken Price, a scholar at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, has turned up thousands of documents Walt Whitman copied and worked on as a clerk in the attorney general's office in the 1860s. And people say government work isn't poetic. Read More at The Chronicle of Higher Education »