LISNews: Librarian News

The tag line for this week's episode: "Information As Weapon"

We've got a bit of an essay talking about that in connection with an awful case in Ohio. Information might want to be free, but couldn't it also be used as a weapon?

There's no miscellany this week as we thought that that would be enough to consider within the realm of preserving the knowledge ecology.

Related links:

• The Register: Anonymous turns private eye in Ohio rape case -- Releases purloined data after hacking attack
• The Plain Dealer: Protest over investigation of suspected rape turns spotlight on Steubenville
• WJW Fox8: Masked Protesters Storm Steubenville
• The Atlantic Wire: Inside the Anonymous Hacking File on the Steubenville 'Rape Crew'
• New York Times: Rape Case Unfolds on Web and Splits City
• NewsNet5: National criticism on Steubenville rape case prompts website creation
• National Post: Matt Gurney -- Anonymous bullies the wrong (presumed) Amanda Todd bully
• Slate: Did Anonymous Unmask the Wrong Guy in Its Hunt for the Man Who Allegedly Drove a Teen to Suicide?
• The Globe and Mail: RCMP dismiss online rumour about Amanda Todd’s tormentor
• arXiv: How Much of the Web Is Archived?

Download here (MP3) (Ogg Vorbis), or subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like gpodder.net.

There is an opportunity available to purchase material goods to replace some of the hardware that has died at Erie Looking Productions over the past three weeks.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

This week's program has not one but two features from the United States Department of Agriculture that may prove useful to reference librarians and selectors. In the essay we talk about the World Conference on International Telecommunications 2012 and how it may bode ill for the Internet not to mention that NPR reports about such as well.

Related links:

• ComputerWorld: Kill switch thrown on Internet in Syria -- Amid bloody civil war, communication blackout hits all of country
• Wired: U.N.: We Seek to Bring Internet to All
• International Telecommunications Union: Basic Texts of ITU
• Michael Geist: UN Internet Meeting About Who Pays, Not Who Rules
• National Public Radio: Shutdowns Counter The Idea Of A World-Wide Web
• Steve Kemp: Simple website creation tools
• The Register: Voda fails again: network melts in Melbourne heatwave -- ‘Try turning it off and turning it back on again’
• Joe Lambert: Offline First – A better HTML5 User Experience
• Fox 8 News: Boehner ‘Flabbergasted’ at Fiscal Cliff Proposal
• Fox 8 News: Coverage of the Emiliano Terry case
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer: Deadly police chase from Cleveland into East Cleveland brings questions, leaves families sorrowful

Download here (MP3) (Ogg Vorbis), or subscribe to the podcast (MP3) to have episodes delivered to your media player. We suggest subscribing by way of a service like gpodder.net. Stephen's Silly Summation of Christmas Wishes can be found here via Amazon, as always.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/.

The website for Library World Records, the Guinness Book of World Records for libraries and books is now back online.

Library World Records is fascinating book first published in 2004 after research work began on the book in 2002. The book was further extensively updated in a second edition in December 2009. Library World Records provides hundreds of intriguing and comprehensive facts about ancient and modern books, manuscripts and libraries around the world.

A much bigger brand new 3rd edition of the book is being researched at the moment and further details of this brand new edition will be revealed on this website around winter 2012.

Link:
http://www.lwrw.org.uk/Page1.htm

Godfrey
BSc, MSc.
London, Britain.

Peer-reviewed library and information science journals are certainly no exception to the scourge of "academese" - a dialect known for its floridness, pedantry, and obfuscatory properties. Rachel Toor, an associate professor of creative writing at Eastern Washington University in Spokane, writes in the Chronicle of Higher Education about what she "hears" from those writing for an "academic" audience:

Am I making a convincing case? Have I mentioned everything everyone else has said about this topic and pointed out the ways that they are (sort of) wrong? Do you see how much I've read? Have I dropped enough important names? Does my specialized language prove I deserve to be a member of your club? Am I right? At the end, I hear hope disguised as an attitude that asks: Am I smart?

She further illustrates her point when reflecting on her career, "In my work for a publisher, I had perpetrated on the world a whole lot of garbled ideas expressed in jargon and in meaningless, incomprehensible, and never-ending sentences."

Toor goes on to discuss internal calls for more persuasive writing in various academic disciplines, including history. She also reviews a new book "Stylish Writing" by Helen Sword, summarizing some of the tips from the book about making academic writing more accessible and, frankly, interesting. -- Read More