The ability to re-read long novels might not seem directly relevant to our current political dysfunction, but neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf makes a strong case that it is in her new book, Reader, Come Home. I reviewed the book for The Washington Post. Read More at The Washington Post »
Journalism
“Copy Machines in Libraries Are Going the Way of the Dodo–Slowly”
I'm always interested in how familiar tools--like the copy machine--change over time or give way to other tools and what that says about how we live, so this story was fun to do. Read More at EdSurge »
“Content Providers?”
A review of The Digital Critic, a collection of essays on living the literary life online, for the TLS. Read More at The Times Literary Supplement »
“Old Ways Meet New Tech (and New Students) at Meeting of Library and Academic Leaders”
Sometimes the old ways (copy machines, general-purpose digital tools) really are best. My report from the Ithaka Next Wave conference. Read More at EdSurge »
“The Copyright Mavericks”
Is there a workaround that allows libraries to make digitized copies of some copyrighted material publicly accessible? Looks that way. The Internet Archive (the geniuses behind the Wayback Machine) and a crack copyright scholar are testing the limits of a little-known section of the copyright code.
(N.B. I hadn't written for Slate for a while, and I'm thrilled to be contributing now to Slate's Future Tense.) Read More at Slate »