Before the printing press, memory was the main store of human knowledge. Scholars had to go to find books, often traveling around from one scriptoria to another. They couldn’t buy books. Individuals did not have libraries. The ability to remember was integral to the social accumulation of knowledge.
Thus, for centuries humans had built ways to remember out of pure necessity.
Blake
Why Great Critics Make Disastrous Judgments
What, then, are the underlying intellectual, creative, and aesthetic issues that can cause even brilliant critics to misfire? An answer can be found in the tension between what we might call literary time and critical time. Critics, of course, have deadlines. A given review or essay must appear by such and such a date, generally just before or after the book’s publication. But as Terry Eagleton points out in Literary Theory: An Introduction, the designation “classic” or “literary masterpiece” is almost always retrospective. By showing how literary genius can be found in works as diverse as Plato’s dialogues, Bacon’s essays, Keats’s poetry, and Hemingway’s prose, Eagleton establishes that there is no intrinsic property that can safely lead a critic to confer the coveted tag of “literary value” to a work:
From Why Great Critics Make Disastrous Judgments – The Chronicle of Higher Education
Watching Wikipedia’s extinction event from a distance
So what’s the big deal about one tiny little article? Who cares if one little sea squirt on the reef gets destroyed? I care, but not enough to re-engage with Wikipedia’s deletionists. Wikipedia went from people writing an encyclopedia to people writing rules about writing an encyclopedia, or writing bots to defend an encyclopedia, but without enough safeguards to save content from deletionists.
From Watching Wikipedia’s extinction event from a distance / Boing Boing
Top Hat Raises $22.5 Million to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill
That’s a weakness Top Hat Chief Executive Officer Mike Silagadze said he’s trying to exploit. He started by selling software tools to professors that help them engage their students, such as smartphone apps that let them tell lecturers if they understand new concepts in real-time. The company, which launched in 2009, has 2 million students using its products.
The next step is to go directly after the textbooks and digital course content made by Pearson and McGraw, Silagadze said in an interview. In November, they launched an online content marketplace, where professors can create course materials and sell it around the world. The idea is to cut out the publisher and let professors sell directly to students and each other, Silagadze said.
From Top Hat Raises $22.5 Million to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill – Bloomberg
Publishers Still Fighting to Bury Universities, Libraries in Fees for Making Fair Use of Academic Excerpts
On behalf of three national library associations, EFF today urged a federal appeals court for the second time to protect librarians’ and students’ rights to make fair use of excerpts from academic books and research.
New Checklists to Support Library Patron Privacy
LITA’s Patron Privacy Interest Group has partnered with the ALA IFC’s Privacy Subcommittee to create new checklists to support library patron privacy policies.
The checklists cover:
data exchange between networked devices and services
e-book lending and digital content vendors
library management systems/integrated library systems
library websites, OPACs, and discovery services
public access computers and networks
students in K-12 schools.
From New Checklists to Support Library Patron Privacy – LITA Blog
What should you think about when using Facebook?
TL;DR: Facebook collects data about you in hundreds of ways, across numerous channels. It’s very hard to opt out, but by reading about what they collect, you can understand the risks of the platform and choose to be more restrictive with your Facebook usage.
From What should you think about when using Facebook? – Vicki Boykis – Data, tech, and sometimes Nutella
The Maps We Wandered Into As Kids
If I ruled the world, or at least a publishing company, all books would contain as much supplementary information as possible. Nonfiction, fiction — doesn’t matter. Every work would have an appendix filled with diagrams, background information, digressions and anecdata. And of course, maps. Lots and lots of maps. This predilection probably sprang from the books I read as a kid — books like The Phantom Tollbooth, The Hobbit and The Princesss Bride — all of which feature engaging maps that serve as gateways to imaginary lands. Here, say these maps, you’re in this other world now.
Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying
An essayist looks into the curious past of pathological collectors – and considers her own lifelong urge to hoard ever more volumes
From Bibliomania: the strange history of compulsive book buying | Books | The Guardian
‘New York Times’ Cuts a Range of Bestseller Lists
The New York Times has eliminated a number of bestsellers lists, although the exact number could not be confirmed Thursday morning. Cutting the various lists is part of an overall plan by the paper to revamp its coverage of publishing.
A note sent on Wednesday to subscribers to the advance bestsellers lists said, “Beginning with the Advance BSL edition that will be delivered today for Feb. 5, 2017, there will be revisions to multiple categories in the publication. These changes will span weekly and monthly lists.”
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