Anonymous Patron writes “Over @Slate, Stephen Metcalf asks Uncle Tom’s Children – Why has Uncle Tom’s Cabin survived—and thrived? We have here an interesting puzzle. How has Uncle Tom’s Cabin survived, and thrived, if it proved so offensive to the 20th-century aspirations of the African-Americans it helped liberate in the 19th? Why isn’t Uncle Tom’s Cabin like Wittgenstein’s ladder: Once climbed, it is obsolete, and we ought to throw it away?
The answer, he believes, can be found in an essay from 1978 by Jane Tompkins, a prominent feminist literary critic”
November 1999
Ohio Budget Bill Remains Pending
AshtabulaGuy writes “Ohio House Bill 66 currently weighs in at twenty megabytes which is a tall order to be viewed over dial-up. The bill remains in the Ohio Senate Finance and Financial Institutions Committee for now. A four megabyte doc
ument is available in Adobe Acrobat format that highlights differences between the Senate’s present version and what the House passed. These are primary documents that cannot be just ignored as we get closer to the Ohio state budget deadline of July 1.”
Too soon to let computers replace university libraries
Anonymous Patron writes “The Japan Times Online has one that looks at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin’s decision to remove almost all the books from its undergraduate library to provide space for a digital learning center, where students can use computers to access a wide variety of information. University officials are proud to be leading a trend.
It is good to see academia catching up with technology. But what are the repercussions of this shift? I am thinking about this from various perspectives: Teacher, researcher, author and reader.
Note from RH: The article mistakenly identifies the library as being in Houston. It’s at the UT-Austin.”
The People’s do-it-yourself library
Cortez writes “With the eroding financial support from government entities, the folks in Boston’s Papercut: http://www.baamboston.org/papercut/ might be on to something: http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features
“It’s Tuesday afternoon, three days after the Papercut ’Zine Library opened, and Mothra, the bullet-belted punk-rock librarian on duty, is sitting in a comfy chair explaining what inspired the venture: a pile of ’zines collecting dust on her best friend’s floor. “I was like, ‘Isn’t there some way to let other people use these?””
Controversy colors teen book
Anonymous Patron writes “USATODAY.com Rainbow Party, aimed at the teen market (ages 14 and up), has some booksellers and librarians wondering whether author Paul Ruditis sensationalizes the subject — and, more significantly, whether they should carry it on their shelves.”
Jazz Discovery at Library of Congress
gsandler writes ”
Here is a
story from the New York Times on the discovery by the Library of Congress of a
previously unknown recording of the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane.
There are very few recordings of this period of John Coltrane’s career. "During this period, Coltrane fully collected himself as an improviser, challenged by Monk and the discipline of his unusual harmonic sense. Thus began the 10-year sprint during which he changed jazz completely, before his death in 1967."
(Registration at the NY Times web site is required.)
“
Florida College Students Concerned about Library Hours
Anonymous Patron writes “students at the University of South Florida are not happy with the very reduced hours at the university’s library. More here from The Oracle.”
Students really using libraries!
Cortez writes “Demonstrating the possibilties of new technology and historic records, students bring the past alive: http://www.common-place.org/vol-05/no-03/school/
“The high-school students in the extracurricular Project Apprentice to History (PATH) in Beverly, Massachusetts, are not your typical honors students, yet their achievements are extraordinary.””
Fancy sitting down with a good book? You’ll be lucky
Anonymous Patron writes “Finding room to read at the British Library is no mean feat for established users, as seats are increasingly filled by twittering students fiddling with their phones, says John Sutherland @EducationGuardian.co.uk“
Pinter picks poetry, politics over plays
slashgirl writes “‘ Harold Pinter, one of the U.K.’s greatest living dramatists, is turning away from playwriting to focus on politics and poetry.
“I think I’ve stopped writing plays now, but I haven’t stopped writing poems,” Pinter, the man behind such works as The Homecoming, The Caretaker and No Man’s Land, told the BBC this week.’
The rest of the story is here.“
Recent Comments